Election to Congress from Boston.--State of Parties.--Meeting of the
Eighteenth Congress.--Mr. Webster's Resolution and Speech in favor
of the Greeks.--Argument in the Supreme Court in the Case of Gibbons
and Ogden.--Circumstances under which it was made.--Speech on the
Tariff Law of 1824.--A complete Revision of the Law for the
Punishment of Crimes against the United States reported by Mr.
Webster, and enacted.--The Election of Mr. Adams as President of the
United States.--Meeting of the Nineteenth Congress, and State of
Parties.--Congress of Panama, and Mr. Webster's Speech on that
Subject.--Election as a Senator of the United States.--Revision of
the Tariff Law by the Twentieth Congress.--Embarrassments of the
Question.--Mr. Webster's Course and Speech on this Subject.
In the autumn of 1822, Mr. Webster consented to be a candidate for
Congress for the city (then town) of Boston, and was chosen by a very
large majority over his opponent, Mr. Jesse Putnam. The former party
distinctions, as has been already observed, had nearly lost their
significance in Massachusetts, as in some other parts of the country.
As a necessary, or at least a natural consequence of this state of
things, four candidates had already been brought forward for the
Presidential election of November, 1824; namely, Mr. John Quincy Adams
of Massachusetts, Mr. Clay of Kentucky, General Jackson of Tennessee,
and Mr. Crawford of Georgia. Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina and Mr.
Lowndes of the same State had also both been nominated by their
friends at an early period of the canvass; but the latter was soon
removed by death, and Mr. Calhoun withdrew his pretensions in favor of
General Jackson. All the candidates named had either originally belonged
to the old Democratic party (or Republican party as it was then more
usually called), or had for many years attached themselves to it; but
no one of them was supported on that ground. Mr. Crawford alone had
attempted to avail himself of the ancient party machinery, so far as to
accept a nomination by a Congressional caucus of his friends. They
formed, however, but a minority of the Republican members of Congress,
and the signal failure of the nomination contributed to the final
abandonment of that mode of procedure. No Presidential candidate has
since been nominated by a Congressional caucus. In the canvass of
1824, it was the main effort of the friends of all the candidates, by
holding out the prospect of a liberal basis of administration, to draw
to themselves as many as possible of the old Federal party. In
Massachusetts, and generally in New England, the fusion of parties was
complete, and Mr. Adams received their united support. In the Middle
States the union was less perfect, and the votes of a large proportion
of the old Federal party were given to General Jackson and Mr.
Crawford.
The Congressional elections in Massachusetts are held a year in advance.
It was not till December, 1823, that Mr. Webster took his seat as a
member of the Eighteenth Congress. It has rarely happened to an
individual, by engaging in public life, to make an equal sacrifice of
personal interest. Born to an inheritance of poverty, struggling through
youth and early manhood against all the difficulties of straitened means
and a narrow sphere, he had risen above them all, and was now in an
advantageous position, at the height of his reputation, receiving as
great a professional income as any lawyer in the United States, and
rapidly laying the foundation of an ample independence. All this was to
be put at risk for the hazardous uncertainties, and the scarcely less
hazardous certainties, of public life. It was not till after repeated
refusals of a nomination to both houses of Congress, that Mr. Webster
was at last called upon, in a manner which seemed to him imperative, to
make the great sacrifice. In fact, it may truly be said, that, to an
individual of his commanding talent and familiarity with political
affairs, and consequent ability to take a lead in the public business,
the question whether he shall do so is hardly submitted to his option.
It is one of the great privileges of second-rate men, that they are
permitted in some degree to follow the bent of their inclinations. It
was the main inducement of Mr. Webster in returning to political life,
that the cessation of the coarse conflicts of party warfare seemed to
hold out some hope that statesmanship of a higher order, an impartial
study of the great interests of the country, and a policy aiming to
promote the development of its vast natural resources, might be called
into action.
Although the domestic politics of the United States were in a condition
of repose, the politics of Europe at this time were disturbed and
anxious. Revolutions had within a few years broken out in Naples,
Piedmont, and Spain; while in Greece a highly interesting struggle was
in progress, between the Christian population of that country and the
government of their Ottoman oppressors. At an early period of this
contest, it had attracted much notice in the United States. A
correspondence had been opened between an accredited committee of the
Grecian patriots sitting at Paris, with the celebrated Koray at their
head, and friends of the cause of Greece in this country;[11] and a
formal appeal had been made to the people of the United States, by the
Messenian Senate of Kalamata, the first revolutionary congress which
assembled in Greece. President Monroe, both in his annual message of
December, 1822, and in that of 1823, had expressed respect and sympathy
for their cause. The attention of Congress being thus called to the
subject, Mr. Webster thought it a favorable opportunity to speak an
emphatic word, from a quarter whence it would be respected, in favor of
those principles of rational liberty and enlightened progress which were
seeking to extend themselves in Europe. As the great strength of the
Grecian patriots was to be derived, not from the aid of the governments
of Christendom, but from the public opinion and the sympathy of the
civilized world, he felt that they had a peculiar right to expect some
demonstration of friendly feeling from the only powerful republican
state. He was also evidently willing to embrace the opportunity of
entering an American protest against the doctrines which had been
promulgated in the manifestoes of the recent congresses of the European
sovereigns.
Till the administration of Mr. Jefferson, it had been the custom of
the two houses to return answers to the annual messages of the
President. These answers furnished Congress with the means of
responding to the executive suggestions. As much time was often
consumed in debating these answers, (a consumption of time not
directly leading to any legislative result,) and as differences in
opinion between Congress and the executive, if they existed, were thus
prematurely developed, it was thought a matter of convenience, when Mr.
Jefferson came into power, to depart from the usage. But though
attended with evils, it had its advantages. The opportunity of general
political debate, under a government like ours, if not furnished,
will be taken. The constituencies look to their representatives to
discuss public questions. It will perhaps be found, on comparing
the proceedings of Congress at the present day with what they were
fifty years ago, that, although the general debate on the answer to
the President's message has been retrenched, there is in the course
of the session quite as much discussion of topics incidentally
brought in, and often to the serious obstruction of the public
business, at the advanced stages of the session.
Whatever may be thought of this as a general principle, President
Monroe, as we have seen, having in two successive annual messages called
the attention of Congress to this subject, Mr. Webster, by way of
response to these allusions, at an early period of the session offered
the following resolution in the House of Representatives:--
"_Resolved_, That provision ought to be made by law for defraying
the expense incident to the appointment of an agent or commissioner
to Greece, whenever the President shall deem it expedient to make
such appointment."
His speech in support of this resolution was delivered on the 19th of
January, 1824, in the presence of an immense audience, brought together
by the interesting nature of the subject and by the fame of the speaker,
now returned, after six years' absence, to the field where he had
gathered early laurels, and to which he had now come back with greatly
augmented reputation. The public expectation was highly excited; and it
is but little to say, that it was entirely fulfilled. The speech was
conceived and executed with rare felicity; and was as remarkable for
what it did not, as for what it did contain. To a subject on which it
was almost impossible to avoid a certain strain of classical sentiment,
Mr. Webster brought a chastened taste and a severe logic. He indulged in
no _ad captandum_ reference to the topics which lay most obviously in
his way. A single allusion to Greece, as the mistress of the world in
letters and arts, found an appropriate place in the exordium. But he
neither rhapsodized about the ancients, nor denounced the Turks, nor
overflowed with Americanism. He treated, in a statesmanlike manner, what
he justly called "the great political question of the age," the question
"between absolute and regulated governments," and the duty of the United
States on fitting occasions to let their voice be heard on this
question. He concisely reviewed the doctrines of the Continental
sovereigns, as set forth in what has been called "the Holy Alliance,"
and in the manifestoes of several successive congresses. He pointed out
the inconsistency of these principles with those of self-government and
national independence, and the duty of the United States to declare
their sentiments in support of the latter. He showed that such a
declaration was inconsistent with no principle of public law, and
forbidden by no prudential consideration. He briefly sketched the
history of the Greek revolution; and having shown that his proposal was
a pacific measure, both as regards the Turkish government and the
European allies, he took leave of the subject with a few manly words of
sympathy for the Greeks.
He was supported by several leading members of the House,--by Mr. Clay,
Mr. Stevenson of Virginia, afterwards Speaker of the House and Minister
to England, and by General Houston of Tennessee; but the subject lay too
far beyond the ordinary range of legislation; it gained no strength from
the calculations of any of the Presidential candidates; it enlisted none
of the great local interests of the country; and it was not of a nature
to be pushed against opposition or indifference. It was probably with
little or no expectation of carrying it, that the resolution was moved
by Mr. Webster. His object was gained in the opportunity of expressing
himself upon the great political question of the day. His words of
encouragement were soon read in every capital and at every court of
Europe, and in every Continental language; they were received with
grateful emotion in Greece. At home the speech fully sustained Mr.
Webster's reputation, not merely for parliamentary talent, but for an
acquaintance with general politics, which few public men in the United
States give themselves the trouble to acquire,--even among those who are
selected to represent the country abroad. In a letter from Mr. Jeremiah
Mason, a person whose judgment on a matter of this kind was entitled to
as much respect as that of any man in the community, this speech is
pronounced "the best sample of parliamentary eloquence and statesmanlike
reasoning which our country can show."
It was during this session, that Mr. Webster made his great argument
in the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Gibbons and
Ogden, to which we have already alluded. It must increase the
admiration with which this great constitutional effort is read, to
know that the case came on in court a week or ten days earlier than Mr.
Webster expected, and that it was late in the afternoon, after a
severe debate in the House of Representatives on some of the details
of the tariff bill, that he received the intimation that he must be
ready to go into court and argue the cause the next morning. At this
time his brief was not drawn out; and the statement of the argument,
the selecting of the authorities, and the final digest of his
materials, whether of reasoning or fact, were to be the work of the
few intervening hours. It is superfluous to say that there was no long
space for rest or sleep; though it seems hardly credible that the only
specific premeditation of such an argument before such a tribunal
should have been in the stolen watches of one night.
In the course of this session Mr. Webster, besides taking a leading
part in the discussion of the details of the tariff law of 1824, made
a carefully prepared speech, in reply to Mr. Clay, on some of the
principles upon which he had supported it. His exposition of the
popular errors on the subject of the balance of trade may be referred
to as a very happy specimen of philosophical reasoning applied to
commercial questions. Mr. Webster did not contest the constitutional
right of Congress to lay duties for the protection of manufactures.
He opposed the bill on grounds of expediency, drawn from the condition
of the country at the time, and from the unfriendly bearing of some of
its provisions on the navigating interests. He was the representative
of the principal commercial city of New England. The great majority of
his constituents were opposed to the bill; one member only from
Massachusetts voted in its favor. The last sentence of the speech
shows the general view which he took of the provisions of the act as a
whole: "There are some parts of this bill which I highly approve; there
are others in which I should acquiesce; but those to which I have now
stated my objections appear to me so destitute of all justice, so
burdensome and so dangerous to that interest which has steadily
enriched, gallantly defended, and proudly distinguished us, that nothing
can prevail upon me to give it my support." This sentence sufficiently
shows with how little justice it was asserted, in 1828, that Mr.
Webster had, in 1824, declared an uncompromising hostility to all
legislative provision for the encouragement and protection of
manufactures.
No subject of great popular interest came up for debate in the second
session of the Eighteenth Congress, but the attention of Mr. Webster, as
chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was assiduously devoted to a
subject of great practical importance; brought forward entirely without
ostentation or display, but inferior in interest to scarce any act of
legislation since the first organization of the government. We refer to
the act of the 3d of March, 1825, "more effectually to provide for the
punishment of certain crimes against the United States, and for other
purposes." This chapter in the legislation of the United States had been
comparatively overlooked. The original act of the 30th of April, 1790,
"for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States,"
deserves, in common with much of the legislation of the First Congress,
the praise of great sagacity and foresight in anticipating the wants and
the operation of the new system of government. Still, however, there was
a class of cases, arising out of the complex nature of our system, and
the twofold jurisdiction existing in the United States, which, being
entirely novel in the history of other governments, was scarcely to be
provided for in advance. The analysis of the English constitution here
failed the able men upon whom it devolved to put the new system of
government in operation. It is to be wondered at, not that some things
were overlooked, but that so many were provided for.
Of the cases left thus unprovided for, more perhaps were to be found in
the judiciary department than in any other. Many crimes committed on
shipboard, beyond the jurisdiction of any State, or in places within the
Union excepted from State jurisdiction, were unprovided for. Statutes
had been enacted from time to time to supply these deficiencies; but the
subject does not appear at any time to have attracted the special
attention of any one whose professional knowledge and weight of
character qualified him to propose a remedy. It was at length taken up
by Mr. Webster, in the second session of the Eighteenth Congress. It
fell appropriately within the sphere of the Committee on the Judiciary,
of which he was chairman; and his own extensive practice in the courts
both of the United States and of the separate States had made him well
acquainted with the defects of the existing laws. He accordingly drew
up what finally passed the two houses, as the sixty-fifth chapter of the
laws of the second session of the Eighteenth Congress, and procured the
assent of the Committee on the Judiciary to report it to the House. Some
amendments of no great moment were made to it on its passage, partly on
the motion of Mr. Webster himself; and partly on the suggestion of other
members of the House. As it finally passed, in twenty-six sections, it
covered all the cases which had occurred in the thirty-five years which
had elapsed since the law of 1790 was enacted; and it amounted to a
brief, but comprehensive, code of the criminal jurisprudence of the
United States, as distinct from that of the separate States.
It was Mr. Webster's object in this statute, not to enact theoretical
reforms, but to remedy practical evils; to make provision for crimes
which, for want of jurisdiction, had hitherto gone unpunished. It was
objected to the bill, on its passage through the House, that it created
a considerable number of capital offences. But these were already, in
every case, capital offences either at common law or by the criminal law
of the States, whenever the State tribunals were competent to take
cognizance of them. It was the effect of Mr. Webster's act, not to
create new offences, but to bring within the reach of a proper tribunal
crimes recognized as such by all the codes of law, but which had
hitherto escaped with impunity between separate jurisdictions. The bill
was received with great favor by the House. Mr. Buchanan said that he
highly approved its general features. "It was a disgrace," he added, "to
our system of laws, that no provision had ever been made for the
punishment of the crimes which it embraced, when committed in places
within the jurisdiction of the United States." An eloquent argument was
made by Mr. Livingston of Louisiana in favor of substituting lower
penalties for capital punishment, but he failed to satisfy the House of
the expediency of so great a revolution in our criminal jurisprudence.
Some slight modifications of the bill were conceded to the sensitiveness
of those who apprehended encroachment on State jurisdiction; but it
passed substantially in the form in which it was reported by Mr.
Webster. Twenty-seven years' experience have shown it to be one of the
most valuable laws in the statute-book.
At this session of Congress the election of a President of the United
States devolved upon the House of Representatives, in default of a
popular choice. The votes of the electoral colleges were ninety-nine for
General Jackson, eighty-four for Mr. Adams, forty-one for Mr. Crawford,
and thirty-seven for Mr. Clay. This was the second time since the
adoption of the Constitution, in 1789, that such an event had occurred.
The other case was in 1801, and under the Constitution in its original
form, which required the electoral colleges to vote for two persons,
without designating which of the two was to be President, and which
Vice-President, the choice between the two to be decided by plurality.
The Republican candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, having
received each an equal number of votes, it devolved upon the House of
Representatives to designate one of them as President. The Constitution
was immediately amended so as to require the candidates for the two
offices to be designated as such in the electoral colleges; so that
precisely such a case as that of 1801 can never recur. In 1824, however,
no person having received a majority of all the votes, it became
necessary for the House to choose a President from among the three
candidates having the highest number. On these occasions the House
votes, not _per capita_, but by States, the delegation of each State
choosing its teller. Mr. Webster was appointed teller for the
Massachusetts delegation. The number of States was twenty-four, and the
tellers were seated in parties of twelve at two tables. Mr. Webster was
appointed by the tellers at one of the tables to announce the result of
the balloting; Mr. Randolph was appointed to the same service at the
other table. The result was declared to be, for Mr. Adams thirteen
votes, for General Jackson seven, and for Mr. Crawford four. The votes
of most of the States were matters of confident calculation beforehand;
those of Maryland and New York were in some degree doubtful. The former
was supposed to depend upon the decision of Mr. Warfield; the latter on
that of General Van Rensselaer. Mr. Webster possessed the political
confidence of both these gentlemen; and is believed to have exerted a
decisive influence in leading them to vote for Mr. Adams.
Mr. Webster had been elected to the Nineteenth Congress in the
autumn of 1824, by a vote of four thousand nine hundred and ninety out
of five thousand votes cast, the nearest approach to unanimity in a
Congressional election, perhaps, that ever took place. The session
which began in December, 1825, was of course the first session under
Mr. Adams's administration. The brief armistice in party warfare
which existed under Mr. Monroe was over. The friends of General Jackson
_en masse_, most of the friends of Mr. Crawford, and a portion of those
of Mr. Clay, joined in a violent opposition to the new administration.
It would be impossible in this place to unfold the griefs, the
interests, the projects, the jealousies, and the mutual struggles, of
the leaders and the factions, who, with no community of political
principle, entered into this warfare. The absence of any well-defined
division of parties, like that which had formerly existed, gave wide
scope to personal intrigue and sectional preference. Although,
estimated in reference to individual suffrages, Mr. Adams had
received a popular majority; and although he was selected from the
three highest candidates by an absolute majority of the States
voting in the House of Representatives, and by a very large plurality
over both his competitors, yet, as General Jackson had received a
small plurality of votes in the electoral colleges (but a little
more, however, than a third part of the entire electoral vote), he
stood before the masses as a candidate wrongfully deprived of the place
to which he was designated by the popular choice. Great sensibility
was evinced at this defeat of the "Will of the People"; and none
seemed to feel the wrong more than a portion of the friends of that
one of the three candidates who had received the smallest vote, but
whom there had been, nevertheless, a confident hope of electing in the
House. The prejudice against Mr. Adams arising from this source
derived strength from the widely circulated calumny of a corrupt
understanding between him and Mr. Clay. The bare suspicion of an
arrangement between party leaders to help each other into office,
however groundless in point of fact, and however disproved by all the
testimony which could be brought to bear on a negative proposition, was
sufficient seriously to affect the popularity of both parties.
Great talent, the amplest civil experience, and the purest patriotism
are an inadequate basis of strength for an administration. If the
capricious and ill-defined element of what is called popularity is
wanting, all else is of little avail. Mr. Adams's administration was
conducted with the highest ability; it was incorruptible; it was
frugal; it was tolerant of opponents to its own injury. With the
exception of half a dozen editors of newspapers warmly opposed to the
administration, from whom the trifling privilege of printing the
laws was withdrawn, no one was removed from office for political
opinion. But the administration was unpopular, and was doomed from its
formation. It was supported by very able men in both houses of
Congress, and of these Mr. Webster was by all acknowledgment the chief.
But it failed to command the confidence of a numerical majority of the
people.
The leading measure of the first session of the Nineteenth Congress was
the Congress of Panama. Mr. Adams had announced in his message at the
commencement of the session, that an invitation to the congress had been
accepted, and that "ministers on the part of the United States would be
commissioned to attend its deliberations." In announcing this purpose,
it is probable that the President regarded himself as within the
ordinary limits of executive discretion. The power of nominating
ambassadors and other public ministers is given by the Constitution to
the President alone. No laws for the establishment of any particular
missions have ever been passed, nor has any control been exercised over
them by Congress beyond determining the salaries of the ministers of
different ranks, and making the annual appropriations for their payment.
The executive is manifestly the sole depositary of the knowledge of the
foreign relations of the country which is necessary to determine what
missions ought to be established. Notwithstanding these obvious
considerations and constitutional principles, the novel and anomalous
character of the proposed Congress afforded a temptation to the
opposition too strong to be resisted. The President's announcement
formed the great point of attack during the first session of the new
Congress. The confirmation of the ministers was vigorously resisted in
the Senate, and the resolution declaring the expediency of making the
requisite appropriations as strenuously opposed in the House. The
mischiefs likely to result from the public discussion of the measure
showed the wisdom of those constitutional provisions on which the
President had acted. The opposition, in denying that the executive
control of foreign relations is exclusive, showed at any rate that it
ought to be, at least as far as it is made so by the Constitution. After
a lapse of twenty-six years, we can scarcely believe that any doubt
should have existed, on the part of men of judgment and discretion, that
sound policy required that the United States should be present at such a
general conference of the American powers; if for no other reason, to
observe their movements. But all the motives for such a course could not
be avowed, and of those that could, a part of the force was weakened by
the avowal. The influence of the United States was impaired in order
that the administration might be distressed.
The subject was discussed with great ability in both houses. The greater
portion of the senatorial debate was with closed doors. Mr. Webster's
speech in the House is far the ablest of those published. It raised the
question from the wretched level of party politics to the elevation of
real statesmanship. It discussed the constitutional question with a
clearness and power which make us wonder that it was ever raised; and it
unfolded the true nature of the proposed congress, as viewed in the
light of the public law. A very important topic of the speech was an
explanation of the declaration of President Monroe, in his annual
message of 1823, against the interposition of the governments of Europe
for the purpose of enabling Spain to resubjugate her former colonial
possessions on this continent. Mr. Webster pointed out the circumstances
which warranted at the time the opinion that such interposition might be
attempted; and he stated the important fact, not before known, that the
purpose on the part of the United States to resist it was deliberately
and unanimously formed by Mr. Monroe's cabinet, consisting at that time
of Messrs. Adams, Crawford, Calhoun, Southard, and Wirt. The principles
assumed in the debate on the Panama mission by the friends of Messrs.
Crawford and Calhoun were greatly at variance with the spirit and
tendency of the declaration, as they were with what has more recently
been regarded as the true Democratic doctrine in reference to the
relations of the United States to her sister republics on this
continent.
The speech on the Panama question was the most considerable effort made
by Mr. Webster in the Nineteenth Congress. In the interval of the two
sessions, in November, 1826, he was reelected with but a show of
opposition. The eulogy upon Adams and Jefferson, of which we have
already spoken, was delivered in the month of August of this year. In
the month of June, 1827, Mr. Webster was elected to the Senate of the
United States by a large majority of the votes of the two houses of the
legislature of Massachusetts, the Hon. Mr. Mills of Northampton, who had
filled that station with great ability, having declined being a
candidate for reelection in consequence of ill health.
The principal measure which occupied the attention of the two houses
during the first session of the Twentieth Congress was the revision of
the tariff. This measure had its origin in the distressed condition of
the woollen interest, which found itself deprived (partly by the effect
of the repeal of the duty on wool imported into Great Britain) of that
measure of protection which the tariff law of 1824 was designed to
afford. An unsuccessful attempt had been made at the last session of
Congress, to pass a law exclusively for the relief of the woollen
manufacturers; but no law having in view the protection of any one great
interest is likely to be enacted by Congress, however called for by the
particular circumstances of the case. At the present session an entire
revision of the tariff was attempted. Political considerations
unfortunately could not be excluded from the arrangements of the bill. A
majority of the two houses was in favor of protection; but in a country
so extensive as the United States, and embracing such a variety of
interests, there were different views among the friends of the policy as
to the articles to be protected and the amount of protection. This
diversity of opinions and supposed diversity of interests enabled those
wholly opposed to the principle and policy of protection, by uniting
their votes on questions of detail with members who represented local
interests, to render the bill objectionable in many parts to several of
its friends, and to reduce them to the alternative of either voting
against it, or tolerating more or less which they deemed inexpedient,
and even highly injurious. Hence it received the name of the "Bill of
Abominations."
The political motives alluded to caused the bill to be made as
acceptable as possible to Pennsylvania and the other Middle States, and
as unfavorable as possible to the leading interests of New England. The
depression of the woollen manufactures had originally caused the
revision of the tariff at this session. A heavy duty on the raw material
was one of the features of the bill. But this was represented as due to
the agricultural interest. The East, although it had now become
eminently a manufacturing region, was still the seat of an active
commerce, and largely concerned in the fisheries. The duty on molasses,
a great article of consumption with the mariners and fishermen of the
East, both in its natural form and that of cheap spirits, was doubled;
but this, it was said, was required for the benefit of the grain-growers
of the Middle States. Other provisions of this kind were introduced into
the bill, in all cases with the assistance of the votes of its
opponents, given in such a way as to render the bill as unpalatable as
possible to the Northeastern manufacturers. Mr. Webster addressed the
Senate, while the bill was before that body, exposing the objectionable
features to which we have alluded. Believing, however, that the great
article of woollens required the protection given it by the bill, and
regarding the general system of protection as the established policy of
the country and of the government, and feeling that the capital which
had been invited into manufactures by former acts of legislation was now
entitled to be sustained against the glut of foreign markets, fraudulent
invoices, and the competition of foreign labor working at starvation
wages, he gave his vote for the bill, and has ever since supported the
policy of moderate protection. He has been accused of inconsistency in
this respect; and by none more earnestly than by the friends of Mr.
Calhoun, who was one of those influential statesmen of the South by
whom, in the Fourteenth Congress, the foundation of a protective tariff
was laid on the corner-stone of the square-yard duty on domestic cotton
fabrics. But he has been sustained by the great majority of his
constituents and of the people of the Northern, Middle, and Northwestern
States; and should the prospects of success be fulfilled with which
manufactures have been attempted at the South, there is little doubt
that she will at length perceive that her own interest would be promoted
by upholding the same policy.
When the speech of Mr. Webster of 1824, in which he assigned his reasons
for voting against the tariff law of that year, is carefully compared
with his speech of 1828, just referred to, it will be found that there
is no other diversity than that which was induced by the change in the
state of the country itself in reference to its manufacturing interests,
and by the course pursued in reference to the details of the bill by
those opposed to protection _in toto_. It is the best proof of this,
that, in the former edition of Mr. Webster's works, the two speeches
were, for more easy comparison, placed side by side.
FOOTNOTES
[11] See North American Review, Vol. XVII. p. 414.