Columbia ©nrtmtfp 
 
 mtbfffittpoflftoPark 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 SELIGMAN LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS 
 
 PURCHASED 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
■ SPEECHES 
 
 a i .. 
 
 lEIBo 
 
 ©if C? f f U 
 
 Xntwuftl K^rrtantnt; 
 
 ®/#PW SPM4* 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES OP THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 
 FEINTED 'bt BALES & SEATON. 
 
SPEECH 
 
 Ti)t CTucstion. 
 
 IIELIVEKED IS THE HOUSE OF BEFBESENTATIYES, 
 
 On motion of Mr. Webster, the House resolved itself into a 
 committee of the whole, on the state of the Union, Mr. Taylor in 
 the chair. 
 
 Mr. Clay offered the following, which he desired to lay on the 
 table for consideration. 
 
 “.Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of 
 America, in Congress assembled. That the people of these States would not see, 
 without serious inquietude, any forcihle interposition, by the Allied Powers of 
 Europe, in behalf of Spain, to reduce to their former subjection those parts 
 of the continent of America which have proclaimed and established for them¬ 
 selves, respectively, Independent Governments, and which have been solemn¬ 
 ly recognized by the United States.” 
 
 The committee of the whole having resumed the consideration of 
 the resolution recommending an appropriation to defray the expense 
 of a mission to Greece, 
 
 Mr. Poinsett, of South Carplina, rose, and addressed the House, 
 in a speech of some length, which he concluded by moving the follow¬ 
 ing amendment: 
 
 “ Resolved, That this House view with deep interest the heroic struggle of 
 the Greeks to elevate themselves to the rank of a free and independent nation; 
 and to unite with the President in the sentiments he has expressed in their fa- 
 vor; in sympathy for their sufferings, in interest in their welfare, and in ardent 
 wishes for their success.” 
 
 “ Resolved, That this House concur in the sentiments expressed by the Pre¬ 
 sident, in relation to this hemisphere, and would view any attempt to oppress 
 or control the free governments of America south of us, by the Allied Powers 
 of Europe, as dangerous to the peace and happiness of the United Stales; and 
 that such measures as may be deemed expedient to protect them from the 
 attacks of any power, other than that of Spain alone, and unassisted, will meet 
 its cordial support.” 
 
 [The latter resolution was withdrawn by Mr. P. in consequence of a resolu¬ 
 tion to a similar effect having been laid upon the table by the Speaker. This 
 explanation is necessary to an understanding of Mr. Randolph’s remarks.] 
 
 Mr. RANDOLPH then rose, and said, that this was perhaps one of 
 finest and prettiest themes for declamation ever presented to a deli¬ 
 berative assembly. But, it appeared to him in a light very different 
 
4 
 
 from any that had as yet been thrown upon it. He looked at the 
 measure as one fraught with deep and deadly danger to the best in¬ 
 terests and to the liberties of the American people; and so satisfied 
 was he of this, that he had been constrained by that conviction to 
 overcome the almost insuperable repugnance he felt to throwing him¬ 
 self upon the notice of the House; but he felt it to be his duty to 
 raise his voice against both the propositions. 
 
 He would not, at this time, go at length into the subject: his in¬ 
 tention in rising was, merely, to move that the committee rise, and 
 that both of the resolutions might be printed. He wished to have 
 some time to thihk of this business—to deliberate, before we took 
 this leap in the dark into the Archipelago, or the Black Sea, or into 
 the wide-mouthed La Plata. He might be permitted to add one or 
 two other views. He knew, he said, that the post of honor was on 
 the other side of the House, the post of toil and of difficulty on this 
 side, if, indeed, any body should be with him on this side. It was a 
 difficult and ati invidious task, to stem the torrent of public senti¬ 
 ment, tvhen alt the geherOUs feelings of the human heart were ap¬ 
 pealed to. But, sir, said Mr. R., I was delegated to this House to 
 guard the interests Of the People of the United States, not to guard 
 the rights of other people; and, if it was doubted, even in thecase of 
 England, that land, fertile above all other lahds, (not excepting 
 Greece herself,) in great and glorious men—if it was doubted whe¬ 
 ther her interference in the politics of the continent, though separat¬ 
 ed from it only by a narrow strait, not so wide as the Chesapeake, 
 as oUr Mediterranean sea—had redounded either to her honor or her 
 advantage; if the effect of that interference has been a monumental 
 debt that paralyses the arm that might now strike for Greece, that 
 certainly would have struck for Spain, tan it be for us to seek, in the 
 very bottom of the Mediterranean, for a quarrel with the Ottoman 
 Porte? And this, while we have aii ocean rolling between? While we 
 are in that sea without a single port in which to refit a gun-boat, 
 
 ■ and while the powers of Barbary lie in succession in our path, shall 
 we open this Pandora’s box of political evils ? It has been wisely 
 and truly said, that it is possible the mere rumor of our interference 
 may produce, at Constantinople, or at Smyrna, that which will drive 
 us at once into a war. We all know the connection that subsists be¬ 
 tween the Barbary states and what we may denominate the mother 
 power. Are we prepared for a war with these pirates? (not that we 
 -are not perfectly competent to such a war, but) Does it suit our finan¬ 
 ces? Does it, sir, suit our magnificent projects of roads and canals ? 
 Does it suit the temper of our people? Does it promote their inter¬ 
 ests? Will it add to their happiness? Sir, why did we remain su¬ 
 pine while Piedmont and Naples were'crushed by Austria? Why did 
 we stand aloof, while the Spanish peninsula wasagain reduced under 
 . legitimate government? If we did not interfere then, why now? 
 Sir, I refer you to the memorable attempted interference in the case 
 of one of the loftiest and most unbendingof statesmen, when he was in 
 the zenith of his glory—When all his dazzling beams were unshorn—I 
 mean Mr. Pitt; and I refer you as a commentary on that attempted in- 
 
5 
 
 terference, tojthe speech of Mr. Fox; a speech fraught with the wisdom 
 of a real statesman. [Here Mr. Randolph paused—when he resumed, 
 he said,] I perceive, sir, that 1 have overcalculated my strength'. 
 
 I feel I am not what I was. The effort of speaking is top much for 
 me. The physical effort has suspended, (as, when physical effort is 
 violent, it always does,) the exercise of the intellectual faculty. 
 What I wished to say was, that this Quixotism, in regard either to 
 Greece or to South America, or, I will add, to North America, (so 
 much of it as lies without our own boundary—I mean Mexico and Gua- 
 timala,) that this Quixotism is not what the sober and reflecting minds 
 of our people require at our hands. Sir, we are in debt as individuals, 
 and we are in debt as a nation; and never, since the days of Saul 
 and David, of Csesar and Catiline, could a more.unpropitious period 
 have been found for such an undertaking. The state of society is 
 too much disturbed. There is always, in a debtor, a tendency either 
 to torpor or to desperation—neither condition is friendly to such de¬ 
 liberations. But he would suspend what he had further to say on 
 the subject. For himself, he saw as much danger, and more, in the 
 resolution proposed by the gentleman from Kentucky, as in that of 
 the gentleman from Massachusetts. The war that may follow on 
 the one is a distant war; it lies on the other side of the ocean. The 
 war that may be induced by the other, is a war at hand; it is on the 
 same continent. He was equally opposed to the amendment as well 
 as to that which had since been offered to the original resolutions. 
 Let us look a little further at all of them. Let us sleep upon them 
 before we pass resolutions which, I will not say, are mere loops to 
 hang speeches on, and thereby commit the nation to a war, the is¬ 
 sues of which it is not given to human sagacity to divine. 
 
 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 January 24. 
 
 The House then again resolved itself into a Committee of the 
 whole, Mr. Taylor in the chair, on the State of the Union, and re¬ 
 sumed the consideration of Mr. Webster’s resolution, for sending an 
 agent to Greece, and the amendment thereto proposed by Mr. Poin¬ 
 sett, which proposes to limit the resolve to the expression of a senti¬ 
 ment decisively favorable to the Greek cause. 
 
 The depending question having been stated, 
 
 Mr. RANDOLPH rose, and said, that it was, to him, a subject of 
 unfeigned regret, that the very few unpremeditated words into which, 
 a few days since, he had been so suddenly and unexpectedly betray¬ 
 ed, should, in the opinion of those for whose judgment he had much 
 greater deference than for his own, have begot a necessity for some 
 further illustration. He could, with the most serious and unaffected 
 sincerity, assure the Committee, that, whenever he was so unfortu¬ 
 nate as to be under the necessity of trespassing on their attention, 
 the pain which it gave them to listen, was not greater than that which 
 he felt in addressing them; and he hoped that that consideration 
 would secure a respectful attention to the little—the very little, that 
 hehad to say. 
 
6 
 
 Sir, said Mr. R. the resolution before you, if we are to take the 
 word of the honorable gentleman that moved it, is, in itself, almost 
 nothing—a speck in the political horizon:—but, Sir, no man belter 
 knows than the honorable mover, that it is from clouds of that portent 
 in the moral and political as well as in the natural atmosphere, that 
 storms, the most disastrous in their consequences, usually proceed. 
 The resolution, in itself, is nothing, when compared with the conse¬ 
 quences which it involves. It appears to me that the bearings and 
 consequences of the measure proposed by this resolution have not 
 yet been traced to their utmost extent; nor, by any means, Mr. R. 
 said, did he intend to undertake the task. But he would give the 
 committee, as succinctly as he could, some of the views in which it 
 presented itself to him. 
 
 It is with serious concern and alarm, said Mr. R. that I have heard 
 doctrines broached in this debate, fraught with consequences more 
 disastrous to the best interests of this People, than any that I ever 
 heard advanced during the five and twenty years since I have been 
 honored with a seat on this floor. They imply, to my apprehension, 
 a total and fundamental change of the policy pursued by this govern¬ 
 ment, ab urbe condita —from the foundation of the Republic, to the 
 ptesent day. Are we, sir, to go on a crusade, in another hemis¬ 
 phere, for the propagation of two objects as dear and delightful to 
 my heart as to .that of any gentleman in this, or in any other assem¬ 
 bly—Liberty and Religion—and, in the name of these holy words— 
 by this powerful spell, is this nation to be conjured and beguiled out 
 of the nigh way of Heaven—out of its present comparatively happy 
 state, into all the disastrous conflicts arising from the policy of Eu¬ 
 ropean powers, with all the consequences which flow from them? 
 Liberty and Religion, Sir! Things that are yetdear, in spite of all the 
 mischief that has been perpetrated in their name. I believe that nothing 
 similar to this proposition is to be found in modern history, unlessin the 
 famous decree of the French National Assembly, which broughtcombi- 
 ned Europe against them, with its united strength, and, after repeated 
 struggles, finally effected the downfal of the French power. Sir, I 
 am wrong—there is another example of like doctrine; and you find 
 it among that strange and peculiar people—in that mysterious book, 
 which is of the highest authority with them, (for it is at once their 
 gospel and their law—) the Koran, which enjoins it to be the duty of 
 all good Moslems to propagate its doctrines at the point of the sword; 
 by the edge of the cimetar. The character of that people is a pecu¬ 
 liar one: they differ from every other race. It has been said, here, 
 that it is four hundred years since they encamped in Europe. Sir, 
 said Mr. R. they wet;e encamped, where we now find them, before 
 this country was discovered, and their title to the country which 
 they occupy is at least as good as ours. They hold their possessions 
 there by the same title by which all other countries are held—pos¬ 
 session obtained, at first, by a successful employment of force, con¬ 
 firmed by time, by usage, by prescription—the best of all possible 
 titles. Their policy, Mr. R. said, had been, not tortuous, like that 
 of other States of Europe, but straight forward; they had invariably 
 
7 
 
 appealed to the sword, and they held by the sword. The Russ had, 
 indeed, made great encroachments on their empire, but the ground 
 had been contested inch by inch; and the acquisitions of Russia, on 
 the side of Christian Europe—Livonia, Ingria, Courland—Finland 
 to the Gulf of Bothnia—Poland!—had been greater than she had 
 made of the Mahometans. And, m consequence of this straight for¬ 
 ward policy to which he had before referred, this peculiar people 
 could boast of being the only one of the Powers of Continental Eu¬ 
 rope, whose capital had never been insulted by the presence of a 
 foreign military force. It was a curious fact, well worthy of atten¬ 
 tion, that Constantinople was the only capital in Continental Eu¬ 
 rope—for Moscow was the true capital of Russia—that had never 
 been in possession of an enemy. It is, indeed, true, said Mr. R. 
 that the Empress Catharine did inscribe over the gate of one of the 
 cities that she won in the Krimea, (Cherson, I think,) “the road to 
 Byzantium:” but, sir, it has proved—perhaps too low a word for the 
 subject—but a stumpy road for Russia. Who, at that day, would 
 have been believed had he foretold to that august (for so she was) 
 and illustrious woman, that her Cossacs of the Ukraine, and of the 
 Don, would have been encamped in Paris before they reached Con¬ 
 stantinople? Who would have been believed if he had foretold that 
 a French invading force, such as the world never saw before, and, I 
 trust, will never again see—would lay Moscow itself in ashes? 
 These are considerations worthy of attention before we embark in 
 the project proposed by this resolotion, the consequences of which 
 no human eye can divine. 
 
 I would respectfully ask the gentleman from Massachusetts, said 
 Mr.R. whether, in his very able and masterly argument—and he has 
 said all that could be said upon the subject, and more than I suppos¬ 
 ed could have been said by any man, in favor of his resolution— 
 whether he himself has not furnished an answer to his speech—I had 
 not the happiness myself to hear Ins speech, but a friend has read it 
 to me—in one of the arguments in that speech. Towards the con¬ 
 clusion, I think, of his speech, the gentleman lays down, from Puf- 
 fendorff, in reference to the honied words and pious professions of 
 the Holy Alliance, that these are all 6urplussage, because nations 
 are always supposed to be ready to do what justice and national law 
 require. Well, sir, said Mr. R. if this be so—why may not the 
 Greeks presume—why are they not, on this principle, bound to pre¬ 
 sume—that this government is disposed to do all, in reference to 
 them, that they ought to do, without any formal resolutions to that 
 . effect ? I ask the gentleman from Massachusetts, whether the doc¬ 
 trine of Puflfendorff does not apply as strongly to the resolution as to 
 the declaration of the Allies—that is, if the resolution of the gentle¬ 
 man be indeed that almost nothing he would have us suppose, if there 
 be not something behind this nothing which divides this House (not 
 horizontally as the gentleman has somewhat quaintly said—but verti¬ 
 cally ) into two unequal parties, one the advocate of a splendid sys- 
 stem of crusades, the other the friends of peace and harmony: the 
 
advocates of a fire-side policy— for, as long as all is right at the fire¬ 
 side, there cannot be much wrong elsewhere—whether, he repeat¬ 
 ed, does not the doctrine of Puffendorff apply as well to the words 
 of the resolution as to the words of the Holy Alliance? 
 
 But, sir, we have already done more than this. The President of 
 the United States, the only organ of.communication which the people 
 have seen fit to establish between us and foreign powers, has already 
 expressed all, in reference to Greece, that the resolution goes to ex¬ 
 press. Return est —it is done—it is finished—there is an end. Not, 
 Mr. R. said, that he would have the House to infer that he meant to 
 express any opinion as to the policy of such a declaration—and the 
 practice of responding to Presidential addresses and messages had 
 gone out for, now, these two or three and twenty years. 
 
 Mr. R. then went on to say that he had thought, if the great master 
 of political philosophy could arise from thedead,or had his valuable life 
 been spared till now, he would not only have been relieved from all 
 his terrors on the subject of a regicide peace, but also have witnessed 
 a return of the age of chivalry and the banishmentof calculation even 
 from the estimates of statesmen, which that great man could never 
 have foreseen; for, the proposition now under consideration was that 
 something new under the sun, which Solomon himself, the wisest of 
 mankind, never dreamed of. Is this all? No sir, said Mr. R. if 
 that was all, I should not have thrown myself upon your .attention. 
 But this is not all. Cases have already been stated, to which the 
 principle of the resolution}, equally applies as to that of the Greeks. 
 In addition to those already put, I will take the case of Canada, if 
 you will. It is known to every body, that discontents have for some 
 time existed in the Canadian Provinces, with the mother country 
 and the measures of its government. Suppose the people of the Brit¬ 
 ish colonies to the North of us undertake to throw off the yoke—I 
 will not put the case of Jamaica, because they, unhappily, are slave 
 holders—are you ready to stake the .peace, and welfare,.and the re¬ 
 sources ofthis nation, in support of Canadian independence? Your 
 doctrine goes that length—you cannot stop short .of it. Where, in 
 that case, will be the assistance of Great Britain, already referred to 
 in debate as being the only spot in the world -in which liberty resides 
 except our own country? After some other observations, Mr. R. 
 adduced another people in valorous achievement and daring spirit 
 on a footing with these Greeks themselves—rand who had achieved 
 their independence from a bondage far heavier than that of the 
 Greeks to the Turks. How is it, sir,said Mr. R. that we have never 
 sent an envoy to our sister republic of Hayti? Here is a case that 
 fits—a case beyond dispute. It is not that of a people who have 
 “ almost ”—(aye sir! “ almost” hut not cdlogether)—iviho have “ al¬ 
 most,” but perfectly achieved their independence. To attempt to 
 shew that thse cases are.equally within the range of the.principle.of 
 the resolution, would be to.snew a disrespect to,the intellects.of 
 those around me. The man who eannotpursue the inference, would 
 not recognize my picture, though, like the Dutchman’s painting, 
 were written under it, “ This is the man; that the horse.” 
 
9 
 
 There was another remark that fell from the gentleman from Mas¬ 
 sachusetts—of which, Mr. R. said, he should speak, as he always 
 should speak of any thing from that gentleman, with all the personal 
 respect which may be consistent with freedom of discussion.. Among 
 other cases forcibly put by the gentleman from Mass, why he would 
 embark in. this insipient crusade against Mussulmen, he stated this 
 as one—that they hold human beings as property. Aye, sir, said 
 Mr. R.—and what says the constitution of the United States on this 
 - point?-—unless, indeed, that instrument is wholly to be excluded 
 from consideration—unless it is to be regarded as a mereuseless parch* 
 ment, worthy to be burnt, as was once actually proposed. Does not 
 that constitution give its sanction to the holding of human beings as 
 property? Sir, I am not going to discuss the abstract question of 
 liberty or slavery, or any other abstract question. I go for matters of 
 fact. But I would ask gentlemen in this House, who have the mis¬ 
 fortune to reside on the wrong side of a certain mysterious parallel 
 of latitude, to take thisquestion seriously into consideration—wheth¬ 
 er the government of the U. States is prepared to say, that the act 
 of holding human beings as property, is sufficient to place the party 
 so offending under the ban of its high and mighty displeasure? 
 
 Sir, the objections to this resolution accumulate upon me as I pro¬ 
 ceed —vires acquirit eundo. If I should attempt to go through with 
 a statement of them all, and had strength to sustain me, I should do 
 what I promised I would not do—I should worry and exhaust the 
 patience of this Committee. 
 
 Sir, what are we now asked to do? To stimulate the executive to 
 the creation of embassies. And what then? That we, or our friends, 
 may fill them. Sir, the sending embassadors abroad is one of the 
 great prerogatives, if you will, of our Executive authority—and we 
 are, I repeat, about to stimulate the President to the creation of a 
 new, and I must be permitted to say, an unnecessary embassy—a di¬ 
 plomatic agency to Greece—that we, or our friends may profit by it. 
 For, sir, it is a matter of notoriety, that all these good things are re¬ 
 served for men who either have been, or are, de facto, members of 
 this or of the other House. No doubt we shall be able to find some 
 learned Theban, or some other Boeotian, willing to undertake this 
 mission—perfectly willing to live upon the resources of the people, 
 rather than his own. But then, said Mr. R. recurs the old fashioned 
 question, Cui bonol His own, undoubtedly, but surely not that of 
 this nation? 
 
 But, it is urged, that we have received ministers from Revolution¬ 
 ary France.—True, said Mr. R. we have; butwhat was Revolution¬ 
 ary France? Our own ancient and very good ally; a substantive 
 power, if- any such exists on the continent of Europe, Whose inde¬ 
 pendent existence no one could doubt or dispute; unless, indeed, the 
 disciples of Berkely, who deny that there is any such thing as mat¬ 
 ter. But, sir, have the United States always received the ministers 
 that are Sent to thetn from foreign powers? How long did the person 
 
10 
 
 who‘was appointed diplomatic agent here from Spaiu (Don Onie} 
 linger in jour anti-chambers before he was acknowledged? And is it 
 said that the situation of Greece approaches more nearly to indepen¬ 
 dence than that of Spain, when Don Onis came here as her minister? 
 Sir, let these Greeks send a minister to us, and then we will delibe¬ 
 rate on the question, whether we will accredit him or not. If,indeed, 
 there was a minister of Greece knocking at the door of the Presi¬ 
 dent’s anti-chamber for admittance, and that admittance was denied, 
 the question of Grecian independence would be more legitimately 
 before us; but I greatly doubt, if even that case would be sufficient 
 to call for the interference of this House. 
 
 But, Mr. R. said, there was one aspect of this question which, to 
 him it appeared, ought to be conclusive' on the minds of all, viz: that 
 Russia, whose designs on Turkey have been unremittingly prosecut¬ 
 ed, ever since the days of Peter the Great, for more than a century; 
 that Russia, allied to the Greeks in religious faith—indentified in 
 that respect—that Russia, unassailable territorially, and dividing 
 with us (according to the gentleman from Massachusetts) the dread 
 and apprehension of the Allied Powers—even Russia, in "juxtapo¬ 
 sition” (to use the words of the mover of the resolution) with Tur¬ 
 key-even Russia dare not move. But we, who are separated first 
 by the Atlantic Ocean, and then have to traverse the whole length of 
 the Mediterranean sea, to arrive at the seat uf conflict—ove, at the 
 distance of five thousand miles, are to interfere in this quarrel—to 
 what purpose? To the advantage solely of this very colossal power, 
 which' has been held up as the great object of our dread, and of .whom, 
 it is difficult to say, whether it is more to be dreaded for its physical 
 force, or its detestable principles. 
 
 Permit me, sir, to ask why, in the selection of an enemy to the 
 doctrines of our Government, and a party to those advanced by the 
 Iloly Alliance, we should fix on Turkey? She at least forms no par¬ 
 ty to that alliance; and I venture to say, that, for the last century, 
 her conduct, in reference to her neighbors, has been much more 
 Christian than that of all the “ Most Christian,” “ Most Catholic,” 
 or "Most Faithful,” Majesties of Europe—for she has not interfered, 
 as we propose to do, in the internal affairs of other nations. 
 
 But, sir, we have not done. Not satisfied with attempting to sup¬ 
 port the Greeks, one world, like that of Pyrrhus or Alexander, is 
 not sufficient for us. We have yet another world for exploits: we 
 are to operate in a country distant from us 80degrees of latitude, and 
 only accessible by a circumnavigation of the globe, and to sustain 
 which, we must cover th*e Pacific with our ships, and the tops of the 
 Andes with our soldiers. Do gentlemen seriously reflect on the work 
 they haye cut out for us? Why, sir, these projects of ambition sur¬ 
 pass those of Bonaparte himself. 
 
 It has once been said, of the dominions of the King of Spain— 
 thank God! it can no longer be said—that the sun never set upon 
 them. Sir, the sun never sets on ambition like this; they who have 
 once felt its scorpion sting, are never satisfied with a limit less than 
 
11 
 
 the circle of our planet. I have heard, sir, the late corrascation iu 
 the Heavens attempted to be accounted for, by the return of the Lu¬ 
 nar Cycle, the moon having got back into the same relative position 
 in which she was nineteen years ago. However this may be, I am. 
 afraid, sir, that she exerts too potent an influence over our legisla¬ 
 tion, or will have done so, if we agree to adopt the resolution on your, 
 table. I think, about once in seven or eight years, for that seems 
 to be the term of our political cycle, we may calculate upon behold¬ 
 ing some redoubted champion—like him who prances into Westmin¬ 
 ster Hall, armed cap a-pie, like Sir Somebody Dimock, at the coro¬ 
 nation of the British King, challenging all who dispute the title to 
 the crown—coming into this House, mounted on' some magnificent 
 project, such as this. But, sir, I never expected, that, of all places 
 in the world, (except Salem) a proposition like this should have come 
 from Boston. 
 
 Sir, I am afiaid,. that, along with some most excellent attributes 
 and qualities—throve of liberty, jury trial, tiie writ of habeas cor¬ 
 pus, and all the (blessings of free government, we have derived 
 from our Anglo Saxon ancestors, we have got not a little of their John 
 Bull, or father John Bull Dog spirit—^-their readiness to fight for any 
 body, and on any occasion. Sir, England has been for centuries 
 the game cock of Europe. It is impossible to specify the wars in 
 which she has been engaged for contrary purposes; and she will with 
 great pleasure, see us take off her shoulders the labor of preserving 
 the balance of power. We find her fighting, now, for the Queen of 
 Hungary.—then for her inveterate foe, the King of Prussia—now at 
 war for the restoration of the Bourbons—and now on the eve of war 
 with them for the liberties of Spain. These lines on the subject, 
 were never more applicable than they have now become: 
 
 “ Now Europe’s balanced—neither side prevails-- 
 
 “ For nothing’s left in either of the scales.” 
 
 If we pursue the same policy, we must travel the same road, and 
 endure the same burthens, under which England now groans. But, 
 Mr.R. said, glorious as such a design might be, a President of the 
 United States would, in his apprehension, occupy a prouder place in 
 history, who, when he retires from office, can say to the people who 
 elected him, I leave you without a debt, than if he had fought as many 
 pitched battles as Ctesar, or achieved as many naval victories as 
 Nelson. And what, said Mr. R. is debt? In an individual, it is 
 slavery. It is slavery of the worst sort, surpassing that of the West 
 India Islands, for it enslaves the mind, as well as it enslaves the 
 body; and the creature who can be abject enough to incur and to 
 submit to it, receives in that condition of his being perhaps an ade¬ 
 quate punishment. Of course, Mr. R. said, he spoke of debt with 
 the exception of unavoidable misfortune. He spoke of debt caused 
 by mismanagement, by unwarrantable generosity, by being generous 
 before being just. Mr. R. knew tliat his sentiment was ridiculed by 
 Sheiudan, whose lamentable end W as the best commentary upon its 
 
12 
 
 truth. No, sir. Let us abandon these projects. Let us say to those 
 seven millions of Greeks, “ We defended ourselves, when we were 
 but'three millions, against a power, in comparison with which the Turk 
 is but as a Iamb. Go and do thou likewise.” And, said Mr. R. so 
 with respect to the governments of South America. If, after having 
 achieved their independence, they have not valor to maintain it, I 
 would not commit the safety and independence of this country in 
 such a cause. I will, in both these, pursue the same line of conduct 
 which I have ever pursued; from the day I took a seat in this House 
 in ’99, from which, without boasting, I challenge any gentleman to 
 fix upon me any colorable change of departure. 
 
 The condition of my strength, said Mr. R. or, rather, of my weak¬ 
 ness, admonishes me to conclude; but I cannot sit down without 
 remarking, that the state of the world is at this moment unexampled. 
 Wearenow carrying on a piratical war against the maritime banditti 
 of the West Indies. The bucaniers are revived. At what expense 
 of life, of health, of treasure, thait war is carried on, perhaps every 
 member of this committee knows better than I—but, sir, to whatmay 
 this resolution lead? To the investing those banditti, and the ban¬ 
 ditti of all the rest of the world, with formal commissions, which the 
 maritime courts of every country in Europe would be bound to res¬ 
 pect—and Said Mr.R. I should not be surprised if some of the rene- 
 gadpes, whom we haveadmitted to the privileges of citizens, or theyet 
 more spurious offspring of our own soil, should take those com- 
 . paissions to cruize against our commerce That such 'conduct would 
 not be without example, the records of our courts will shew. 
 
 It is not, then, the mere power of Turkey which you are to encoun¬ 
 ter, supposing that you stop short with the original resolution. But 
 you do not—you go further—out of the frying pan into the fire—the 
 amendment of the gentleman from South Carolina, and the proposi¬ 
 tion of the gentleman from Kentucky, go still further—by adopting 
 which, you 'will put the peace of the nation into peril—and for whom? 
 For a people of wh om we know almost as little as we do about the 
 Greeks. Can any man in this House, say, what even is the state of 
 society in Buenos Ayres, its moral condition, &c. 
 
 Let us, said Mr. R. adhere to the policy laid down by the second as 
 well as the first founder of our republic—by him who was the Camillus, 
 as well as Romulus, of the infant state—to the policy of peace, com¬ 
 merce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances 
 with none; for to entangling alliances we must come, if you once em¬ 
 bark in policy such as this. And, with all his British predilections, 
 Mr. R. said, he suspected he should, whenever that question should 
 present itself, resist as strongly an alliance with Great Britain, as 
 with any other power. We are sent here, said he, to attend to the 
 preservation of the peace of this couptry, and not to be ready, on all 
 Occasions, to go to war whenever any thing like what, in common 
 parlance, is termed a turn up takes place in Europe. 
 
 These, sip, said Me. R. are some of ithe views which I have taken 
 of the subject. There are other vie^vs of it which I might take, but 
 
13 
 
 from which I abstain, (I may be permitted to say) out of self respect, 
 as well as from respect for this Committee. 
 
 I can, however, assure the Committee, fur one, that the public bur¬ 
 dens on those whom I represent here (though they are certainly bet¬ 
 ter off than those to the north and the west of them; that is, till you 
 come to the favored states, where the interest of the public debt is 
 paid, and where almost all the public moneys are disbursed)—their 
 burdens, sir, are as great as they can bear, becduse their private en¬ 
 gagements are greater, than they can, discharge—and, if this be. not 
 a self-evident proposition, I am at a loss to know what can be such. 
 And this universal distress in the country has been the effect of 
 freaks of legislation. I do not deny but there may be some who 
 have drawn great prizes in the lottery but that is not the case with 
 the great mass of the nation. And wiiat is this scheme but a lottery? 
 If it should end in war, there will be more great prizes to be drawn, 
 but it will be forme and those whom I represent, to pay them. 1 have 
 been acquainted with my constituents a long time, to little purpose, 
 and have greatly mistaken their disposition and present temper 
 of mind, if they are in any such “melting mood.” The freaks of 
 legislation to which I have referred, the vast expenditures which be¬ 
 got the necessities for over-issues of paper money—that system, com¬ 
 pared with which all the evils of Pandora’s box are blessings—have 
 brought both England and America to this distress. The two cases 
 are strictly parallel—they run on all fours—and, if this resolution 
 be adopted, not merely similar, but yet more disastrous consequences 
 will ensue. 
 
 I shall then, said Mr. R. return to my constituents without the 
 least alarm in regard to this question. Unless, indeed, I and those 
 who in this case think with me, have reason to fear that our consti¬ 
 tuents will award us merited censure for not having better supported 
 the cause we advocate. Unless on this account, -1 cherish not the 
 least doubt that when I, for one, go back to those who sent me here, 
 I shall be greeted with their honest open countenances, and gratu- 
 lating hands. There has not been a question, since I have been a 
 member of this House, on which my opinion has been more clear than 
 on this—no, not even in the case of the sedition law. 
 
 What, said Mr. R. is our situation? We are absolutely combat¬ 
 ting shadows. The gentleman would have us to believe his resolution 
 is all but nothing—yet again it is to prove omnipotent, and. fill 
 the whole globe with its influence. Either it is nothing, or it is 
 something. If it be nothing, let it return to its original nothingness, 
 let us lay it on the table, and have done with it at once; but, if it is 
 that something which it has been, on the other hand, represented to 
 be, let us beware how we touch it. For my part, I would sooner 
 put the shirt of Nessus on my back, than sanction these doctrines— 
 doctrines such as I never heard from my boyhood till now. They go 
 the whole length. If they prevail, there are no longer any Pyrenees 
 —every bulwark and barrier of the Constitution is broken down; it 
 is become tabula rasa, a carte blanche, for every one to scribble on it 
 what he pleases. 
 
SPEECH 
 
 mm* 
 
 BEIITIMD US' THE BOUSE Or ItEf IlESENTATIVES UNITED STATES, 
 
 Januaiy 31,1824. 
 
 Mr. RANDOLPH, of Virginia, rose. He began by saying, that 
 lie very much feared, fhat the indulgence extended tojiim by the 
 Committee, a few days since, might induce them to think that he was, 
 thereby, emboldened to throw himself upon their attention more fre¬ 
 quently than was seemly or befitting, and that he should, on too many 
 ' occasions, offer to their consideration the crude conceptions of his 
 very feeble understanding. But, said he, I can, with the utmost 
 sincerity, assure the Committee, that they may lay aside all alarm 
 on that subject; for, I do not foresee, at this time, any further occa¬ 
 sion, at the present session, when it will be necessary for me to tres¬ 
 pass on their attention. I shall not again, unless some very unex¬ 
 pected case should arise,’ arouse in their breasts the feeling which 
 such a trespass is well calculated to inspire. 
 
 During a not very short course of public life, Mr. Randolph said, 
 he did not .know that it ever had bean his fortune to rise under as 
 much embarrassment, or to address the House with as much re¬ 
 pugnance, as he now felt. That repugnance, in part, grew out of 
 the necessity that existed for his taking some notice, in the course of 
 his observations, of the argument, if argument it might be called, of 
 an honorable member of this House, from Kentucky. And, although, 
 said Mr. Randolph, I have not the honor to know, personally, or even 
 by name, a large portion of the members of this House, it is not ne¬ 
 cessary for me to indicate the cause of that repugnance. But this I 
 may venture to promise the Committee, that, in my notice of the ar¬ 
 gument of that member, I shall shew, at least, as much deference to 
 it, as he shewed to the Message of the President of the United States 
 of America, on returning a bill of a nature analogous, to that now 
 . before us—I say at least as much —I should regret if not more. Witt 
 the argument of the President, however, Mr. Randolph said, he had 
 nothing to do—he washed his hands of it—and would leave it to the 
 triumph, the clemency, the mercy, of the honorable gentleman of 
 
15 
 
 Kentucky—if, indeed, to use his own language, amid the mass of 
 words in which it was enveloped, he had been able to find it. His 
 purpose, in regard to the argument of : the gentleman from Ken¬ 
 tucky, was, to shew,-that it lies in the compass of a nut-shell—that 
 it turns on the meaning of one of the plainest words in the English 
 language. He was happy to be able to agree with that gentleman in 
 at least one particular, to wit: in the estimate the gentleman had 
 formed of his own powers as a grammarian, philologer, and critic— 
 particularly, as those powers had been displayed in the dissertation 
 with which he had favored the Committee, on the interpretation of 
 the word establish. 
 
 “ Congress,” says the Constitution, “ shall have power Jo establish 
 [ergo, says the gentleman, Congress shall-have power to construct 
 Post Roads.” 
 
 One would suppose, said Mr. Randolph, that, if any thing could be 
 considered as settled, by precedent in legislation, the meaning 
 of the words of the Constitution must, before this time, have been 
 settled, by the uniform sense in which tt)at power has been exercised, 
 from the commencement of the Government to the present time. 
 What is the fact? Your statute book is loaded with acts for the “ es¬ 
 tablishment” of post roads—and the Postmaster General is besieged 
 with petitions, for the “ establishment” of Post Offices. And yet, 
 we are now gravely debating on what the word “ establish” shall be 
 held to mean! A curious predicament we are placed in—precisely 
 the reverse of that of Moliere’s citizeH turned gentleman, who dis¬ 
 covered, to his great surprize, that he had been talking “ prose” all 
 His life long, without knowing it—a common case—it is just so with 
 all prosers, and I hope I may not exemplify it in this instance. But, 
 sir, we have been, for five-and-thirty years, establishing post-roads, 
 under the delusion that we were exercising a power specially con¬ 
 ferred upon us by the constitution, while we were, according to the 
 suggestion of the gentleman from Kentucky, actually committing 
 treason, by refusing, for so long a time, to carry info effect that very 
 article of the Constitution! 
 
 To forbear the exercise of a power vested inus forthe publicgood, 
 not merely for our own aggrandizement, is, according to the argu¬ 
 ment of the gentleman from Kentucky, treachery to the Constitu¬ 
 tion! I, then, said Mr. Randolph, must have commenced my public 
 life in treason, and in treason am I doomed to end it. One of the 
 first votes that I ever had the honor to give, in this House, was a 
 vote against the establishment, if gentlemen please, of a uniform sys¬ 
 tem of bankruptcy—a power as unquestionably given to Congress, by 
 the Constitution, as the power to lay a direct tax. But, sir, my trea¬ 
 son did not end there. About two years after the establishment of 
 this uniform system of bankruptcy, 1 was particeps criminis, with al¬ 
 most the unanimous voice of this House, in committing another act 
 of treachery in repealing it; and Mr. Jefferson, the President of the 
 United States, in the commencement of his career, consummated the 
 treason by putting his signature to the act of repeal. 
 
16 
 
 Miserable, indeed, would be the condition of every free people, if, 
 in expounding the charter of their liberties, it were necessary to go 
 back to the Anglo-Saxon, to Junius and' Skinner, and other black 
 letter etymologists. Not, sir, that I am very skilful in language: 
 although I have learned from a certain Curate of Brentford, whose 
 name will survive when the whole contemporaneous bench of Bishops 
 shall be buried in oblivion, that words —the counters of wise men, 
 the money of fools—that it is by the dextrous cutting, and shuffling 
 of this pack, that is derived one-half of the chicanery, and more' than 
 one-half of the profits, of the most lucrative profession in the world— 
 and, sir, by this dextrous exchanging, and substituting of words, we 
 shall not be the first nation in the world which has been cajoled, if 
 we are to'be cajoled, out of our rights and liberties. 
 
 In the course of the observations which the gentleman from Ken¬ 
 tucky saw fit to submit to the Committee, were some pathetic ejacu¬ 
 lations on the subject of the sufferings of our brethren of the West; 
 Sir, our brethren of the West have suffered, as our brethren through¬ 
 out the United States, from the same cause, although with them the 
 cause exists in an aggravated degree—from- the acts of those to Whoni 
 they have confided the power of legislation; by a departure—and we 
 have all suffered from it—I hope no gentleman will understand me, 
 as wishing to make any invidious comparisons.between different 
 quarters of our country—by a departure from the industry, the sim¬ 
 plicity, the economy, and the frugality, of our ancestors. They have 
 suffered from a greediness of gain, that has grasped at the shadow 
 while it has lost the substance—from habits of indolence, of profu¬ 
 sion, of extravagance—from an apery of foreign manners, and of fo¬ 
 reign fashions—from a miserable attempt at the shabby genteel, which 
 only serves to make our poverty more conspicuous. The way to 
 remedy this state of suffering, is, to return to those habits of labor, 
 and industry, from which we have thus departed. 
 
 But, said Mr. 11: we have been asked, if, by some convulsion of na¬ 
 ture, this Government should be suddenly destroyed, and should pass 
 away, “like the baseless fabric of a vision, and leave not a rack behind, ?? 
 what monument would remain of the benefits derived from it in the 
 West—in other words, what have we done for the West? Sir, let 
 me reverse the question. What have we no? done for the West? Do 
 gentlemen want monuments? Unless the art of printing should be 
 lost, posterity may find them.in your statute books, and in the jour¬ 
 nals of this House. They may find them in Indian treaties for 
 the extinguishment of title to lands—in grants of land, the effects of 
 which begin'now to be felt in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as 
 they have long been-severely felt in Maryland, Carolina, and Virgi- 
 niarthey will find them in laws'granting every facility for the nomi¬ 
 nal payment—and, he might almost say, for the spunging, of the 
 debts due this Government, by purchasers of the public lands—in 
 the grants, which cannot be found in the older states, for the estab-' 
 lishment of- schools, and for other great objects of public concern¬ 
 ment, for which nothing has been given to the states of the East. In 
 
17 
 
 a word, they would fiud them in the millions which this nation has 
 disbursed, and is now disbursing, for the acquisition of the naviga¬ 
 tion of the Mississippi,' and for the purchase of Louisiana. If these 
 be nothing, said Mr. R. then indeed we have done nothing for the 
 West. It is true, sir, that these things were done when the names 
 of more than one who now figure on this floor, had not been heard of 
 out of their own parish. In a word, without speaking this in any in¬ 
 vidious spirit: without the remotest intention of twitting our West¬ 
 ern brethren with what we have done for them,,I liave stated some 
 of the benefits conferred on the West,.,for the purpose of repressing 
 the spirit of discontent, which, beginning at home, never fails to lay 
 hold upon any external object with which, it meets as an excuse for 
 complaining. I will not add, Mr; Chairman—from Washington to 
 Milledgeville—for. this part of the country, what lias been done? 
 
 With, these few remarks, continued Mr. R. permit me now to re- 
 cal the attention of the committee to the original design of this Go¬ 
 vernment. It grew out of the necessity, indispensable and unavoid¬ 
 able, in the circumstances of this.coimtry, of some general power, 
 capable of regulating foreign commerce. Sir, I am old enough to re¬ 
 member the origin of. this Government; and, though I was too young 
 to participate in the transactions of that day, I have a perfect recol¬ 
 lection of what was public sentiment on the subject. And'I repeat, 
 without fear of contradiction, that .the proximate, as well as the re¬ 
 mote cause ofth? (existence of the^ederal (Government, was, the re¬ 
 gulation of foreign commerce. Not to particularize all the difficul¬ 
 ties which grew out of the conflicting laws of the slates, Mr. R. re¬ 
 ferred to but one, arising from Virginia taxing an article which Ma¬ 
 ryland'then made duty-free; and to that very policy, said he, maybe 
 attributed, in a great degree, the rapid growth and,prosperity of the 
 town of Baltimore. If the old Congress had possessed the power of 
 laying a duty of ten per cent, ad valorem on imports, this constitu¬ 
 tion would never have been called into existence. 
 
 But we- are told that, along with the regulation of foreign com¬ 
 merce, the states have yielded to the General Government, in as 
 broad terms, the regulation of domestic commerce—rl mean, said Mr. 
 R. the commerce among the several states-—and that,the same pow¬ 
 er is possessed by Congress over the one as over the other. It is ra¬ 
 ther unfortunate for this argument, that, if it applies to the extent to 
 which the power to regulate foreign commerce has been carried by 
 Congress, they may prohibit, altogether, this domestic commerce, as 
 they have heretofore, under the other power, prohibited foreign com- 
 
 But why put extreme cases? This Government cannot go on one 
 day without a mutual understanding and deference between the 
 State and General Governments. This Government is the breath of 
 the nostrils of the states. Gentlemen may say what they please of 
 the preamble to the constitution; but this constitution is not the work 
 of the amalgamated population of the then existing confederacy, but 
 the offspring of the states; and however high we may carry our heads, 
 
48 
 
 and strut and fret our hour, "dressed in alittle brief authority,” it is 
 in the power of the states to extinguish this Government at a blow. 
 They have only to refuse to send members to the other branch of the 
 Legislature, or to appoint Electors of President and Vice President, 
 ana the thing is done. I hope gentlemen will not understand me as 
 seeking for reflections of this kind—but, like Falstaff’s rebellion—I 
 mean Worcester’s rebellion, they lay in my way, and I found them. 
 
 But, we are asked, what if little Delaware should erect her back, 
 or New Jersey, and should undertake to stop the transportation' of 
 the United States’ mail? It would, be something very like the at¬ 
 tempt Virtually made by another state, during the late war, or an at¬ 
 tempt to stop the transit of the U. S. troops through the territory of 
 a state. And this brings me to another branch of the subject, on 
 which, in my discursive way, I' mean to touch. I recollect once to 
 have heard, from a gentleman from Kentucky, the power to re-char- 
 ter the old Bank of the United States, called a “ vagrant power,” 
 seeking through the different clauses of the constitution where to fix 
 itself; but, like a man in Kentucky seeking for his land, found the 
 ground shingled.over with warrants. Now, said Mr. R. this vagrant 
 power (of making roads and canals) after being whipt from parish to 
 parish, is, at last, seeking i settlement under tne war-making power. 
 And under this power to make war, sir, what may we not do? Quar¬ 
 ter troops uponyou-4)urnyour house, sir. Ormirie—burn your own 
 ships, add,your navjr yards) that the enemy may not 'have the plea¬ 
 sure of doing it. But would'any man contend that, ih time of peace, 
 all the incidents to the war-making power take effect? I have al¬ 
 ways anderstood, said Mr. R. that inter arma Merit leges —and a man 
 might as well bring an action against' the hferp’of New Orleans— 
 yes, sir, the hero of New Orleans, if I may ball him so—by an ac¬ 
 tion of trespass quare clausumfr'egit, when he marched down to the 
 beach, and gave the enehiy a foretaste of what he gave them thereaf¬ 
 ter—a man might as well do that, as, in time of peace, sustain the 
 power of the same hero—not) sir, that I impute the assumption of it to 
 him—of doing all the things which he might rightfully do in a time of 
 war. When, Mr. R. said, he considered this war-making power, and 
 the money-raising power, and suffered himself to reflect on 
 the length to which they go, he felt ready to acknowledge that, in 
 yielding these, the. states have yielded every thing. The last words 
 of Patrick Henry on : this subject,.though uttered five and twenty 
 years ago. were now ringing in his ears. If gentlemen will come 
 fairly out, said Mr.-R.Tand tell us, You have given us'the power of 
 the purse and of the sword, and these two enable us to take whatever 
 else we may want, shall understand them. Thank God, howe¬ 
 ver, that has not yet become the construction of the constitution. 
 
 I am sorry to say, because I should be the last man in the world to 
 disturb the repose of a venerable man, to whom I wish a quiet end of 
 his honorable life—that all the difficulties under which we have la¬ 
 bored, and now labor, on this subject, have grown out of a fatal ad¬ 
 mission, by one of the late Presidents of the United States—an ad- 
 
19 
 
 mission which runs, counter to the tenor of his whole political life, 
 and is expressly contradicted by one of the most luminous and able 
 state papers that ever was written, the offspring of his pen—an ad¬ 
 mission which gave a sanction to the principle, that this Government 
 bad the power to charter, the present colossal Bank of the United 
 States. Sir, said Mr. R. that act, and one other, which I will not 
 name, bring forcibly home to my mind a train of melancholy reflec¬ 
 tions on the miserable state of our mortal being. 
 
 “ In life’s last scenes, what prodigies surprise! ' 
 
 “ Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise. > 
 
 “ From Marlborough’s eyes, the streams of dotage flow; 
 
 “ And Swift expires a driv’ler and a show.” 
 
 Such is the state of the case, Sir. It is miserable to think of it— 
 and we have nothing left to us but to weep over it. 
 
 We have been told, sir, by my friend, from New Jersey, over the 
 way, tiiat the framers of the constitution foresaw the raising up of 
 some new sects, which were to construe the powers of the govern¬ 
 ment differently from their intention; and, therefore, the clause 
 granting a general power to make all laws that might be necessary 
 and proper to carry the granted powers into effect, was inserted in 
 that Constitution. Yes, said Mr. R. such a sect did arise some twen¬ 
 ty odd years ago—and, unfortunately, I had the honor to be a mem¬ 
 ber of that church. From the commencement of the government to 
 this day, differences have arisen between the two great parties in 
 this nation—one .consisting of the disciples of Mr. Hamilton, the Se- 
 cretai r y f cif 'theTreasury, S'nd another party who believed that, in their 
 construction of the constitution, those to whom they opposed them¬ 
 selves exceeded the just limit of its legitimate authority—and Mr. 
 R. prayed gentlemen to take into their most serious consideration 
 the fact, that,‘on. this very questiou of construction, this sect, which 
 the framers of the constitution foresaw might arise, did arise.in’their 
 might, and put down- the construction of the constitution according 
 to the Hamiltonian version. But did we at that day dream, said I\lr. 
 R. that a new sect would arise after them, which would as far tran¬ 
 scend Alexander Hamilton and his disciples, as they out-went Tho¬ 
 mas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Taylor, of Caroline? This 
 is the deplorable fact: such is now the actual state of things in this 
 land; and it is not a subject so much of demonstration as it is self- 
 evident—it speaks to the senses, so that every one may understand 
 it. On the occasion of that great strife, Mr.- Jefferson, then Vice 
 President of the United States, drew, and sent to Kentucky, to be 
 moved by the eminent and worthy man who was afterwards his At¬ 
 torney General, those celebrated resolutions, generally, called the 
 Kentucky Resolutions. -These were followed by another set of reso¬ 
 lutions, which were called John Taylor’s Resolutions, but which we 
 now, by the public declaration of Mr. Taylor, under his own hand, 
 know were drawn up by Mr. Madison. These gave rise to that very 
 atile and masterly Report of the Massachusetts General Court, sus- 
 
20 
 
 taking the constitutionaltiy of the Alien and Sedition Laws. Yes, 
 sir, it was a very able report—and here permit me to say I have not 
 heard a shadow of an argument on this floor—and I do not expect 
 to hear it, because it is unsusceptible of it—as forcible, as strong, in 
 support of the power now claimed for this House, as is the argument 
 of the Legislature of Massachusetts in support of the Alien and Se¬ 
 dition Laws—and I say that if you can enact this bill, you can re¬ 
 enact the Alien and Sedition Laws—not, sir, that I am at all afraid 
 of their re-enactment now—they who burnt their fingers with the Se¬ 
 dition Law have learnt lessons from experience, and so have those 
 who have had their example before their eyes. For, we learn from 
 high authority here, that, notwithstanding the representations of 
 “venal and hireling presses” to the contrary, the country is in great 
 distress—by . which we are to understand, that means have been tak¬ 
 en to use,the press here, like the bayonet beyond the water, for the 
 support offlegitimate authority. No sir, I am not afraid of the enact- 
 mentof the Sedition Law; there is now no occasion todefend ourselves 
 by such :a measure, against the. idle bark of every unnecessary cur 
 in the Republic. But, Mr. R. said, he recollected when this vagrant 
 power was first detected by this new sect, like an insect feeling for 
 the soft arid pulpy parts of the body politic, &c. 
 
 I remember to have heard it said, elsewhere, Said Mr. R. that 
 “ when gentlemen talked of precedent, they forgot they were not in 
 . Westminster Hall.” Whatever trespass, said he, I may be guilty of 
 upon the attention of the Committee, one thing I will promise them, 
 and will faithfully perform my promise—I .will dole out to them no 
 political metaphysics. Sir, I unlearned metaphysics almost as early 
 as Fontenelle, and he tells us, I think, it was at nine years old. f 
 shall say nothing about that word municipal. I am almost as sick of 
 it as honest Jack FalstafF was of “ security”—it;has been like rats¬ 
 bane-in my mouth, ever since the late Ruler of Frapce took shelter 
 under that word, to pocket our money, and incarcerate our persons, 
 with the most profound respect for our neutral rights. I have done 
 With the word municipal ever since that day. Let us come to the 
 plain common-sense construction of the Constitution. Sir, we live 
 under a government of a peculiar structure, to which the doctrines 
 of the European writers on civil polity do not apply—and when gen¬ 
 tlemen get up and quote'Vattel.as applicable, to the powers of the Con¬ 
 gress of the United States, I should as soon have expegted ihein to 
 quote Aristotle or the Koran.. Our government is not like the con¬ 
 solidated monarchies of the old world—it is a solar system, an im- 
 perium in imperio: aad, when the question is about the one or the 
 other, what belongs to the imperium and what to the imperio, we gain 
 ttothing by referringto Vattei. He treats of an integral government, 
 a compact structure— totus teres atque rolundus. But ours is a sys¬ 
 tem composed of two distinct governments—the one general in its 
 , nature, the other internal. Now, sir, a government may be admira¬ 
 ble for external, and yet execrable for internal purposes. And when 
 the question of power in the government arises, this is the problem 
 
21 
 
 which every honest man has to work. The powers of government 
 are divided, in our system, between the general and state govern¬ 
 ments, except some powers, which the People have very wisely re¬ 
 tained to themselves. With these exceptions, all the power is di¬ 
 vided between the two governments. The'given power will not lie,, 
 unless, as in the case of direct taxes, the power is specifically given— 
 and even then, the states have a concurrent power. The question 
 for every honest man to ask himself, is, to which.of these two divi¬ 
 sions of government does the power in contest belong. And, 
 said Mr. R. while I am on the subject of assumed power, permit me 
 to say, that, if my strength allows me, I shall be compelled to state 
 some acts of assumption and usurpation on the part of the states, as 
 well as on the.part of the general government: not that I at all agree 
 with the gentleman from New-York, (Mr. Storrs,) that the danger of 
 this government is from the state governments—nor can I imitate, 
 while I greatly admire the generosity with which that gentleman, a re¬ 
 presentative from; the largest state in the Union, would shearher of her 
 strength—to do what? To preserve this union? No. To reduce her to 
 a level, by possibility, with the smallest state in the Union. 'And this, 
 sir, reminds me of one other of the nothings we have done for the Wes¬ 
 tern Country. We have, among other nothings, given them, in case of 
 an election of President coming into this House, nine votes out of 
 twenty-four. We have erected them, as soon as their numbers wuuld 
 render it possible, under the law, into independent states, and thus 
 given them, in the other branch of the legislature, a voice to weigh 
 down the voice, or counterpoise it, of New York or Pennsylvania. 
 These are among the nothings we have done for them. This, then, 
 is the problem we have to settle: Does this power of internal im¬ 
 provement belong to the general or to .the state governments, or is it a 
 concurrent power? Gentlemen say we have power, by the Consti¬ 
 tution, to establish post roads, and, having established post roads, we 
 should be much obliged to you to allow us, therefore, the power to 
 construct the roads and canals into the bargain. ■ If I had the physi¬ 
 cal strength, said, Mr. R. f could easily demonstrate to the Com¬ 
 mittee; that, supposing the power to exist on our part—of all the 
 powers that can be exercised by this House, there is no power, that 
 would be more susceptible of abuse than this very power. Figure to 
 yourself, said he, a committee of this House determining on some 
 road, and giving out the contracts to the members of both Houses of 
 Congress, or to their friends, &c. Sir, if I had strength, I could 
 shew to this committee that the Asiatic plunder of Leadenhall street 
 has not been more corrupting to the British government than the exer¬ 
 cise of such a power as this would prove to us. 
 
 - The gentleman from New York, (Mr. Storrs) says that Congress 
 possesses the power to coin money, and asks if that does not involve 
 a jurisdiction over the whole subject of money. It does, sir; and yet 
 1 would, by the bye, correct one mistake into which that gentleman 
 alone has not fallen. In what does that power consist? In designa¬ 
 ting the metal, determining the rate of alloy, fixing the weight, dt- 
 
22 
 
 reefing the impress, and declaring the value of the coin—not iri the 
 mechanical act of coining. And if all our coin were struck by Watt 
 & Bolton at Birmingham, the coinage would be as much an act of 
 sovereignty, if it had due weight} and the proper assay, &c. as if 
 it were coined at the mint in Philadelphia. But, sir, under this pow¬ 
 er, what have we done? We have erect'ed a bank, which will not 
 redeem the notes of its branches, and the slates are deluged with 
 spurious bank paper, while with this base currency throughout the 
 land, debtors are bound to pay in specie. Sir, the bank-note-table 
 of New York, in. which they do not deign to name the banks of Ken¬ 
 tucky, is a politico-economical curiosity; and, instead of one curren 
 cy of uniform value, we have a thousand different kinds of base mo¬ 
 ney, by ringing the changes upon which, we hear the profits which 
 brokers and shavers and stock jobbers levy on the holiest industry of 
 the nation. I said, continued Mr. R. that this government, if put 
 to the test—a test it is by no means calculated to endure—as a go¬ 
 vernment for the management of the internal concerns of this coun¬ 
 try, is one of the worst that can be conceived—which is determined 
 by the fact, that it is a government not having a common feeliug and 
 common interest with the governed. I know said he, that we are 
 told—and it is the first time that the doctrine has been openly avow¬ 
 ed—that, upon the responsibility of this House to the People, by 
 means of the elective franchise, depends all the security of the People 
 of the United States against theabuse of the powers of this government. 
 But, sir, how shall a man from Mackinaw or the’Yellow Stone River, 
 respond to the sentiments of the people who live in New Hampshire? . 
 It is as great a mockery—a greater niockery than it was'to talk to these 
 colonies about their virtual representation in the British Parliament. 
 
 I have no hesitation in saying that the liberties of the Colonies were-- 
 safer in the custody of the British Parliament than they will be in 
 any portion of this country, if all the powers of the States, as well 
 as those of the General Government, are devolved on this House; 
 and in this opinion I am borne out, and more than borne out, by the 
 authority of Patrick Henry himself. 
 
 But the gentleman from New York, and some others who have spo¬ 
 ken on this occasion, say, What! shall we be startled by a shadow? 
 Shall we rtcoil from taking a power clearly within—(what?)—out¬ 
 reach? Shall we not clutch the sceptre—the air-drawn sceptre, that 
 invites our hand, because of the fears and alarms of the gentlemen 
 from V’rginia? Sir, if I cannot give reason to the committee, they 
 shall at least have authority. , Thomas Jefferson, then in the vig¬ 
 or of his intellect, was one of the persons who denied the existance 
 of such powers. James Madison was another. He, in that master¬ 
 ly and unrivalled report in the Legislature of Virginia, which- i; 
 worthy to be the text book of every American Statesman, has set¬ 
 tled t&is question. For me to attempt to add any thing to the argu¬ 
 ments of that paper, would be to attempt to gild refined gold—to 
 paint the lilly—to throw a perfume on the violet—to smooth the ice 
 —or add another hue unto the rainbow—in every aspect of it, waste- 
 
23 
 
 ful and ridiculous excess. Neither will I hold up my farthing rush- 
 light to the blaze of that meridian sun. But sir, I cannot but de¬ 
 plore, and to my dying day I shall deplore—my heart aches when I 
 think of it—that the hand which erected that monument of political 
 wisdom should have signed the act to incorporate the present Bank 
 of the United States. 
 
 It was not a matter of conjecture, merely, Mr. R. said, but of 
 fact—of notoriety, that there does exist on this subject an honest 
 difference of opinion among enlightened men; that notone or two,, 
 but many.states in the Union see with great concern and alarm the 
 encroachments of the General Government on their authority. They 
 feel that they have given up the power of the purse and the sword, 
 and enabled men, with the purse in one hand and the sword in the 
 other, to rifle them ofalLthat they hold dear. Among the reveries of 
 that strange and most extraordinary man, the lat.e rider of France, 
 while he was dying, inch by inch, among the rat3 of St, Helena, he 
 expressed the thought, that, if instead of Elba, he had chosen Corsi¬ 
 ca as the. place of his retreat, when he was driven by the Allies out 
 of France, he would have been enabled, from the bravery and devo¬ 
 tion of the people, and the mountainous passes of the country, &c. to 
 hold it against the combined powers of Europe—as if a man who 
 could not keep France, could keep any thing else. And we too, sir, 
 now ; begin to perceive what we have surrendered—that, having given 
 up the power of the purse and the sword, every thing else is at the 
 mercy and forbearance of the General Government. We did believe 
 there were some , parchment barriers—rno! what is worth all the 
 parchment barriers in the world—that there was, in the powers of 
 the Stages, some counterpoise to the power of this body: but, if this 
 bill passes, we can believe so no longer..' 
 
 I have mentioneil Bonaparte—and, perhaps history cannot afford 
 another example of such a rise, and of such a fall. We see him giv¬ 
 ing law in the Kremlin, in the ancient palace of the Muscovite Czars— 
 in three years we see him in the island of St. Helena, enduring—I 
 will not say what. With that example of humiliation before me, it 
 costs me nothing to endure the triumph of the gentleman from Penn¬ 
 sylvania, (Mr. Hemphill,), who tells us that a new era is approach¬ 
 ing—(not the era of good feeling, I am afraid, for that has come al¬ 
 ready,)—in which all Presidential squeamishness is to be at an end— 
 when this Government shall enter on a new course, and we are to 
 take a new latitude and departure. With this example before me, 
 I must recall the recollection of ihree-and-twenty years ago, when 
 that gentleman, who is the father of the present bill, was upholding, 
 or, rather, endeavoring to uphold, the wreck and remnant of that 
 system of policy which its triumphant adversaries had cloven down. 
 I remember his exertions in regard to what has been called the mid¬ 
 night Judiciary. Sir, at that time, I stood, in relation to this House, 
 and to that gentleman, in a station very different from that which I 
 now sustain; or ever expect—or, if I know myself, would ever wish, 
 to occnpy again. If that era arrives, to which the hopes, and wishes 
 
24 
 
 of the gentleman seem to aspire, it is a pity we have not some Dry- 
 den to celebrate its advent. Another Jlstrpa reihTx will be hailed— 
 and we shall ouce more listen to the strain, 
 
 “ Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Satnrnia Regna.” 
 
 Sir, if this bill passes, we shall not . only have a midnight, but a 
 day-light, and star-light, judiciary'bill. You will have what one of— 
 I was going to say, (I must not call him so, but I will—I know not 
 What else to call him,) the most violent Federalist I ever heard, once 
 said, we ought, to have—federal justices of the peace. . For, you are 
 told, that all the power that is claimed for Congress over roads, is a 
 conservative power—that if robberies, (except of the mail,) or mur¬ 
 ders, are committed, or contracts are made on a road belonging to 
 the United States, they will fall under the cognizance, and jurisdic¬ 
 tion, of the State Government. Sir, I am no lawyer; but this .is the 
 first time that I ever.heard, that the effectof contracts was limited to the 
 place of signature.' I always have heard that they Avere, in their na¬ 
 ture, transitive. But, sir, suppose the power to be conservative on¬ 
 ly—and suppose some breach is made in the road, or any other in¬ 
 jury done to it, are you not to punish that injury? And, if any thing 
 of a trespass is committed on this road, are you to haul a man all the 
 way from the extreme verge of the largest states in the Union—for 
 he must be tried in the Federal Court, and not in a court of the state— 
 to answer for having thrown a pebble in the road? and then, if ag¬ 
 grieved by the decision of the court, is he to be left to the remedy of 
 coming here, to the Supreme Court, for his appeal?' 
 
 Blit, sir, it is said we have a right to establish post offices and post 
 roads, and we have a right to regulate commerce between the seve¬ 
 ral states: and it is argued that “ to regulate” commerce, is to pre¬ 
 scribe the way in which it, shall be carried on—which gives, by a 
 liberal construction, the power to construct the way, that is, the roads 
 and canals on which it is to be carried! Sir, since the days of that 
 unfortunate man; of'the German coast, whose name was originally 
 Fyerstein, Angli'cised to Firestone, but got, by translation, from that 
 to Flint, from Flint to Pierre-a-Fusil, and' from Pierre-a-Fusil to 
 Peter Gun—never was greater violence done the English language, 
 than by the construction, that, under the power to prescribe the way 
 in wliich commerce shall be carried on, we have the right to construct 
 the way on which it is to be carried. Are gentlemen aware of the 
 colossal power they are giving to the General Government? Sir, I 
 am. afraid, that that ingenious gentleman, Mr. Me Adam, will, have 
 to give up his title to the distinction of the. Colossus of Roads , and- 
 surrender.it to some of the gentlemen of this committee, if they suc¬ 
 ceed in their efforts on this occasion. If, indeed, we have the. pow¬ 
 er which is contended for by gentlemen under that clause of the con¬ 
 stitution which relates to the regulation of commerce among the se¬ 
 veral' states, we may, under the same power, •prohibit , altogether, the 
 commerce between the states, or any portion of the states—or we 
 
25 
 
 may declare that it shall be carried on only in a particular way, by 
 a particular road, or through a particular canal; or we may say 
 to the people of a particular district, you shall only carry your 
 produce to market through our canals, or over oUr roads, and 
 then, by tolls, imposed upon them, we may acquire power to ex¬ 
 tend the same blessings, and privileges, to other districts of the coun¬ 
 try. Nay, we may go further. We may take it into our heads— 
 Have we not the power to provide and maintain' a navy ? What is 
 more necessary to a navy than seamen to man it? And the great 
 nursery of our seamen is {besides fisheries) the coasting trade—we 
 may take it into our heads, that those monstrous lutnberihg Wagons 
 that now traverse the country between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, 
 stand in the way of the raising of seamen, and may declare that no 
 communication shall be held between these points but coastwise: we 
 may specify. Some particular article in. which alone trade shall be 
 carried on. And, sir, if, contrary to all expectation, the ascendency 
 of Virginia, in the general government, should again be established, 
 it may be declared that coal shall be carried in no other way than 
 coastwise, &c. Sir, there is no end to the purposes that may be ef-. 
 fected under such constructions of power. I here beg of gentlemen 
 to recollect—I particularly call upon the very few members of this 
 House, who happen to be interested in the navigation of the River on 
 which I reside, (the Roanoke,) to say, whether, after we have, with 
 many efforts and a great expense, with the loss of at least half of our 
 capital, effected the navigation of that river, it would be competent 
 to this government to seiie upon our feeders, to assume jurisdiction 
 of Lake Drummond, &c. and, for the accomplishment of some wild 
 scheme—not more preposterous and ridiculous than some others I 
 could name—drain the waters of that Lake into the Atlantic ocean, 
 and abolish our canal. If we should chance to encounter the dis¬ 
 pleasure of the government, under these constructions of power, they 
 may say to every wagoner in North Carolina, you shall not carry on 
 any commerce across the Virginia line, in wagons or carts, because 
 I have some other object to answer, by a suppression of that trade. 
 Are gentlemen prepared for this ? 
 
 There is one other power, said Mr. R. which may be exercised, in 
 case the power now contended for be conceded, to which I ask the 
 attention of every gentleman who happens to stand in the same un¬ 
 fortunate predicament with myself—of every man who has the mis¬ 
 fortune to be, and to have been born, a slave holder. If Congress 
 possess the power to do what is proposed by this bill, they may not 
 only enact a' sedition law—for there is precedent—but they may 
 emancipate every slave in the United States—and with stronger color 
 of reason than they can exercise the power now contended for. And 
 where will they find the power? They may follow the example of 
 the gentlemen who have preceded me, and hook the power upon the 
 first loop they find in the constitution: they might take the preamble 
 —perhaps the war making power—or they might take a greater 
 sweep, and say, with some gentlemen, that it is not to be found in 
 .this or that of the granted powers, tut results from all of them— 
 
26 
 
 which is not only a dangerous, but the most dangerous doctrine. Was 
 it not demonstrable, Mr. R. asked, that slave labor, is the dearest in 
 the world—and that the existence of a large body of slaves is a source 
 of danger? ' Suppose we are at war with a foreign power, and free¬ 
 dom should be ottered them by Congress as an inducement to them to 
 take a part in it—or suppose the country not at war, at every turn of 
 this federal machine, at every successive census, that interest will 
 find itself governed" by another and increasing power, which is bound 
 to it, neither by any common tie ofinterest or. feeling. And, ifeverthe 
 time shall arrive, as assuredly it has arrived elsewhere, and, in all 
 probability, may arrive here, that a coalition of knavery and fanati¬ 
 cism shall, for any purpose, be got up on this floor, I ask gentlemen, 
 atho stand in the same'predicament as I do, to look well to what they 
 are now doing—to the colossal power with which they are now arm¬ 
 ing this government. The power to do what I allude to is, I aver, more 
 honestly inferrible from the war-making power, than the power we 
 $re now about to exercise. Let them look forward to the time when 
 such’a question shall arise, and tremble with me at the thought lhat 
 that question is to be decided by a majority of the votes of (his House, 
 pf whom not ope possesses the slightest tie of common interest or of 
 common feeling with us. 
 
 When, on a late occasion, it was proposed to this House to give a 
 grant of some ninety pounds, lawful money, to rock the cradle of 
 declining age, to smooth the pillow pf an ancient gentlewoman, the 
 mother of a race of heroes—a race to whom some of us seem to have 
 a constitutional and instinctive* antipathy—we have been met with a 
 cry of'danger to'the constitution! of danger to the liberties of the 
 country! But, when it is proposed to draw the last shilling from the 
 pockets of honest industry, lobe laid out, as from the very nature of 
 the thing it must be laid out, in jobs, and ioritracts, ami corruption— 
 and if you will' trace the exccution.of all your projects—the Rip Rap, • 
 Ufr others, you.will find the process is the same in all—you are told 
 that in making roads and digging canals, and spending millions upon 
 them, you are promoting the honor, and interest, and grandeur of the 
 country! And this, Mr. Chairman, for fear’tliat the states, which, 
 are all-clamorous, burdening your table with daily petitions, to get 
 you to extend your post routes through all the States and Territories, 
 should undertake to stop the passage of the United States’ mail! Why, 
 sir, if we suppose a case like this, we may suppose a universal mad¬ 
 ness seizing on the whole population of the country, and argue from 
 that supposition. 
 
 And this brihgs me, said Mr. R. to notice an admission, as it has 
 been called, of my worthy cblleague, of the 'power of altering post 
 rbads, after they ate established. I cannot understand this as gen-' 
 tleinen appear to do, and I know that my colleague is not correctly 
 eo understood. Sir, jn the state, one ofwhose representatives I am, 
 I don’t know a singly post route that has not been changed from what 
 it was when established as a post Mad by the Statute. Why, sir, you 
 will not, at this moment, oh the mail route from the capital of the 
 
27 
 
 United State's to the capital of Virginia, travel for the first twenty- 
 miles on a single inch of the road as it existed when that mail route 
 was first established. What follows from the doctrine of gentlemen 
 on this subject? Why, that if Virginia should do what she ought to 
 do—make a good road between the two points referred to—the mail 
 is yet to continue to go, as now, plunging through the worse than 
 Serbonian bogs, between the Neabsco and Chapawamsic, and we 
 shall do it, because it is treason—not by the Constitution of the Unit¬ 
 ed States, to be sure, but about as pretty a case of constructive trea¬ 
 son, as a latitudinarian judge could desire to see on a summer's-.day, 
 to alter a post road. From the doctrines now advanced on this floor, 
 it follows, that every mile that a post route is changed, whether fer¬ 
 tile better or worse, the powers of government are impugned; and 
 ( nullum, tempos occurrit regi), we do not know what a mass of crimin¬ 
 ality may not have been incurred, and very innocently incurred, be¬ 
 cause never, till now, had our people a preceptor learned enough to 
 instruct them in the true meaning of the word “ establish.” 
 
 After a short pause, Mr. R. said, it was to him a matter of painful 
 reflection liow utterly inadequate he felt himself to say what he in¬ 
 tended to have said,’ and still more as he intended to say it. But, 
 before I sit down, said Mr. R. permit me to put it to the candor even 
 of those Members of this House who differ from me respecting the 
 constitutionality of the power now claimed, to say what there is in, 
 at); state of this nation, at this particular juncture, that calls for the - 
 immediate exercise of this power, supposing it to be possessed. 
 
 - The honorable gentleman from Delaware tells us we have power 
 to purchase stock, and thus promote objects of internal improvement, 
 where they are commenced by the states or by individual enterprise. 
 Sir, if we have money to spare, let me advise the gentleman, who is. 
 chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, to begin with buy¬ 
 ing our own stock. - We can do nothing better with our money than 
 buy our own bonds. I have known many speculators leave their 
 own debts unpaid, to purchase the property of others; but I never 
 knew one of them to come to good. Let us discharge our war debt, 
 and no longer put off the payment of it by shuffling evasions, under 
 pretence of a change of stock. Individuals, not inferior to any in 
 the country, and some of the great states too, also entertain serious 
 doubts of the power of Congress, to pass this bill. I should wish, 
 in the course of future discussion, that some gentleman would show 
 the urgency of the occasion to make the plunge at this moment. 
 Are there not already causes enough of jealousy and discord exist¬ 
 ing among us? Is this the most auspicious time to set up a new 
 construction of the Constitution? Is this the most auspicious time 
 for the exercise of the assumption of a power which the gentleman 
 from New-York, with his usual perspicacity, so clearly sees we pos¬ 
 sess, but which Thomas Jefferson, aud James Madison, and others 
 ef at least equal authority with the gentleman from New-York, as 
 clearly $ee we do not possess? Is this a time to increase those jea¬ 
 lousies between different quarters of the country, already sufficiently 
 apparent? 
 
28 
 
 I intended, said Mr'. R. to have managed this subject in a different 
 manner; but the exhaustion of both bodily and mental powers calls 
 on me to do what I ought to have done long ago—to draw these re¬ 
 marks to a close. But it is too late in the day for me to speak for 
 reputation; Whatever is to be the fate of this bill—whether this 
 splendid project shall or shall not go into operation now, or be re¬ 
 served for the new reign, the approach of which is hailed with so 
 much pleasure; my place must be either in the obscurity of private 
 life, or in the thankless and profitless employment of attempting to 
 uphold the rights of the State's, and of the People, so long as I can 
 stand—more especially the rights of my native State, the land of 
 my sires, which, although I be among the least worthy or least fa¬ 
 vored of her sons, and although she may allot tome a step-son’s por¬ 
 tion—I will uphold, so long as I live. 
 
 Let us, then; I repeat, Mr. Chairman, pay our debts, personal and 
 public; let us leave the profits of labor in the pockets of the people, 
 to rid them of that private embarrassment under which they so ex¬ 
 tensively suffer, and apply every shilling of the revenue, not indis¬ 
 pensable to the exigencies of the government, to the faithful discharge- 
 of the public debt, before we engage in any new schemes of lavish 
 expendiure. Sir, we have already paid more interest on the 3percent. 
 stock, than the amount of the whole principal of that debt at nominal 
 par. 
 
 . Should this bill pass, one more measure only requires to be con¬ 
 summated; and then we, who belong to that unfortunate portion of. 
 this confederacy which is south of Mason and Dixonfs line, and east 
 of the Alleghany Mountains, have to make up our mind-to perish 
 like so many mice in a receiver of mephitic gas, under the experi¬ 
 ments of a set of new political chemists; or we must resort to the 
 measures, which we first opposed to British aggressions and usurpa¬ 
 tions—to maintain that independence which the valor of our fathers 
 acquired, but which is every day sliding froth under our feet. I be¬ 
 seech all those gentlemen who come from that portion of the Union, 
 to.take into serious consideration, whether they are not, by the pas¬ 
 sage of this bill, precipitately, at least without urgent occasion, now 
 arming the General Government with powers hitherto unknown— 
 under which we shall become, what the miserable proprietors of Ja¬ 
 maica and Barbadoes are to their English mortgagees, mere stew¬ 
 ards—sentinels—managers of slave labor—we ourselves retaining, 
 on a footing with the slave of the West Indies, just enough of the 
 product of our estates to support life, while all the profits go with 
 the course of the Gulf stream. Sir, this is a state of things that can¬ 
 not last. If it shall continue with accumulated'pressure, we must 
 oppose to it associations, and every other means short of actual in¬ 
 surrection. We m ust begin to construe the Constitution like those 
 who treat it as a bill of indictment, in which they are anxious to pick 
 a flaw—we shall keep on the windward side of treason—but we must 
 combine to resist, and that effectually, these encroachments, or the 
 little upon which we now barely subsist will be taken from us. 
 With these observations, Mr. R. abandoned the question to its fate. 
 
SPEECH OF MR, RANDOLPH 
 
 ON THE 
 
 tariff Jiill, 
 
 IN THE BOUSE OF HEPBE9EITTATITES, 
 
 1S, 1824. 
 
 Mr. RANDOLPH, of Virginia, addressed the chair. I ani, Said 
 fie, practising no deception upon myself, much less upon the House, 
 when I say, that, if I had consulted my own feelings and inclinations, 
 I should not have troubled the House, exhausted as it is, and as I 
 am, with any further remarks upon this subject. I come to the dis¬ 
 charge of this task, not merely with reluctance, but with disgust; 
 jaded, worn down, abraded, I may say, as I am by long attend¬ 
 ance upon this body, and continued stretch of the attention upon this 
 subject. I come to it, however, at the suggestion, and in pursuance 
 of the wishes of those, whose wishes are to me, in all matters touch¬ 
 ing my public duty, paramount law; I speak with those reservations, 
 of course, which every moral agent must be supposed to make to 
 himself. 
 
 It was not more to his surprise, than to his disappointment, Mr., 
 R. said, that, en his return to the House, after a necessary absence of 
 a few days, on indispensable business, he found it engaged in discus¬ 
 sing the general principle of the bill, when its details were under 
 consideration. If he had expected such a turn in the debate, he 
 would, at any private sacrifice, however great, have remained a spec¬ 
 tator and auiiitor of that discussion. With the exception of the 
 speech, already published, of his worthy colleague on his right (Mr.P. 
 P. Barbour,) Mr. R. said, he was nearly deprived of the benefit of the 
 discussion which had taken place. Many weeks had been occupied 
 with tins bill (he hoped the House would pardon him for saying so,) 
 before he took the slightest part in the deliberations on the details, 
 and he now sincerely regretted that he had not had firmness enough 
 to adhere to the resolution which he had laid down to himself in 
 the early stage of the debate, not to take any part in the discussion 
 of the details of the measure.* But, as he trusted, what he now had 
 to say upon this subject, although more and better things had been 
 said by others, might not be the same that they had said, or might 
 
 * By so doing, many of Mr. R’s strongest objections to the bill were in si 
 manner dissipated, there being no report of these skirmishes. Some of them, 
 with which he thought it indecent again to trouble the House, will be found 
 (substantially) appended to this speech. 
 
so 
 
 'foot be said in {lie same manner,- he here borrowed the language of 
 a man who had been heretofore conspicuous in • the councils of the 
 country; of one who was unrivalled for readiness and dexterity in 
 debate; who was long without an equal on the floor of this body; who 
 had contributed as much to the revolution of 1801, as ahy man in 
 this nation,* and had derived as little benefit from it;—as, to use the 
 Words of that celebrated man, what he had to sav was not that which 
 had been said by others, and Would not be said fn tln-ir manner, the 
 House would, he trusted, have patience with him during the short 
 time that his strength would allow him to occupy their attention. 
 And he begged them to understand, that the notes which he held in 
 his hand were not notes on which he meant to speak, but of what 
 others had spoken, and from which he would make the smallest se¬ 
 lection in his power. 
 
 Here permit me to say, observed Mr. R. that I am obliged, and 
 with great-reluctance, to differ from my worthy colleague, who has 
 taken so conspicuous a part in thisdebate,about one fact, which I will 
 call to his recollection: for I am sure it was in his memory, though 
 .sleeping* He has undertaken to state the causes by which the dif¬ 
 ference in the relative condition of various parts of the,Union has 
 -been produced? but, my worthy colleague has omitted to-state the 
 primvm mobile of the commerce and manufactures to which a por¬ 
 tion of the country that I need not name, owes its present pros¬ 
 perity and wealth. That primum mobile was southern capital. 
 I speak now not of transactions quorum pars minima fui, but of 
 things of which, nevertheless, I have a contemporaneous recollec¬ 
 tion. I say, without the fear of contradiction, then, that, in con¬ 
 sequence of the enormous depreciation of the evidences of the 
 public debt of this country—‘the debt proper of the United States 
 (to which must be added an item of not less than twenty mil¬ 
 lions of dollars, for the state debts assumed by the United States,) 
 being bought up and almost engrossed by the people of what 
 were then called the northern states—a measure':which nobody 
 dreamt any thing about, or which nobody had the slightest sus¬ 
 picion—I mean the assumption of the 9tate debts by the federal 
 government—these debts being bought up for a mere song, a capi¬ 
 tal of eighty millions of dollars, or, in other, words, a credit to that 
 amount, bearing an interest of six per cent* per annum (with the 
 exception of nineteen millions (the interest of that debt,) which bore 
 an interest of three per cent.) (See note 2, .Appendix ,)—a capital of 
 eighty millions of dollars was poured, in a single day, into the cof¬ 
 fers of the north: and to that cause we may mainly ascribe the differ¬ 
 ence,so disastrous to the south, between that country and the other 
 portion of ibis Union, to which I have alluded. When we, said Mr. 
 
 1 R. roused by the sufferings of .our brethren of Boston’, entered into 
 the contest with the mother country, and when we ciineTout of it— 
 •when this constitution was adopted, we were comparatively rich: 
 they were positively poor. What is now our relative situation? 
 
 * See Note 1, Appendix. 
 
SI 
 
 They are flourishing and rich: We are trihutary to them, not only 
 through the medium of the public debt of which I have spoken, but 
 also through the medium of the pension list, nearly the whole amount 
 of which is disbursed in the eastern states—and to this creation of a 
 day is to be ascribed the difference of our relative situation, (I hope 
 my worthy colleague will not consider any thing that I say as con¬ 
 flicting with' his general principles, to which I heartily subscribe.) 
 (Note 3 of Appendix.) —Yes, sir; and the price paid for'thc creation 
 flf all that portion of this capital, which consisted of the assumed 
 debts of the states, was the immense boon of fixing the seat of govern¬ 
 ment where it now is. And I advert to this bargain, because l wish 
 to shew to every member of this House, and, if it were possible, to 
 every individual of this nation, the most tremendous and calamitous 
 results of political bargaining. 
 
 Sir, when are \ye to have enough of this Tariff question? In 181G, 
 it was supposed to be settled. Only three years thereafter, another 
 
 S isition for increasing it was sent from this House to the Senate, 
 l with a tax of four cents per pound on brown sugar. It was, 
 fortunately, rejected in that body. In what manner this hill is baited, 
 it does not become me to say; but I have too distinct a recollection 
 of the vote jn committee of -the whole, on the duty upon molasses, 
 and afterwards, of the vote in the House on the same question; 
 of the yofes of more than one of the states on that question, not to 
 mark it well. I do not say that the change of the vote on that ques • 
 tion was effected by any man’s voting against his own motion; but I 
 do not hesitate to say, that it was effected by one man’s electioneer¬ 
 ing against his own motion, I an) very glad, Mr. Speaker, that old 
 Massachusetts Hay, and the Province.of Alaine and Sagadahock, by 
 whom we stood in the days of the Revolution, now stand by the 
 South, and will not aid in fixing on us.this system of taxation, com¬ 
 pared with which, the taxation of Mr. Grenville and Lord North was 
 as nothing, I speak with knowledge of what I say, when I declare, 
 that this bill is an attempt to reduce the country, south of Mason and 
 Dixon’s line and east of the Allegany mountains, to a state of worse 
 than colonial bondage; a state to which the domination of Great 
 Britain was, in my judgment, far preferable; and I trust I shall al¬ 
 ways have the fearless integrity to utter any political sentiment 
 which the head sanctions and ' the heart ratifies: for the British 
 Parliament never would have dared to lay such duties on our im¬ 
 ports, or their exports to us, either ‘‘at home" or here, as is now 
 proposed to be laid upon the imports from abroad. At that time, we 
 had the command of the market of the vast dominions then.subject, 
 and we should have had those which have since been subjected, to 
 the British empire: we enjoyed a free trade, eminently superior to 
 any thing that we can enjoy, if this bill shall go into operation. It 
 is a sacrifice of the interests of a part of this nation to the ideal be¬ 
 nefit of the rest. It marks us out as the victims of a worse than 
 Egyptian bondage. It is a barter - f so much of our rights, ot so 
 jnuch of the fruits of our labor, for political power to be transferred. 
 
32 
 
 to ether hands. It ought to be met, and I trust it will be met, in 
 the Southern country, as was the Stamp act, and by all those mea¬ 
 sures, which 1 will not detain the House by recapitulating, which 
 succeeded the Stamp act, and produced the final breach with the 
 mother country, which it took about ten years to briBg about; as I 
 trust in my conscience, it will not take as long to bring about simi¬ 
 lar results from this measure, should it become a law. 
 
 All policy is very suspicious,-says an eminent statesman, that sa¬ 
 crifices the interest of any part of a community to the ideal good of 
 the whole; and those governments only are tolerable, where, by the 
 necessary construction of the political machine, the interest of all 
 the parts are obliged to be protected by it. Here is a district of 
 country extending from the Patapsco to the Gulf of Mexico, from the 
 Allegany to the Atlantic, a district, which, taking in all that part of 
 Maryland lying south of the Patapsco and east of Elk river, raises 
 five sixths of all the exports of this country, that are of home growth— 
 l have in my hand the official statements, which prove it, but which 
 I will not weary the House by reading, (See Appendix, note 4.J —in 
 all this country—Yes, sir, and I bless God for it; for, with all the 
 fantastical and preposterous theories about the rights of man (the 
 theories, not the rights themselves, I speak of,) there is nothing but 
 power that can restrain power—I bless God, that, in this insulted, 
 oppressed, and outraged region, we are, as to our counsels in regard 
 to this measure, but as one man; that there exists on the subject but 
 qne feeling and one interest. We rre proscribed and put to the ban; 
 and, if we do not feel,and, feeling, do not act, we are bastards to those 
 fathers who achieved the Revolution: then shall we deserve to make 
 our bricks without straw;- There is no case on record, in which a 
 proposition like this, suddenly changing the whole frame of a coun¬ 
 try’s polity, tearing asunder every ligature of the body politic, was 
 ever carried by a lean majority of two or three votes, unless it be 
 the usurpation of the septennial act, which passed the British Parlia¬ 
 ment by, I think, a majority of one vote, the same .that laid the tax 
 on cotton bagging. I do not stop here, sir, to argu&about the con¬ 
 stitutionality of this bill; I consider the constitutiu’tfa dead letter: I 
 consider it to consist, at this time, of the power of the general go¬ 
 vernment and the power of the states: that is the constitution. You 
 may entrench yourself in parchment to the teeth, says Lord Chat¬ 
 ham, the sword will find its way to the vitals of the constitution. 
 I have no faith in parchment, .sir; I have no faith in the abracadabra 
 of the constitution; I have nb faith in it. I have faith in the power 
 of that commonwealth, of which I am an unworthy son; in the power 
 of those Carolinas, and of that Georgia, in her antient and utmost ex¬ 
 tent, to the Mississippi, which went with us through thejvaljey of the 
 shadow of death, in the war of our independence. I haye'said, that 
 I shall not stop to discuss the constitutionality of this question, for 
 that reason, and for a better: that there never was a constitution 
 under the sun, in which, by an unwise exercise of the powers of the 
 government, the people may not be driven to the extremity of re- 
 
distance by force. “ For it is not, perhaps, so much by the assump- 
 “ tion of unlawful powers, as by the unwise or unwarrantable use of 
 ■“ those which are most legal, that governments oppose their true end 
 “and object; for there is such a thing as tyranny as well as usurpa- 
 “ tion.” If, under a power to regulate trade, you prevent expor¬ 
 tation; if, with the most approved spring lancets, you draw the last 
 drop of blood from our veins; if, secundum artem, you draw the last 
 shilling from our pockets, what are the checks of the constitution to 
 us? A fig for the constitution! When the scorpion’s sting is probing 
 us to the quick, shall we stop to chop logic? Shall we get some 
 learned and cunning clerk.to say whether the power to do this is to 
 be found in the constitution, and then, if he, from whatever motive, 
 shall maintain the affirmative, like the animal whose fleece forms so 
 material a portion of this bill, quietly lie down and be shorn? 
 
 Sir, events now passing elsewhere, which plant a thorn in my pil¬ 
 low and a dagger in iny heart, admonish me ol the difficulty of go¬ 
 verning with sobriety any people who are over head and cars in debt. 
 That state of things begets a temper which sets at naught every 
 thing like reason and common sense. This country is unquestionably 
 laboring under great distress, but we cannot legislate it out of that dis¬ 
 tress. We may, by .your legislation, reduce all the country south and 
 east of Mason and’Dixon’s line, the whites as well as the blacks, to the 
 conditions of Helots—You can do no more. We have had placed 
 before us, in the course of this discussion, foreign examples and au¬ 
 thorities; and among other things, we have been told, as an argu¬ 
 ment in . favor of this measure, of the prosperity of Great Britain. 
 Have gentlemen taken into consideration the peculiar advantages of 
 Great Britain? Have they taken into consideration that, not except¬ 
 ing Mexico, and that fine country which lies between the Orinoco and 
 the Caribbean sea, England is decidedly superior in point of physical 
 advantages, to every country under the sun? This is unquestionably 
 true. I will enumerate same of those advantages. First, there is her 
 climate. In England,such is the temperature of the air, that a man can 
 there do more dtiySa work-in the year, and more hours work in the day, 
 than in any other climate in the' world; of course l include Scotland 
 and Ireland in this description. It is in such a climate only, that 
 the human animal can bear without extirpation the corrupted air, the 
 noisome exhalations, the incessant labor of these accursed manufac¬ 
 tories.—Yes, sir, accursed; for I say it is an accursed thing which I 
 will neither taste, nor touch, nor handle. If we were to act here on 
 the English system, we should have the yellow fever at Philadelphia, 
 New York, &c. not in August merely, but from June to January, 
 and from January to June. The climate of this country alone, were 
 there no other natural obstacle to it, says aloud, you shall not man- 
 ufacture! Even our tobacco factories, admitted to be the most whole¬ 
 some of any sort of factories, are known to be, where extensive, the 
 very Nidus (if I may use the expression,) of Yellow Fever and other 
 fevers of similar type. In another of the advantages of Great Bri¬ 
 tain, so important to her prosperity, we are almqst on aparwithher. 
 
u 
 
 if'we knew how properly to use it,— Forlunafos nimium sua si bona 
 norint —for, as regards defence, we are, to all intents and put poses, 
 almost as much an island as England herself. But one of her insu¬ 
 lar advantages we can never acquire. Every part of that country is 
 accessible from the sea., There, as you recede from the sea, you do not 
 get further from the sea. I know that a great deal will be said of our 
 majestic rivers, about the father of floods, and his tributary streams; 
 but, with the Ohio, frozen uji all the winter and d ry all the summer, 
 with a long tortuous, difficult, and dangerous navigation thence to 
 the ocean, the gentlemen of the west may rest assured that they will 
 never derive one particle of advantage, from even a total prohibition 
 of foreign manufactures. You may succeed in reducingt/sto your own 
 level of misery; but, if we were to agree to become your slaves, you 
 never can derive one farthing of advantage from tliis hill. What 
 parts of this country can derive any advantage from it? Those parts 
 only, where there, is a water power in immediate contact with navi¬ 
 gation, such as the vicinities of Boston, Providence, Baltimore, 
 Richmond, &c. Petersburg is the last of these as you travel 
 south,* You take a bag of cotton up the river to Pittsburg, or 
 to Zanesville, to have it manufactured and sent down to New Or¬ 
 leans for a market, and before your bagof cotton lias got to the place 
 of manufacture, the manufacturer of Providence has received his re¬ 
 turns for the goods made from his bag of cotton purchased at the 
 same time that you purchased yours. No, sir, gentlemen may as well 
 insist that because the, Chcsape-.ke Bay, mare nostrum, our Medi¬ 
 terranean Sea, gives us every advantage of navigation, we shall ex¬ 
 clude from it every thing but Steam-buats and those boats called kaP 
 exoehen, per emphasin, par excellence, Kentucky boats—a sort of 
 huge, square, clumsy wooden box. And why not insist upon ii? 
 Hav’nt you “ the power to regulate Commerces ? s * Would not that 
 too be a “ regulation of Commerce ?” It would, indeed, and ? 
 pretty regulation it is; and so is this bill, And, Sir, I marvel that the 
 representation from the great commercial state of New York should 
 bein favor of this bill. If operative—rand if inoperative why talk of it? 
 —If operative, it must, like the embargo of 180r, 8, 9, transfer no 
 small portion of the wealth of the London of America, as New Y ork 
 has been called, to Quebec and Montreal, She will receive the most 
 of her imports from abroad, flown the river. I do not know any bill 
 that could be better calculated for Vermont than this bill: because, 
 through Vermont, from Quebec, Montreal, and other positions on the 
 St. Lawrence, weare, if it passes, unquestionably to receive our sup¬ 
 plies of foreign goods. It will no doubt, also, suit the Niagara frontier. 
 
 But, sir, I must not suffer myself to be led too far astray from the 
 topic of the peculiar advantages of England as a manufacturing 
 country, Her vast beds of coal are inexhaustible: there are daily 
 discoveries of quantities of it, greater than ages past have yet con- 
 
 * Petersburg is the last of these situations combining navigation and water 
 power, as you travel southward from Boston to New Orleans, 
 
85 , 
 
 Burned; to which beds of coal her manufacturing establishments have 
 been transferred, as any man may see who will compare the present 
 population of her towns with what it was formerly. It is to these 
 beds of coal that Birmingham, Manchester, Wolverhampton, Shef¬ 
 field, Leeds, and other manufacturing towns, owe their growth. If 
 you could destroy her coal in one day, you would cut at once the si¬ 
 news of her power. Then, there are her metals, and particularly tin, of 
 which she has the exclusive monopoly. Tin, I know, is to be found in 
 Japan, and perhaps elsewhere, but, in practice, England has now the 
 monopoly of that article. I might go Further, said Mr. R. and I might 
 say, that England possesses an advantage, quo ad hoc, in her insti¬ 
 tutions; for there men are compelled to pay their debts. But, litre, 
 men are not only not compelled to pay their debts, but they are pro¬ 
 tected in the refusal to pay them, in t he scandalous evasion of their 
 legal obligations; and, after being convicted of embezzling the public 
 money, and the money of others, of which they were the appointed 
 guardians and trustees, they have tire impudence to obtrude their 
 unblushing fronts into society, and elbow honest men out of their 
 way. There, though all men are on a footing of equality on the high 
 way, and in the courts of law, at mill and at market, yet the castes 
 in Hindoostan are not more distinctly separated, one from the other, 
 than the different classes of society are in England. It is true that 
 it is practicable for a wealthy merchant or a manufacturer, or his de¬ 
 scendants, after having, through two or three generations, washed out 
 what is considered the stain of their original occupation, to emerge, 
 by slow degrees, into the higher ranks of society; but this rarely 
 happens. Can you find men of vastfortune, in this country, content 
 to move in the lower circles—content as the ox under the daily 
 drudgery of, the yoke? It is true that, in England, some of these 
 wealthy people take it into their heads to buy seats in Parliament. 
 But, when they get there, unless they possess great talents, they are 
 mere nonentities; their existence is only to be found in the Red Book 
 which contains a list of the members of Parliament. Now, sir, I 
 wish to know if, in the Western country, where any man may get 
 beastly drunk--for three pence sterling—in England you cannot get 
 a small wine glass of spirits under twenty five cents; one such drink 
 of grog as l have seen swallowed in this country, wuuld there costa 
 dollar—in the western country, where every man can get as much 
 meat and bread as he can consume, and yet spend the best part of 
 his days, and nights too, perhaps, on the tavern benches, or loitering 
 at the cross roads asking the news; can you expect the people of 
 such a country, with countless millions of wild land and wild animals 
 besides, can be cooped upin manufacturing establishments, and made 
 to work sixteen hours a day, under the superintendence of a driver— 
 yes, a driver, compared with whom a southern overseer is a gentle¬ 
 man anilonan of refinement; for, if they do not work, these work 
 .people in the manufactories, they cannot eat—and. among all the 
 punishments that can be devised (put death even among the number,) 
 I defy you to get as much work out of a man by any of them, as when 
 he knows that he must work before he can eat. 
 
86 
 
 But, Sir, if we follow the example of England in one respect, as 
 we are invited to do, we must also follow it in another. If we adopt 
 her policy, we must adopt her ,institutions also. Her policy is the 
 result of her institutions, and our institutions must be as the result of 
 our policy, assimilated to hers. We cannot adopt such an exterior 
 system as that of England, without adopting also her interior policy. 
 We have heard of her wealth, her greatness, her glory; but her eulo¬ 
 gist is silent about the poverty, wretchedness, misery, of the lowest 
 orders. Shew me the country, say gentlemen, which has risen to 
 glory without this system of bounties and protection on manufactures. 
 Sir, shew me any country, beyond pur own,.which has risen to glory 
 or to greatness, without an established church, or without a powerful 
 aristocracy, if not an hereditary nobility. I know no country in Eu¬ 
 rope, except Turkey, without hereditary nobles. Must we, too, have 
 theseCorinthian ornaments of society, because those countries of great¬ 
 ness and glory have given in to them? But, after we shall have destroy¬ 
 ed all our foreign trade; after we shall have, by the prevention of im¬ 
 ports, cut off exports—thus ^keeping the promise of the constitution 
 to the ear, and breaking .it to the hope—paltering with the people in 
 acfiiuble sense—after we shall have, done this, we are told “ we shall 
 only have to resort to an excise —we have only to change the mode of 
 collection of taxes from the people; both modes of taxation'are volun¬ 
 tary .” Very voluntary! The exciseman comes into my house, 
 searches my premises, respects not even the privacy of female apart¬ 
 ments, measures, gauges and weighs every thing, levies a tax upon 
 every thing, and then tells me the tax is a voluntary one on my part, 
 and that 1 am, or ought to be, content.- Yes, voluntary, as Portia 
 said to Shylock, when she played the judge so rarely—art thou con¬ 
 tent Jew? Art thou content? 
 
 These taxes, however, it seems, are voluntary, “as being altogether 
 upon consumption.” By a recent speech on this subject, the greater 
 part of which, said Mr. R. I was so fortunate as to hear, 1 learn 
 that there have been only two hundred capital prosecutions in Eng¬ 
 land, within a given time, for violations of the revenue laws. Are 
 we ready, if one of us, too poor to own a saddle horse, should borrow' 
 a saddle and clap it on his plough horse, to ride to church or 
 court, or mill or market, to be taxed for a surplus saddle-horse, and 
 surcharged for having failed to list him as such? Are gentlemen 
 aware of the inquisitorial, dispensing, arbitrary, and almost papal 
 power of the Commissioners of Excise? I shall'not stop to go in¬ 
 to a detail of them; but I never did expect to hear it said, on this 
 floor, and by a gentleman from Kentucky too, that the excise system 
 was a mere scare-crow, a bug-bear, that the sound of the words con¬ 
 stituted all. the difference between a system of excise, and a system 
 of customs; that bothineantthe same thing:—“Write them together,, 
 your’s is as fair a name;—Sound them, it doth .become the mouth 
 as well”—here, Sir, I must beg leave to differ, I do not think it 
 does:—“Weigh them, it is as heavy” —[that I grant]—“conjure 
 with them”—excise—“ will start a spirit as soon as” customs 
 
37 
 
 —This I verily believe Sir, and I wish, with all my heart, if this bill 
 is to pass; if new and unnecessary burthens are to be wantonly im¬ 
 posed upon the people; that we were to return home with the bles¬ 
 sed news of a tax or excise, not less by way of “minimum,” than 
 fifty cents per gallon upon whiskey. And here, if I did not consider 
 an exciseman to bear, according to the language of the old lawbooks, 
 caput lupimrn, and that it was almost as meritorious to shoot such a 
 hell-hound of tyranny, as to shoot a wolf or a mad dog—and, if I did 
 not know that any thing like an excise in this country is in effect ut¬ 
 terly impracticable, I myself, feeling, seeing, blushing for my country, 
 would gladly vote to lay an excise on this abominable liquor, the 
 lavish consumption of which renders this the most drunken nation 
 under the sun; and yet, we have refused to take the duties from 
 wines, from cheap French wines particularly, that might lure the dog 
 from his vomit, and lay the foundation of a reformation of the public 
 manners. Sir, an excise system can never be maintained in this 
 country. I had as lief be a tythe-proctor in Ireland, and met on a 
 dark night in a narrow road by a dozen white-boys, or peep-of-day 
 boys, or hearts of oak, or hearts of steel, as an exciseman in the Al¬ 
 leghany mountains, met, in a lonely road, or by-place, by a back¬ 
 woodsman, \vith a rifle in his hand. With regard to Ireland, the Bri¬ 
 tish chancellor of the exchequer has been obliged to reduce the excise 
 in Ireland on distilled spirits, to comparatively nothing to what it was 
 formerly, in consequence of the impossibility of collecting it in that 
 country. Ireland is, not to speak with statistical accuracy, about the 
 size of Pennsylvania, containing something like twenty-five thousand 
 square miles of territory, with a population of six millions of inhabi¬ 
 tants, nearly as great a number as the whole of the white population 
 of the United States; with a standing army of 20,000 men; with ano¬ 
 ther standing army, composed of all those classes in civil life, who, 
 through the instrumentality of that army, keep the wretched people in 
 subjection—under all these circumstances, even in Ireland,' the ex¬ 
 cise cannot be collected. I venture to say, that no army that the 
 earth has ever seen—not such an one as that of Bonaparte, which 
 marched to the invasion of Russia—would be capable of collecting an 
 excise in this country—not such an one as thatdescribed, if you will 
 allow me to give some delightful poetry in exchange for very wretch- 
 . ed prose, as Milton has described: 
 
 “ Such forces met not. nor so wide a camp, 
 
 When Agrican, with all his northern powers. 
 
 Besieged Albracca, as romances tell, 
 
 The city of Calliphrone, from whence to win 
 The fairest of her sex, Angelica, 
 
 His daughter, sought by many pvowest knights. 
 
 Both Paynim and the Peers of Charlemagne.” 
 
 Not such a force, nor even.the troops with which he compares 
 them, which were no less than “ the legion fiends of hell,” could col¬ 
 lect an excise here. If any officer of our government were to take 
 
the field a still-hunting, as they call it in Ireland, among our south¬ 
 ern or western forests and mountains, I should like to see the throw¬ 
 ing off of the hounds. I have still enough of the sportsman about me, . 
 that I should like to see the breaking cover; and, above all, I should 
 like to be in at the death. 
 
 And what, said Mr. Randolph, are we now about to do? For 
 what was the Constitution formed? To drive the people of any 
 part 0/ this Union from the plough to the distaff? Sir, the Con¬ 
 stitution of the United States never would have been formed, and 
 if formed, would have been scouted, una voce , by the people, if 
 viewed as a means for effecting purposes like this. The Constitu¬ 
 tion was formed for external purposes, to raise armies and navies, and 
 -to lay uniform duties on imports, to raise a revenue to defray the ex¬ 
 penditure for such objects. What are you going to do now? To 
 turn the Constitution wrong side out; to abandon foreign commerce 
 and exterior relations—I am sorry to use this Frenchified word—the 
 foreign affairs, which it was established to regulate, and convert it 
 < into a municipal agent, to carry a system of espionage and excise 
 into every log house in the United States. We went to ,\var with 
 Great Britain for Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights; we made a Treaty 
 of Peace in which I never could, with the aid of my glasses, see a 
 word about either the one or the other of these objects of contention; 
 we are now determined never to be engaged in another for such pur¬ 
 poses; for we are, ourselves, putting an end to them. And, by the way 
 of comfort in this state of things, we have been told, by the doctor 
 as well as by the apothecary, that much cannot be immediately ex¬ 
 pected from this new scheme; that years will pass away before its 
 beneficial effects will be fully realized. And to whom is this told? 
 To the consumptive patient it is said—here is the remedy; persevere 
 in it for a few years, and it will infallibly cure your disorder: and 
 this infallible remedy is prescribed for pulmonary consumption, 
 which is an opprobrium of physicians, and has reached a stage, that, 
 in a few months, not to say days, must inevitably terminate the ex¬ 
 istence of the patient. This is to be done, too, on the plea that the 
 people who call for this measure are already ruined. I will do any 
 thing, sir, in reason, to relieve these persons; but I can never agree, 
 because, they are ruined, and. we are half-ruined only, that we shall 
 be entirely ruined, for the contingent possibility of their relief. We 
 have no belief in this new theory—new, for it came in with the 
 French Revolution, and that is of modern date—of the transfusion of 
 blood from a healthy animal to a sick one: and, if there is to be such 
 a transfusion for the benefit of these ruined persons now, we refer 
 the gentlemen to bulls and goats for supplies of blood, for we should 
 be the veriest asses to permit them to draw our own. 
 
 We are told, however, that we have nothing to do but to postpone 
 the payment of the public debt for a few years, and wait for an accu¬ 
 mulation of wealth, for a new run of luck, 
 
 “ Rusticus expectat dum defluet omnis et ille 
 
 “ Liibitur et labitur in omne volubilis «vum,” 
 
This postponement of the public debt is no novelty. All debts are,noW- 
 ' a-days, as old Lilly hath it, in the future in ms, “ about to be” paid. 
 "We have gone on postponing paying the national debt, and our own' 
 debts, until individual credit is at an end; until property, low as it is 
 reduced in price by our fantastic legislation, can no longer be bought 
 but for ready money. Here is one, and there the other. 1 am de- 
 scribinga state of society which I know to exist in a part of the coun¬ 
 try, and which I hear, with concern, does exist in a greater degree, 
 in a much larger portion of the country, than I pretend to be per¬ 
 sonally acquainted with. * 
 
 In all beneficial changes in the natural world—.and the sentiment 
 is illustrated by one of the most beautiful effusions of imagination 
 and genius that I ever read—in all those changes, which are the 
 work of an all-wise, all-seeing, and superintending providence, as in 
 the insensible gradation by which the infant bud expands into manhood, 
 and from manhood to cenility; or, if you will, to caducity itself,— 
 you find nature never working but by gradual and imperceptible 
 changes; you cannot see the object move, but take your eye from it 
 for a while, and, like the index of that clock, you can see that it’has 
 moved. The old proverb says, God works good, and always by 
 degrees. The devil, on the other hand, is bent on mischief, "and al¬ 
 ways in a hurry. He cannot stay: his object is mischief, which can 
 best be effected suddenly, and he must be gone to work elsewhere. 
 But we have the comfort, under the pressure of this measure, that at 
 least no force is exercised upon us; we are not obliged to buy goods 
 of foreign manufacture. It is true, sir, that gentlemen have not 
 said you shall not send your tobacco or cotton abroad; but they 
 have said the same thing, in other words; by preventing the importa¬ 
 tion of the returns which we used to receive, and without which, the 
 sale or exchange of our produce is impracticable, they say to us, you 
 shall sell only to us, and we will give you what we please: you shall 
 buy only of us, but at what price we please tp ask. But no force is 
 used! You are at full liberty not to buy or to sell. Sir, when an Eng¬ 
 lish Judge once told a certain curate of Brentford, that the court of 
 chancery was open equally to the rich and the poor, Horne Tooke 
 replied, “ so, my lord, is the London Tavern.” You show a blanket 
 or a warm rug to a wretch that is shivering with cold, and tell him 
 you shall get one no where else, but you are at liberty not to buy mine. 
 
 No Jew, who ever tampered with the necessities of a profligate 
 young heir, lending him money at an usury of cent, per cent., ever 
 acted more paternally than the advqcates of this bill, to those upon 
 whom it is to operate. I advise you, youngman, for your good,says 
 the usurer. I do these things very reluctantly, says Moses—these 
 courses will lead you to ruin. But, no/orce—no sir, no force short 
 of Russian despotism, shall induce me to purchase, or, knowing it, 
 to use any article from the region of country which attempts to cram 
 this bill down our throats. On this, we of the south are as resolved, 
 as were our fathers about the tea, which they refused to drink; for 
 this is the same old question of the stamp act in a new shape, viz; 
 whether they, who have no common feeling with us, shall impose on 
 
40 
 
 us, not merely a'burthensome but a ruinou9 tax, and that, by way of 
 experiment and sport. And I say again, if we are to submit to’ such 
 usurpations, give me George Grenville, give me Lord North for a 
 master. It is in this point of view that I most deprecate the bill. 
 If, (said Mr. R.) from the language I have used, any gentleman shall 
 believe I am not as much attached to this Union as any one on this 
 floor, he will labor under a great mistake. But there is no magic in 
 this word union. I value it as the means of preserving the liberty 
 and happiness of the people. Marriage itself is a good thing, but the 
 marriages of Mezentius were not so esteemed. The marriage of Sin- 
 bad, the sailor, with the corse of his deceased wife, was an union, and 
 just such an union will this be, if, by a bare majority in both Houses, 
 this bill shall become a law. And, I ask, sir, whether it will redound to 
 the honor of this House, if this bill should pass, that the people should 
 owe their escape to the act of any others rather than to us? Shall 
 we, when even the British Parliament are taking off taxes by whole¬ 
 sale—when all the assessed taxes are diminished fifty per cent,—when 
 the ; tax on salt is reduced seven eighths, with a pledge that the 
 remainder shall come off, and the whole would have been repeal¬ 
 ed, but that it was kept on as a salvo for the wounded pride of Mr. 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, when asked—why keep on 
 this odious tax, which brings but a paltry hundred and fifty thousand 
 perannum? answered, bysubterfuge and evasion,aslh'aveheard done 
 m this House, and drew back upon his resources, his majority—how 
 will it answer for the people to have to look up for their escape from 
 oppression, not to their immediate Representatives, but to the Repre¬ 
 sentatives of the States, or, possibly, to the Executive? And, permit 
 me here to say, aud'.I say it freely because it is true, that I join as 
 heartily as any. man, in reprehending “the cold, ambiguous support 
 of the executive government to this bill.” I do not use my own 
 words; I deprecate as much as any member of this House can do, 
 that the Executive of this country should lend to this bill, or to any 
 other bill, a cold and ambiguous support, or support of any sort, un¬ 
 til it comes before him in the shape of a law, unless it be a measure 
 which he, in his constitutional capacity, may have invited Congress 
 to pass. I may be permitted to say, and I will say, that, in case this 
 bill should be unhappily presented to him for his signature, and as an 
 allusion has been made to him in debate, I presume I may repeat it, 
 —I hope he will recollect how much the country that gave him birth 
 has done for him, and the little, not to say worse than nothing, that, 
 during his administration, he has done for her. I hope, Sir, he will 
 scout the bill as contrary to the genius of our government, to the 
 whole spirit andletter of our confederation—1 say of our confedera¬ 
 tion—Blessed be God, it is a confederation, and that it contains with¬ 
 in itself the redeeming power which has more than once been exer¬ 
 cised—and that it contains within itself the seeds of preservation, if 
 not of this Union, at least of the individual Commonwealths of which 
 it is composed. 
 
 But, sir, not satisfied with an appeal to the example of Great Bri- 
 
41 
 
 tain, whom we have been concent hitherto very sedulously to cen¬ 
 sure and to imitate,—as I once heard a certain person say that.it was 
 absolutely necessary for persons of a peculiar character to be ex¬ 
 tremely vehement of censure of the very vice of which they are 
 themselves guilty—the example of Russia has'been introduced, the 
 very last, I should suppose, that would be brought into this House 
 on this or any other question. A gentleman from South Carolina 
 (Mr. Poinsett,) whose intelligence and information 1 very much re¬ 
 spect, but the feebleness of whose voice does not permit him to be 
 heard as distinctly as could be wished, remarked the other day, and, 
 having it on my notes, I will, with his leave, repeat it—Russia is 
 cursed with a paper money, which, in point of depreciation and its 
 consequent embarrasment to her, can boast of no advantage, I be¬ 
 lieve, even over that of Kentucky—so cursed, that it is impossible, 
 until her circulation is restored to a healthful state, she can ever 
 take her station as a commercial or manufacturing nation, to any 
 extent. Nay, more, Russia, with the exception of a few of her pro¬ 
 vinces, consists, like the interior of America, of a vast inland con¬ 
 tinent, desolated and deformed by prairies or steppes, as they are 
 there called, inhabited by a sparse population} and, as an appeal has 
 been made to experience, said Mr. R. I ask any gentleman to shew 
 me an instance of any country under the sun that has) under these 
 circumstances, taken a stand as a manufacturing or great commer¬ 
 cial nation. These great rivers and inland seas cut a mighty figure 
 on the map, but, when you come to consider of capacities for foreign 
 commerce, how unlike the insular situation of Great Britain,.or the 
 peninsular situation of almost the whole continent of Europe—sur¬ 
 rounded or penetrated as it is by inland seas and gulfs! May I be par¬ 
 doned for adverting to the fact—I know that comparisons are extreme¬ 
 ly odious—that, when we look to Salem and Boston, to parts of the 
 country where skill, and capital, and industry, notoriously exist, we 
 find opposition to this bill; and that, when we look to countries which 
 could sooner build one hundred pyramids, such as that of Cheops, 
 than manufacture one cambric needle, or a paper of White Chapel 
 pins, or a watch-spring, we hear a clamour about this system for 
 the protection of manufactures. The merchants and manufacturers 
 of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, the Province of Maine, and Sa- 
 gadahock repel this hill, whilst men in hunting shirts, with deer-skin 
 leggins and moccasins on their feet, want protection for manufactures 
 —men with rifles on their shoulders, and long knives in their belts, 
 seeking in the forests to lay in their) next winter’s supply of bear- 
 meat. But it is not there alone the cry is heard. It is at Baltimore- 
 decayed, deserted Baltimore, whose exports have more than one-half 
 decreased, whilst those of Boston have four times increased—it is de¬ 
 cayed and deserted Baltimore that comes here and asks us for the pro¬ 
 tection of those interests which have grown up during the late war- 
 privateering among the number, I presume. Philadelphia, too, in a 
 state of atrophy, asks for the measure—Philadelphia, who never can, 
 pass what bill you please, have a foreign trade to any great amount, 
 
42 
 
 or become a great manufacturing town, for which she wants' all (he 
 elements of climate, coal, and capital—this city, no* over built, swoln 
 to the utmost extent of the. integument, and utterly destitute of force 
 or weight in the Union, wants this bill for the protection of the do¬ 
 mestic industry of her free blacks, I .-presume. New York, too, is 
 now willing .to build up Montreal and Quebec at her expense-—to 
 convert the. Hudson into a theatre for rival disputants about steam¬ 
 boats in the courts below stairs, anil for them, and sucli as them, 
 with a coasting licence, to ply upon. The true remedy, and the only 
 one, for the iron-manufacturer of Pennsylvania, who has nothing but 
 iron, to sell,; and that, they tell us, is worth nothing, would be to lay 
 on the table of this House a declaration of war in blank, and then go 
 into a committee of the whole, to see what nation in the world it 
 would be most convenient to go to war with—for, fill the blank with 
 the name of what power you please, it must be a sovereign state, 
 and, though it have not a seamab or a vessel in the world, its com- 
 missionsare as good.and valid in an admiralty court, as those of the 
 Lord High Admiral of Great Britain. In this way you will put our 
 furnaces in blast, and your paper mills into full operation; and many, 
 very tnany, who, during the last war, transported flour on horse-back 
 for the supply of your army, at the c ost of an hundred doliars per 
 barrel, and who have since transported provisions in steam-boats up 
 and down the Missouri river—very many such individuals would 
 thus be taken out of the very jaws of bankruptcy and lifted up to'- 
 Opulence, at the expense of that people, at whose expense, also, yoU 
 are now about to enable these iron manufacturers to fill their pock¬ 
 ets. New England does not want this bill. Connecticut, indeed, 
 molasses having been thrown overboard to lighten the ship, votes for 
 this bill. A word in the ear of the land of steady habits—I voted 
 against that tax, on the principle^ which has always directed my 
 public life, not to compromise my opinions—not to do evil that good 
 may come of it—let me tell the land of steady.habits, that, after this 
 bill shall be fairly, otf the shore; after we shall have cleared decks 
 and made ready for action again; after she shall have imposed on me 
 the onerous burthen ofthis bill, she shall have the benefit of my vote 
 to put on again this duty on molasses—hot at this day—this'is not 
 the last tariff - measure; for, in less than five years, I would, if I were 
 a betting man, wager any odds that we have another tariff proposi¬ 
 tion, worse by far than that,'.amendments to which gentlemen had 
 strangled yesterday by the bow-string of the previous question. Fair 
 dealing'leads to safe counsels and safe issues. There is a certain 
 left-handed wisdom, that often overreaches its own objects, which, 
 grasps at the shadow and lets go the substance. We shall not only 
 have this duty on molasses, I can tell the gentlemen from Connecti¬ 
 cut, but we shall have, moreover, an additional bounty on intoxica¬ 
 tion by whiskey, in the shape’of an additional duty on foreign distil¬ 
 led spirits. 
 
 The ancient Commonwealth of Virginia, one of whose,jinworthy 
 srins, and more unworthy representatives, I am, said Mr. U., must 
 now begin to open her eyes to the fatal policy which she'lias pursu- 
 
ed for the last forty years. ' I have not a doubt, that they who were 
 the agents for transferring her vast, and boundless, and fertile coun¬ 
 try to the United States, with an express stipulation, in effect, that 
 not an acre of it should ever enure to the benefit of any man from 
 Virginia, were as respectable, and kind hearted, and hospitable, and 
 polished, and guileless Virginia gentlemen, as ever were .cheated 
 out of their estates by their overseers; men who, as long as they 
 could command the means, by sale of their last acre, or last negro, 
 would have a good dinner, and give a hearty welcome to whomso¬ 
 ever chose to drop in, to eat, friend or stranger, bidden or unbid¬ 
 den. What will be the effect of this bill on the Southern states? 
 The effect of this policy is, what I shudder to look at; the more, be¬ 
 cause the next census is held up in terrorem over us. We are told, 
 you had better consent to this —we are not threatened exactly with 
 .General Gage and the Boston Port bill—but we are told by gentle¬ 
 men, we shall, after the next census, so saddle, and bridle, and 
 martingale you, that you will be easily regulated by any bit, or 
 whip, however severe, or spurs, however rank, of domestic manu¬ 
 facture, that we choose to use. But this argument, sir, has no 
 weight in it with me, I do not choose to be robbed now, because, 
 after I am once robbed, it will become easier to rob me again. Obsta- 
 principiis, is my maxim—because every act of extension of the sys¬ 
 tem operates in a two-fold way, decreasing the strength and means 
 ofthe robbee, and increasing those of the robber. This is as true 
 as any proposition in mathematics. Gentlemen need not tell us, 
 we had better give in at once. No, sir, we shall not give in; no, 
 we shall hold out—we shall not give in. We do not mean to be 
 threatened out of our rights by the menace of another census. We 
 are aware of our foily, and it is our business to provide against the 
 consequences of it, but not in this way. When I recollect, that the 
 tariff of 1816 was followed by that of 1819-20, and that by this mea¬ 
 sure of 1823-24,. I cannot believe that we are at any time hereafter, 
 long to be exempt from the demands of these sturdy beggars, who 
 will take no denial. Every concession does but render every fresh 
 demand and new concession more easy. It,is like those dastard na¬ 
 tions who'-vainly think to buy peace. When I look back to what 
 the country of which I am a representative was, and when I see what 
 it is—when I recollect the expression of Lord Cornwallis, applied 
 to Virginia, “that great and unterrified colony,” which he was about 
 to enter, not without some misgivings of his mind as to the result of 
 the invasion—when I compare what she was when this House of Re¬ 
 presentatives first assembled in the city of New York, and what she 
 now is, I know, by the disastrous contrast, that her councils have not 
 been governed by statesmen. They might be admirable professors 
 of a university, powerful dialecticians ex cathedra, but no sound 
 counsels of wise statesmen could ever lead to such practical ill re¬ 
 sults as are exhibited by a comparison of the past and present con¬ 
 dition of the ancient colony and dominion of Virginia. 
 
 In the course of this discussion, said Mr. U. I have heard, I will 
 not say with surprise, because nil admirari, is my motto—no doc- 
 
44 
 
 trine that can be broached on this floor can ever, hereafter, excite 
 surprise in my mind—I have heard the names of Say, ! Ganilh, Adam 
 Smith, and Ricardo, pronounced, not only in terms, Mat in a tone, of 
 sneering contempt, as visionary theorists, destitute ofj practical wis¬ 
 dom, and the. whole clan of Scotch and Quarterly re viewers lugged 
 in to boot. IJhis, sir, is a sweeping clause of proscription. With 
 the names of Say, Smith, and Ganilh, I profess to be acquainted, 
 for I, too, am versed in title pages, but I did not expect v.o hear, in 
 this House, a name, with which I am a little further acquainted, 
 treated with so little ceremony, and by whom? I leave Adam.Smith 
 to the simplicity, and majesty, and strength of his own native geriicis 
 which has canonized his name—a name which will be pronounced 
 with veneration, when not one name in this House will be remem¬ 
 bered. But, one word as to Ricardo, the last mentioned of these 
 writers—a new authority, though the grave has already closed upon 
 him, and set its seal upon his reputation. I shall speak of him in the 
 language of a man of as great a genius as this, or perhaps any, age 
 has ever produced—a man remarkable for the depth of his reflections 
 and the acumen of his penetration ‘ I had been led,’ says this ^an, 
 ‘ to look into loads of books—my understanding had for too" y .my 
 ‘years been intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, and the great 
 
 * masters of knowledge, not to be aware of the utter feebleness of the 
 
 * herd of modern economists. I sometimes read chapters from more 
 ‘ recent works, or part of Parliamentary debates. I saw that these 
 [ominous words!] ‘ were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the 
 ‘ human intellect.’ [I am very glad, sir, he did not read our debates. 
 What would he have said of ours?]—‘ At length a friend sent me Mr. 
 
 * Ricardo’s book, and recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of 
 ‘ the advent of some legislator oh this science, I said, Thou art the 
 
 * man. Wonder and curiosity had long been dead in me; yeti won- 
 ■ dered once more. Had this profound work been really written in 
 ‘ England during the 19th century? Could it be that an Englishman, 
 
 * and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by mercantile and se- 
 ‘ natorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities and a cen- 
 ‘ tury of thought had failed to advance by one hair’s breadth? All 
 ‘ other writers had been crushed and overlaid by the enormous weight 
 
 * of facts and documents; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori, from 
 
 * the understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light into 
 ‘ the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been 
 ‘but a collection of-tentitive discussions, into a science of regular 
 ‘ proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis.’ 
 
 I pronounce no opinion of my own, said Mr. R., on Ricardo; I re¬ 
 cur rather to the opinion of a man, inferior in point of original and 
 native genius, and that highly cultivated, too, to none of the moderns, 
 and. few of the ancients. Upon this subject, what shall we say to the 
 following fact? Butler, who is known to gentlemen of the profession 
 of the law, as the annotator, with Hargrave, on Lord Coke, speaking 
 with Fox as to political economy—that most extraordinary man, 
 unrivalled for his powers of debate, excelled by no man that evsr 
 
45 
 
 lived, or probably ever will live, as a public debater, and of the deep¬ 
 est of political erudition, fairly confessed that he had never read 
 Adam Smith. Butler said to Mr. Pox “ that he had never read Adam 
 Smith’s work on the Wealth of Nations.” “ To tell you the truth,” 
 ' replied Mr. Fox, “nor I neither. There is something in all these sub¬ 
 jects that passes my comprehension—something so wide that I could 
 never embrace them myself, or fiud any one who did.” And yet we 
 see how we, with our little dividers, undertake to lay off the scale, 
 and with our pack-thread to take the soundings, and.speak with a con¬ 
 fidence peculiar!to quacks (in which the regular bred professor ne¬ 
 ver indulges) on this abstruse and perplexing subject. Confidence 
 is one thing, knowledge another; of the want of which, overweening 
 confidences notoriously the indication. What of that? Let Ganilh, 
 Say, Ricardo. Smith—all Greek and Roman fame be against us— 
 we appeal to Dionysius in support of our doctrines; and to him not on 
 the throne of Syracuse but at Corinth—not in absolute possession of 
 that most wonderful and enigmatical city, as difficult to comprehend 
 as the abstrusest problem of political economy, which furnished not 
 only the means but the men for supporting the greatest wars—asking- 
 dom within itself, under whose ascendant the genius of Athens, in 
 her most high and palmy state, quailed, and stood rebuked. No; we 
 follow the’pedagogue to the schools—dictating in the classic shades 
 of Longwood —(lucus a non lucendo )—to his disciples. 
 
 We have been told that the economists are right in theory and 
 wrong in practice; which is as much as to say, that two bodies occupy 
 at the same time the same space; for it is equally impracticable to be 
 right in theory and wrong in practice. It is easy to be wrongin practice; 
 but if our practice corresponds with our theory, it is a solecism to say 
 that we can be right in the one and wrong in the other. As for 
 Alexander and Caesar, said Mr. R., I have as little respect for their 
 memory as is consistent with that involuntary homage which all must 
 pay to men of their prowess and abilities; and if Alexander had 
 suffered himself to be led by the nose out of Babylon and banished 
 to Sinope, or if Casar had suffered himself to be deprived of his im¬ 
 perial sway, not by the dagger of the assassin, but by his own sla¬ 
 vish feare, I should have as little respect for their memory as for that 
 of him whose example has on this occasion been held up to us for 
 admiration. Speaking of that man who has kept me awake night 
 after night, and has been to - me an incubus by day, for fear of the 
 vastness of his designs, I cannot conceive of a spectacle so pitiful, 
 so despicable, as that man, under those circumstances; and if the 
 work dictated by him at St. Helena be read with the slightest atten-i 
 tion, no forsworn witness at the Old Bailey was ever detected in so 
 many contradictions as he has been guilty'of. No, sir, the Jupiter 
 from whose reluctant hand the.thunder-bult is wrung, is not the one 
 at whose shrine I worship—not that I think that the true Amphitrion 
 is always him with whom we dine—he is not the political economist 
 who is to take place of Smith and Ricardo. Will any man make me 
 believe that he understood the theory or the practice of political 
 economy better than these men, or than Charles Fox? Impossible. 
 
46 
 
 When,! recollect what that, man'inight have done for liberty, and 
 what, he did; when I recollect thatto him we owe this Holy Alliance 
 this fearful power of Russia-^o^Russia, where I should advise per¬ 
 sons to go who desired to be instructed in petty treason by the‘mur¬ 
 der of a husband, or in parricide By the murder of ai father, but from 
 whom I should never think of taking a lesson in poetical economy— 
 ■to whom' I would say, rather, pay your debts, not in depreciated pa¬ 
 per; do not commit daily acts of bankruptcy; restore your currency; 
 practise on the principles of liberality and justice, and then I will 
 listen to you—No, sir, Russia may, ir’she pleases, not only lay hea¬ 
 vy duties on imports; she may prohilnt them if she pleases; sue has 
 nothing to export but what some other inland countries have, politi¬ 
 cal power—physical, to be sure, as well as intellectual power—but 
 she does not even dare to attack the Turk: she cannot stir: she is 
 something like some of our interior people of the South; who have 
 plenty of land, plenty of serfs, smoke-houses filled with meat, and 
 very fine horses to ride, but who, when they go abroad, have notone 
 , shilling to bless themselves with: and so long as she is at peace, and 
 does not trouble the rest of the world, so long she may be suffered to 
 remain: but, if she should continue to act hereafter as she has done 
 heretofore, it-will be the interest of the civilized' world to procure her 
 dismemberment, per fas aut nefas. 
 
 But it Is said, a measure of this sort is necessary to create em¬ 
 ployment for the people. Why, sir, where are the handles of the 
 plough? ;: Are they unfit for young gentlemen to touch? Or .will they 
 rather choose to enter your military academies, where the sons of the 
 rich are educated at the expense of the poor,'and where so many po¬ 
 litical Janissaries are every year turned out, always ready for war, 
 and to support the powers that be—equal to the Strelitzes of Mos¬ 
 cow or St. Petersburg. I do not speak now of individuals, of course, 
 but of the tendency of the system—the hounds follow the huntsman 
 because he feeds them, and bears the &fiip. I speak of the system. 
 I concur most heartily,-.sir, in the censure which has been passed up¬ 
 on the greediness of office, which stands a stigma on the present gen¬ 
 eration. Men from whom wo might expect, and from whom 1 did 
 expect better things, crowd the antichamber of the palace, for every 
 vacant office; nay, even before men are dead, their shoes are wanted 
 for some bare-footed office-seeker. How mistaken was the old Ro¬ 
 man, the old-Consul, who, whilst he held the plough by one hand, 
 and death held the other, exclaimed, “ Diis immortalibus sero!” 
 
 . Our fathers, how did they acquire their property? By straight for¬ 
 ward industry, rectitude, and frugality. How did they become dis¬ 
 possessed of their property? By indulging in speculative hopes and 
 designs; seeking the shadow whilst they lost the substance; and now, 
 instead of being, as they were, men of respectability, men of sub¬ 
 stance, men capable and willing to live independently and honestly, 
 and hospitably too—for who so parsimonious as the prodigal who 
 has nothing to give—What have we become? A nation of sharks, 
 preying on one another,‘ preying on one another through the instru¬ 
 mentality of this paper system, which, if Lycurgus had known of it 
 
4t 
 
 lie would unquestionably have adopted, in preference to his iron 
 money, if his object had been to ma|e the Spartans the most accom-v. 
 plished knaves, as well as to keepjthem poor. 
 
 But, we are told this is a curious constitution of ours: it is made 
 for foreigners and not for ourselves—for the protection of foreign, 
 and not of American industry. Sir, this is a curious constitution of 
 ours, said Mr. tt.; and if I were disposed to deny it, I could not suc¬ 
 ceed. It is an anomaly in itself. It is that supposed impossibility 
 of all writers, from Aristotle to the present day, an imperium in im- 
 fierio. Nothing like it ever did exist, or possibly ever will, under 
 similar circumstances. It is a constitution consisting of confede¬ 
 rated bodies, for certain exterior pimposes, and, also, for some in¬ 
 terior purposes, but leaving to the State authorities, among a 
 great many powers, the very one which we now propose to exer¬ 
 cise: for, if we were now passing a revenue bill —a bill, the object 
 of which were to raise revenue—however much I should deny 
 the policy, and however I could demonstrate the futility of the 
 plan, I still should deem it to be a constitutional bill—a bill passed 
 to carry, bona fide , into effect, a provision of the Constitution, but a 
 bill passed with short-sighted views.. But this is no such bill. It is 
 a bill, under pretence of regulating commerce, to take money from 
 the pockets of a very large, and, I thank God, contiguous-territory, 
 and to put it into other pockets. One word, sir, on that point;—I 
 can assure the gentlemen whose appetites are so keenly wuetted for 
 ohr money—I trust, at least, that if this bill passes, there will be a 
 meeting of the members opposed to it, and a general and consenta¬ 
 neous resistance tb its operation throughout the whole Southern coun¬ 
 try—and we shall make it by lawful means; quant a nous, the law 
 will be a dead letter. It shall be to me, at least, as innocuous as the 
 pill of the empyric, which I am Determined not to swallow. The 
 manufacturer of the East riiay carry his woollens, or his cottons, or 
 his coffins, to what market he pleases—I do not buy of him. Self- 
 defence is the first law of nature. You drive us into it. You create 
 heats and animosities amongst this great family, who ought to live 
 like brothers; and, after you have got this temper of mind roused 
 among the Southern people, do you expect to come among us to trade, 
 and expect us to buy your wares? Sir, not only shall we not buy 
 them, but we shall take such measures (I will not enter into the de¬ 
 tail of them now,) as shall render it impossible for you to sell them. 
 Whatever may be said here, of the “ misguided counsels,” as they 
 have been termed, “ of the theorists of Virginia,” they have, so far 
 as regards this question, the confidence of, united Virginia. W.e 
 are asked,—does the South lose any thing by this bill—why do you 
 cry out? I put it, sir, to any man, from any part of the country, from 
 the Gulf of Mexico, from the Balize, to the Eastern shore of Mary¬ 
 land—which, I thank heaven, is not yet under the government of 
 Baltimore,, and will not be, unless certain theories should come into 
 play in that State, which we have lately heard of, and a majority of 
 men, told by the head, should govern—whether the whole country, 
 between the points I have named, is not unanimous in opposition io 
 
this bill. Would itnot be unexampled, that we should thus complain, 
 protest, resist, and that alltheywiile nothing should be the matter F 
 Are our understandings (howe^feow mine may be rated, much 
 sounder than mine are engaged iircnis resistance,) to be rated so low, 
 as that we ire to be made to'believe that we are children affrighted 
 by a bug-bear? We are asked, however, why do you cry outp—it is 
 all for your good. Sir, this reminds me of the mistresses of George 
 II. who, when they were insulted by the populace, on arriving in Lon¬ 
 don, (as all such creatures deserve to be, by every mob,) put their 
 heads out of the window, and said to them, in their broken English, 
 “ Goot people, we be come for your goots-,” to which one of the mob 
 rejoined—" Yes, and for our chattels too, I fancy.” Just so it is 
 with the oppressive exactions proposed and advocated by the sup¬ 
 porters of this bill, on the plea of the good of those who are its vic¬ 
 tims. 
 
 There is not a member of this House; said Mr. R., more deeply 
 penetrated than the one who is endeavoring to address you, with the 
 inadequate manner in which he hasdischarged the task imposed upon 
 him—m this instance, he will say, on his part, most reluctantly. But, 
 as I have been all my life a smatterer in history, I cannot fail to be 
 struck with the fitness of the comparison instituted by a historian of 
 this country with the Roman republic, just as it was in a state of pre¬ 
 paration for a master. 
 
 “ Sed,|postquam luxu, atque desidia civitas corrupts est; rursus 
 respublica, magnitudine sua, imperatorum atque magistratuum vitia 
 sustentabat; ac veluti effoeta parentum, multis tenipestatibus, haud 
 sane quisquam Romse virtute magnus fuit.” . 
 
 Of this quotation,! will, as they sometimes say in the Parliament, 
 for the benefit of the country gentlemen, attempt a translation. 
 “ But, after the state had become corrupted by luxury and sloth”— 
 in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. we are totd of one who laid 
 by his sequins in good money, and when he afterwards came to use 
 them, he found them to be bits of paper, not worth more than old 
 continental (or Kentucky) money—" by luxury and sloth, again the 
 republic,”—and here I press the comparison—“ by dint of its own 
 magnitude, its own greatness, its own vastness, bore up under the 
 faults, the vices, of its generals, magistrates, and that, too, as if 
 cffeie—(past bearing) since,for a long while”—Ihopethe.comparison 
 will not hold here—“ for a long time scarcely any man had become 
 great at Rome by his. merit.” So, sir, it is with this republic. It 
 does sustain, by its greatness and growing magnitude, the follies and 
 vices of its magistracy. Had this government been stationary like 
 any of the old governments of Europe, of the second class, Prussia 
 for instance, or Holland, by the political evolutions of the last thir¬ 
 ty years—l might say thdlast twelve years—it would have sunk into 
 insignificance and debility: and it is only upon this resource, the 
 increasing; greatness of this republic, that the blunderers who plunge 
 blindfold into schemes like this, can rely for any possibility of salva¬ 
 tion from the effect of their own rash, undigested measures. It is 
 true, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; 
 
49 
 
 and elsewhere than in the republic of Rome and ot other times, than 
 the day spfCat dire, it may be said, “iHaud sane quisque virtute 
 mugnus eft.” 
 
 I had more to say, Mr. Speaker, could I have said it, on this sub¬ 
 ject. But I cannot sit down without asking those, who were once 
 my brethren of the church, the elders in the young family of this 
 good old republic of the thirteen states, if they can consent to rivet 
 upon us this system, from which no benefit can possibly result to 
 themselves. I put it to them as descendants of the renowned colo¬ 
 ny of Virginia—as children sprung from her loins—if, for the sake of 
 all the'benefits with which this bdl is pretended to be freighted to 
 them—granting such to be the fact, for argument’s sake—they could 
 consent to do such an act of violence to the unanimous opinion, feel¬ 
 ings, prejudices, ifyou will, of the whole southern states, as to'psss 
 it?' I go farther. Task of them what is there in the condition of.the 
 nation, at this time, that calls for the immediate adoption of this mea¬ 
 sure? Are the Gapls at the gate of the Capitol? If they are, the 
 cacklings of the Capitoline geese will hardly save it. What is there 
 to induce us to plunge into the vortex of those evils so severely felt 
 in Eui ope from this verv manufacturing and paper-policy? For, it 
 is evident that, if we go into this system of policy, we must adopt 
 the European institutions also., . We have very good materials to 
 work with—We have only to make our elective King, President for 
 life, in the first place, and then to make the succession hereditary in 
 the family of the first that shall happen to have a promising son. 
 For a King we can be at no loss —ex quovis ligno —any block will do 
 for him. The Senate may,'perhaps; be transmuted into a House of 
 Peers, although we should meet with more difficulty than in the 
 other case: for, Bonaparte himself was not more hardly put to it, 
 to recruit the ranks of his mushroom-nobility, than we should be to 
 furnish a House of Peers. As for us, we are the faithful Commons,, 
 ready made to hand; but with all our loyalty, I congratulate the 
 House—I congratulate the nation—that, although this body is daily 
 degraded by the sight of members of Congress manufactured into 
 placemen, we have not yet reached such a point of degradation as to 
 submit to suffer Executive minions to be manufactured into members 
 of Congress. We have shut that door; I wish we could shut the 
 other also. I wish we could have a perpetual call Of the House in 
 this view, and suffer no one to go out from its closed doors. The time, 
 Mr. It. said, was peculiarly inauspicious for the change in our policy 
 which is proposed by this bill. We are on the eve of an election 
 .that promises to be the most distracted that this nation has ever yet 
 
50 
 
 undergone. It may turn, put to be a Polish election. At such a 
 time, ought any measure to.be broaght forward which is supposed to 
 be capable of being demonstrated to be extremely injurious to one 
 great portion of this country. and beneficial in proportion to another? 
 Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. There are firebrands enough 
 in the land, without this apple of discord being cast into this assem¬ 
 bly. Suppose this measure is not what it is represented to be; that 
 the fears of the south are altogether illusory and vissionary; that it 
 will produce all the good predicted of it—an honorable gentleman 
 from Kentucky, said, yesterday,. and ,1 was sorry to hear it, for I 
 have great respect for that gentleman, and for other gentlemen from 
 that state—that the question was not whether a bare majority should 
 pass the bill, but whether the majority or minority,should rule. The 
 gentleman is wrong, and if he will consider the matter rightly, he 
 Will see it. Is there no difference between the patient and the ac¬ 
 tor? We are passive: we do not call upon them to act or to suffer, 
 but we call upon them not so to act as that we must necessarily 
 suffer: and I venture to say, that in any government properly con-,, 
 stituted, this very consideration would operate conclusively, that, if 
 this burden is to be laid on 102, it ought not to be laid by 105. We 
 are the eel that is being flayed, while the cook-maid pats us on the 
 head, and cries, with the clown in King Lear, “ down, wantons, 
 dpwitt.” There is but one portion of the country which can profit 
 trpthis bill, and from that portion of the country comes this bare 
 majority in favor of it. I bless God that Massachusetts and old 
 Virginia are once again rallying under the same banner, against op¬ 
 pressive and unconstitutional taxation: for, if all the’blood be drawn 
 from out the body, I care not whether it be by the British Parlia¬ 
 ment or the American Congress—by an Emperor or a King abroad, 
 or by a President at home. 
 
 Under these views, and with feelings of mortification and shame 
 at the very weak opposition I have been able to make to this bill, I 
 entreat gentlemen to consent that it may lie over, at least, until the 
 next session of Congress. We have other business to attend to, and 
 our families and affairs need,our attention at home—and indeed I, sir, 
 would not give one farthing for any man who prefers being here to 
 being at home—who is a good public man and a bad private one. With 
 these views and feelings, I move you, sir, that the bill be indefinitely 
 postponed. 
 
 House of Representatives, April 8. 
 
 On the motion to,reduce the duties on coarse woollens— 
 
 MR. RANDOLlPH expressed his surprise that the votaries of hu¬ 
 manity—personsfwho could' not sleep, such was their distress of 
 mind at the very existence of negro slavery—should persist in press¬ 
 ing a measure, the effect of which was to aggravate the misery of 
 that unhappy condition—whether viewed in reference to the slave or 
 tohis master—if he wereaman possessing asingle spark of humanity— 
 
for, what could be more pitiable than the situation of a man who had 
 every desire to clothe his negroes comfortably—but who wa9 ab¬ 
 solutely prohibited from'so doing by. legislative enactment? He 
 hoped that none of those who wished to ^enhance to the poor slave (or. 
 what was the same thing—to his master) the price of his annual 
 blanket, and of his sordid suit of coarse, but, to him, comfortable 
 woollen cloth—would ever travel through the southern country to 
 spy out the nakedness, if not of the land, of the cultivators of the 
 soil. It was notorious that the profits of slave labor had been, for 
 a long time, on the decrease, and that, on a fair average, it scarcely 
 reimbursed the expense of'the slave, including the helpless ones, 
 whether from infancy or age. The words of Patrick Henry, in the 
 Convention of Virginia, still rung in his ears: “ They may liberate 
 every one of your slaves. The Congress possess the power and will 
 exercise it.” Now, sir, the first step towards this consummation, 
 so devoutly wished by many, is to pass such laws as may yeo still 
 further diminish the.pittance which their labor yields to their unfor¬ 
 tunate masters. To produce such a state of things as will ensure, in 
 case the slave shall not elope from his master—his master will run 
 away from him. Sir, the blindness, as it appears to me—I hope gen¬ 
 tlemen will pardon the expression—with which a certain quarter of 
 this country—I allude particularly to the seaboard of South Carolina 
 and Georgia—has lent its aid to increase the powers of the general 
 government on points'—to say the least, of doubtful construction—fills 
 me with astonishment and dismay. And I look forward,almost with; 
 out a ray of hope, to the time which the next census, or that which 
 succeeds it, will assuredly bring forth—when this work of destruction 
 and devastation is to commence in the abused name of humanity and 
 religion—and when the imploring eyes of some will be, as now, 
 turned towards another body, in the vain hope that it may arrest the 
 evil and stay the plague. 
 
 House of Representatives, April 12. 
 
 MR. RANDOLPH said, that if the House would lend him its at¬ 
 tention for five minutes, he thought he could demonstrate that‘the 
 argument of the gentleman from Delaware, in favor of the increased 
 duty on brown sugar, was one of the most suicidal arguments that 
 ever reared it’s spectral front in a deliberative assembly. 
 
 The gentleman objects to reducing the duty on sugar, because it 
 will diminish the revenue, which he says we cannot dispense with— 
 and yet he wishes to continue it as a bounty of S3 per 100 lbs. 
 (not the long hundred of 112 lbs.,) until the sugar planting and sugar 
 manufacture should be extended, so as to supply the whole demand of 
 bur consumption. Then, what becomes of the revenue from sugar, 
 that we cannot dispense with? This is what I call a suicidal argu¬ 
 ment—It destroys itself. . 
 
 But, we must not reduce the duty to what it stood at, only eight 
 
52 
 
 years ago, because it will injure the sale of the public lands—Yes, sir, 
 the public lands! for which, sold or unsold, we never get paid. The 
 gentleman would persuaders that we are under obligation to such 
 purchasers as bought the "sugar lands .under the existing duty—and 
 now many sugar estates haVe been established on lands bought of the 
 •public—and.sihce the year 1816, too? Sir, this argumentof obligation 
 to tax ourselves, for the profit of these overgrown sugar planters, 
 will not hold water—It will not even hold cotton.—[Mr. Tod’s re¬ 
 iterated motions to enhance the tax on cotton bagging, had just sue- 
 ceedcd by the Speaker’s casting vote.] We are not to reduce t ie 
 duty on sugar, for fear of injuring the sale of the public lands, for 
 which, although we may obtain nominal payment, we shall never re¬ 
 ceive one penny. 
 
 . [Mr. McLane, at the commencement of his reply, appearing to be 
 much irritated, Mr. Randolph rose and assured him that he intend¬ 
 ed not the slightest personal disrespect or offence—but Mr. McLane 
 went on to say that the gentleman from Virginia had displayed a good 
 head—but he would not accept that gentleman’s head, to be obliged 
 to have his heart along with it.] 
 
 Mr. Randolph replied. 
 
 It costs me nothing, sir, to say that I very much,regret that the 
 zeal which I have not only felt but cherished, on the subject of laying 
 taxes in a manner which, in my judgment, is inconsistent, not merer 
 ly. with the spirit, but the very letter of the constitution—should have 
 given to my remarks, on this subject, a pungency, which has rendered 
 them disagreable, and • even oflensive to the gentleman from Dela¬ 
 ware. For that gentleman I have never expressed any other senti¬ 
 ment but respect—I have never uttered, or entertained, an unkind 
 feeling towards that gentleman, either in this Honse or elsewhere— 
 nor do I now feel any such sentiment, towards him—I never pressed 
 my regard upon him—I press it upon no man, He appears to 
 have considered my remarks as having a personal application to him¬ 
 self I certainly did not intend to give them that direction, and I 
 think that my prompt disclaimer of any such intention ought to have 
 disarmed his resentment, however justly it may have beep excited. 
 He has been pleased, sir, tbsay something, which, no doubt, he 
 thinks very severe, about my head and my heart. 
 
 How easy, sir, would it be for me to reverse the gentleman’s pro¬ 
 position, and to retort upon him, that I would not, in return, take 
 that gentleman’s heart, however good it may be, if obliged to take 
 such a head into the bargain. 
 
 But, sir, I do not think this—I never thought it—and, therefore, I 
 cannot be so ungenerous as to say it: for, Mr. Speaker, who made me 
 a searcher of hearts?—of the heart of a fellow man, a fellow sinner? 
 Sir, this is an awful.subject! better suited to Friday or Sunday next, 
 [Good Friday and Easter Sunday,] two of the most solemn days in 
 the Christian calendar—when I hope we shall all. consider it,' and 
 lay it to heart as we ought to do. 
 
 "But, sir, I must still maintain that the argument of the gentleman 
 is suicidal—he has fairly worked the equation, and one half of his ar- 
 
53 
 
 gument i£ a complete and conclusive answer to tire other. And, sir, if 
 I should e&erbe so unfortunate as, through inadvertence, or the heat of 
 debate, to (hll into such an error, I should, so far. from beingoffended, 
 feel myselflnder obligation to any gentleman who would expose its fal¬ 
 lacy, even t» ridicule—-as fair a weapon as any in the whole Parliamen¬ 
 tary armory! I shall not go so far as to maintain, with my Lord Shafts- 
 bury, that imis the unerring test of truth, whatever it may be of tem¬ 
 per—but if ft be proscribed as a weapon as unfair as it is confessedly 
 powerful, wlat shall we say (I put it; sir, to you, and to the House,) 
 to the poisoled arrow?—to the tomahawk and the scalping knife. 
 Could the mast unsparing use of ridicule justify a resort to these wea¬ 
 pons? Was tlis a reason that the gentleman should sit in judgment on 
 my heart?—yis, sir, my heart—which the gentleman, (whatever he 
 may say,) in Ms heart believes to be a frank heart, as I trust it is & 
 brave heart. Kir, I dismiss the gentleman to his self complacency— 
 let him go—ye|, sir, let him go—and thank his God (hat he is not as 
 this Publican. I 
 
 In t|e House of Representatives, April 13. 
 
 I rise, sjr, folthe purpose of offering to the consideration of this 
 House an ameniment to the bill before them, which nothing but an 
 imperious sensei of duty could have induced" me, rebus exist entibus, 
 to propose. Itlnrill be recollected that, in the year 1816, an addi¬ 
 tional duty was Slid on brown sugar. My present object is to reduce 
 the duty to whal it then was. I shall not take'up the time of the 
 House—I never lave done it—in discussing the general principles of 
 any bill on the consideration of its details. We all know the depre¬ 
 ciation of monewwhich has taken place since 1816: that revulsion 
 in the pecuniary ftoncerns of this country, many of us, in our own per¬ 
 sons, and all of i* in the persons of our friends, yet live to deplore. 
 Sir, what was theft comparative value of money then and at present? 
 Do we not all know that at that time a duty of 6 cents per lb. on 
 sugar would not hive been as much felt as a duty of 3 cents is felt 
 now? Sir, there was not a man, with the exception, perhaps, of a 
 few miserable usurers and muckworms, who could not then get $6 
 easier than he now An get 3, For myself, I could more easily have 
 paid g3 at that timqL than I can pay SI to-day. Sir, the demon of 
 speculation had taken possession ot the public mind—the bubble, 
 not, sir, of the South Bea or the Mississippi, but one every whit as 
 mischievous—was thenfully blown to its utmost expansion, and was 
 near bursting. Yet thy duty on this article—an article we are all 
 obliged to consume; into necessity next to the articles of salt and 
 iron, in universal demanck and entering into the food of the poorest 
 man in the community, would not have been as great, in proportion 
 to the value of money—at 86 then, as it is now at 83. Sir, I want to 
 know on what principle it\s that the sugar planter, who gets his 
 mules, his stave-timber, the provisions for his slaves at the first hand 
 and on the cheapest possible terms, cannot be satisfied with a protec- 
 taon-r(tlie word is not mine; I disclaim every thing of the kind, but 
 I use it in gentlemen’s own sense of the term,)—yes sir, a protection 
 
54 
 
 of 2£ cents a pound on their 1 sugar? Sir we have had a practical 
 commentary in the success of the last amendment, (Mr. Tod’s, on 
 cotton bagging,) on the effects of perseverance: I hope we shall 
 profit by it; I nope it will animate, especially, every opponent of the 
 bill to keep the faith; to fight the good fight, and to hold out to the end. 
 [Here Mr. Brent interposed.] 
 
 Sir, I have not yet done. Mv proposition, sir, is 'not to lay a tax, 
 but to take one off. But, fromjtne effect it seems to produce, I could 
 really tiling that • by some necromantic process, I had been suddenly 
 transferred to a Chamber of Deputies, or to a British House of Com* 
 mons, to the deliberative hall of some one of the older—I will not say 
 the more corrupt—I disclaim theimputation—but one of the older and 
 more astute governments of Europe. Sir, I am wrong. *1 rather 
 could wish I was thus transferred: for, in the British Parliament, I 
 should see duties reduced to less than one half of their former amount; 
 not indeed from choice, sir, for poweris sweet, and so is money; but- 
 the British ministry have been driven to the reduction, and on the 
 necessary article of salt, seven eighths of the duty has been taken off, 
 and they are pledged to repeal the remainder. But here, sir, by some 
 strange conjunction of the planets—for evidently it cannot have been 
 by any constellation beingin opposition—a most extraordinary effect 
 has been produced. In this most popular branch of the most popular 
 government in the world, we, who come immediately from the peo¬ 
 ple, whose arteries may be expected to pulsate and keep measure 
 with their own, instantly become extremely fastidious, so soon as any 
 proposal is made, the object Of which is to lessen the burthens of the 
 country. Sir, wereitnotas plain asthe noon day sun, I would quote, 
 high authority in this House, to prove what I have said of the dis¬ 
 tresses of the country. Sir, the very stamp act itself could hardly 
 throw us .into a greater flame than a proposal to diminish any of the 
 taxes—aye, sir, or our, own emolument, seems to excite in this house. 
 But as it is a feeling in which I do not participate, as my feelings 
 run in quite another direction, I find myself quite cool; never more 
 unmoved in my life; for if, as.I have some reason to fear, the tax 
 shall not be reduced, I, sir, shall pay as little of it as any man. 
 
56 
 
 This is the origin of the term deferred stock, in our laws and financial state- 
 nents. 
 
 One-third of the dollar . = 2 
 
 taken as interest and funded at 3 per cent. 
 
 Two-thirds of the remaining 4s = 2 j. 8d. at 6 per cent, - - 2 8 
 
 1-3 of 2-3 or J deferred—also at 6 per cent.14 
 
 ». 6 0 
 
 NtlTE 3. 
 
 From this admission I feel myself'compelled to except the opinions, however 
 long established, as to the impolicy of the expulsion of the Morescoes from Spain, 
 and of the Huguenots from France by the revocation of the edict of Mints. 
 Never having been “ addictus jurare in verba magistri,” I have long ago 
 taught myself to believe, that the alleged impolicy of these two celebrated 
 measures (which I have never heard called in question by any authority what¬ 
 soever, ; is one of those “ vulgar errors” that ought to. go to swell the catalogue 
 of the ingenious Sir Thomas Brown. From the institution of the Passover to 
 
57 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 40. 
 
 It is a subject of much regret to me, that at this time I had not had the benefit 
 of the very able speech of his successor in office, Mr Robinson, which reached 
 the United States a few days after. It ought to be reprinted in every leading 
 paper in the Union. 
 
 With the good sense, liberality, manliness, and good faith, which character¬ 
 ize the whole speech, he states, that Government ispledged to the abolition 
 of the small remnant of the salt tax; and if insisted on by the Opposition, the 
 pledge shall be redeemed. He suggests, however, the policy of substituting 
 some other reduction in lieu of the small tax now payable on salt, which he 
 conceives to be as little burthensome at its present reduced rate, as any other, 
 and more easy of collection. 
 
 NOTE 4. 
 
 List of exports of domestic growth. 
 
 Cotton. 
 
 Tobacco. 
 
 Rice. 
 
 Indian corn—Exclusively Southern. 
 Flour, wheat, &c. 
 
 Lumber,