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ting heartily sick of them, and in England, particularly, would willingly get rid of them if they could. We have been assured, by the declaration of a minister of the crown, from his place in Parliament, "that there is a growing conviction, among all men of sense and reflection in that country, that the true policy of all nations is to be found in unrestricted industry." Sir, in England they are now retracing their steps, and endeavoring to relieve themselves of the system as fast as they can. Within a few years past, upwards of three hundred statutes, imposing restrictions in that country, have been repealed.

Sir, the experience of France is equally decisive. Bonaparte's effort to introduce cotton and sugar has cost that country millions; and, but the other day, a foolish attempt to protect the iron mines spread devastation through half of France, and nearly ruined the wine-trade, on which one fifth of her citizens depend for subsistence. As to Spain, unhappy Spain, fenced round with restrictions, her experience one would suppose would convince us, if any thing could, that the protecting system in politics, like bigotry in religion, is utterly at war with sound principles and a liberal and enlightened policy.

Sir, I say, in the words of the philosophical statesman of England, "leave a generous nation free to seek their own road to perfection." Thank God, the night is passing away, and we have lived to see the dawn of a glorious day. The cause of free trade must and will prosper, and finally triumph. The political economist is abroad; light has come into the world; and, in this instance, at least, men will not "prefer darkness rather than light."

Sir, let it not be said, in after times, that the statesmen of America were behind the age in which they lived; that they initiated this young and vigorous country into the enervating and corrupting practices of European nations; and that, at the moment when the whole world were looking to us for an example, we arrayed ourselves in the cast-off follies and exploded errors of the Old World, and, by the introduction of a vile system of artificial stimulants and political gambling, impaired the healthful vigor of the body politic, and brought on decrepitude and premature dissolution.

IX. SMUGGLING CAUSED BY HIGH DUTIES.

IB.

THE gentleman complains of frauds upon the revenue, and fraudulent invoices, and smuggling; but it is his system which has produced these evils. Smuggling, from the very nature of

SMUGGLING CAUSED BY HIGH DUTIES.

165

things, must exist, when the duties exceed the risk and expense of the illicit intercourse. For a season, sir, the high moral sense of a young and uncorrupted people may oppose some obstacle to these practices. No government on earth can prevent them. Napoleon, in the plenitude of his power, was unable to maintain his continental system. His prohibitions and restrictions were constantly violated with impunity. Yes, sir, he who sported with kingdoms, who constructed thrones upon the ruins of empires, and appointed the officers of his household to fill them; whose armies were his custom-house officers, who drew his cordons around the nations which he conquered, was utterly unable to put down the great principles of free trade. It has been well said, sir, "that when all Europe was obedient to his nod, the smuggler disputed his commands, set at naught his edicts, laughed to scorn his power, and overthrew his policy."

How is it with England, that sea-girt isle, surrounded with a thousand ships, and thirty thousand guardians of her revenue? Sir, do we not all know that smuggling is there a profitable trade, and that the revenue laws of England are constantly violated with impunity?

And how is it in Spain? A modern traveler asserts that there are a hundred thousand persons in that unhappy country who live by smuggling, and that there are thirty thousand others paid by the government to detect their practice, but who are in a league with the offenders; and, as to the condition of things in our own country, the gentleman has told us a tale this day, which, if he be not himself deceived, shows what fearful progress these practices have already made.

The time was when smuggling was absolutely unknown_any where in this country, as it still is in the Southern States. It is your protecting system which has introduced it. It is the natural consequence of high duties, The evil was foretold; and, as we predicted, it has come upon us. The protecting system has already, in the minds of many, removed the odium which formerly rested on this practice. It was but the last year that a distinguished senator rose up in his place here and held this language: "Your tariff policy compels respectable men to violate your law; you force them to disregard its injunctions, in order to elude its oppressions." It was his perfect conviction that there was not a virtuous man throughout the Union who would now think it criminal to smuggle into the country every article consumed in it. And why? Because you force them to it in selfdefense.

Sir, when these sentiments shall become prevalent, what think

you will become of that system? How long will it last, after the payment of duties shall come to be considered as a badge of servitude?

IB.

X.-ON INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

House of Representatives, Jan., 1819.

They did not supexist on as great a What then was con

On this subject of national power, what can be more important than a perfect unity in every part, in feelings and sentiments? And what can tend more powerfully to produce it, than overcoming the effects of distance? No country, enjoying freedom, ever occupied any thing like as great an extent of country as this republic. One hundred years ago, the most profound philosophers did not believe it to be even possible. pose it possible that a pure republic could scale, even, as the island of Great Britain. sidered as chimerical, we have now the felicity to enjoy; and, what is most remarkable, such is the happy mould of our government, so well are the state and general powers blended, that much of our political happiness draws its origin from the extent of our republic. It has exempted us from most of the causes which distracted the small republics of antiquity.

Let it not, however, be forgotten, let it be forever kept in mind, that it exposes us to the greatest of all calamities,― next to the loss of liberty, and even to that in its consequences, -disunion. We are great, and rapidly, I was about to say fearfully, growing. This is our pride and our danger, our weakness and our strength. Little does he deserve to be intrusted with the liberties of this people, who does not raise his mind to these truths. We are under the most imperious obligation to counteract every tendency to disunion.

The strongest of all cem ́ents is, undoubtedly, the wisdom, justice, and, above all, the moderation of this house; yet the great subject on which we are now deliberating, in this respect, deserves the most serious consideration. Whatever impedes the intercourse of the extremes with this, the center of the republic, weakens the Union. The more enlarged the sphere of commercial circulation, the more extended that of social intercourse - the more strongly we are bound together, the more inseparable are our destinies.

Those who understand the human heart best know how power fully distance tends to break the sympathies of our nature. Nothing, not even dissimilarity of language, tends more to estrange man from man. Let us, then, bind the republic together

EFFECT OF OUR NAVAL VICTORIES.

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with a perfect system of roads and canals! Let us conquer space! It is thus the most distant part of the republic will be brought within a few days' travel of the center; it is thus that a citizen of the West will read the news of Boston still moist from the press.

J. C. CALHOUN.

XI. EFFECT OF OUR NAVAL VICTORIES.

THIS country is left alone to support the rights of neutrals. Perilous is the condition, and arduous the task. We are not intimidated. We stand opposed to British usurpation, and by our spirit and efforts have done all in our power to save the last vestiges of neutral rights. Yes, our embargoes, non-intercourse, non-importation, and, finally, war, are all manly exertions to preserve the rights of this and other nations from the deadly grasp of British maritime policy.

But, say our opponents, these efforts are lost, and our condition hopeless. If so, it only remains for us to assume the garb of our condition. We must submit, humbly submit, crave pardon, and hug our chains. It is not wise to provoke where we can not resist.

But first let us be well assured of the hopelessness of our state before we sink into submission. On what do our opponents rest their despondent and slavish belief? On the recent events in Europe? I admit they are great, and well calculated to impose on the imagination. Our enemy never presented a more imposing exterior. His fortune is at the flood. But I am admonished by universal experience that such prosperity is the most precarious of human conditions. From the flood the tide dates its ebb. From the meridian the sun commences his decline. Depend upon it, there is more of sound philosophy than of fiction in the fickleness which poets attribute to fortune. Prosperity has its weakness, adversity its strength. In many respects, our enemy has lost by those very changes which seem so very much in his favor. He can no more claim to be struggling for existence; no more to be fighting the battles of the world in defence of the liberties of mankind. The magic cry of "French influence" is lost. In this very hall, we are not strangers to that sound, Here, even here, the cry of French influence," that baseless fiction, that phantom of faction now banished, often resounded. I rejoice that the spell is broken by which it was attempted to bind the spirit of this youthful nation. The minority can no longer act under cover, but must come out and defend their opposition on its own intrinsic merits.

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Our example can scarcely fail to produce its effects on other nations interested in the main ́tenance of maritime rights. But if, unfortunately, we should be left alone to maintain the contest, and if — which may Heaven forbid !—necessity should compel us to yield for the present, yet our generous efforts will not have been lost. A mode of thinking and a tone of sentiment have gone abroad which must stimulate to future and more successful struggles. What could not be done with eight millions of people will be done with twenty. The great cause will never be yielded; no, never, never! I hear the future audibly announced in the past, in the splendid victories over the Guerriére,* Java, and Macedonian. We and all nations, by these victories, are taught a lesson never to be forgotten. Opinion is power. The charm of British naval invincibility is gone.

IB.

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SIR, proud as I am of the title of citizen of Virginia, grateful as I am for the unmerited favor which that honored mother has shown me, I yet feel, with the Father of the Country, that "the just pride of patriotism is exalted" by the more comprehensive title of citizen of the United States, that title which gives me a share in the common inheritance of glory which has descended to us from our Revolutionary sages, patriots, and heroes; that title which enables me to claim the names of the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, and the Sumpters, of South Carolina, of the Hancocks, the Adamses, and the Otises, of Massachusetts, and all the other proud names which have illustrated the annals of each and all of these States, as "copatriot with my own."

In reviewing, Mr. President, the fundamental tenets of that new school of constitutional law, which has sprung up within the last four or five eventful years of our political history, I have endeavored to show that they have no foundation whatever in any just view of the constitution, - that they are directly at war with the cotemporary understanding and expositions of its founders, and that they derive no countenance whatever from the principles of that genuine republican school, which reëstablished the constitution in its purity, after the temporary perversions to which it had been subjected.

These modern doctrines, I do firmly believe, are, in their tendency; utterly subversive of that happy system of government,

* Pronounced Gerryair.

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