Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)

"Nays. – Messrs. Bibb, Black, Buckner, Calhoun, Clay, Dudley, Grundy, Hendricks, Hill, King, Miller, Moore, Poindexter, Sprague, Rives, Troup, Tyler, White, Wright. – 19.

"The Senate then, at half-past four o'clock, adjourned.

"Friday, February 22

"Mr. Smith (of Md.) said, the motion to amend by the word 'uniform' was unnecessary. That was provided for by the constitution. 'All duties must be uniform.' An addition to the cost of goods of forty, fifty, or sixty per cent. would be uniform, but would not prevent fraud, nor the certainty of great inequality in the valuation in the several ports. The value of goods at New Orleans particularly, and at almost every other port, will be higher than at New-York. I have not said that such mode was unconstitutional, nor have I said that it was impracticable; few things are so. But I have said, and do now say, that the mode is open to fraud, and more so than the present. At present the merchant enters his goods, and swears to the truth of his invoice. One package in every five or ten is sent to the public warehouse, and there carefully examined by two appraisers on oath. If they find fraud, or suspect fraud, then all the goods belonging to such merchants are sent to the appraisers; and if frauds be discovered, the goods are forfeited. No American merchant has ever been convicted of such fraud. Foreigners have even been severely punished by loss of their property. The laws are good and sufficiently safe as they now stand on our statutes. I wish no stronger; we know the one, we are ignorant how the other will work. Such a mode of valuation is unknown to any nation except Spain, where the valuation is arbitrary; and the goods are valued agreeably to the amount of the bribe given. This is perfectly understood and practised. It is in the nature of such mode of valuation to be arbitrary. No rule can be established that will make such mode uniform throughout the Union, and some of the small ports will value low to bring business to their towns. A scene of connivance and injustice will take place that no law can prevent.

"The merchant will be put to great inconvenience by the mode proposed. All his goods must be sent to the public warehouses, and there opened piece by piece; by which process they will sustain essential injury. The goods will be detained from the owners for a week or a month, or still more, unless you have one or two hundred appraisers in New-York, and proportionately in other ports; thus increasing patronage; and with such a host, can we expect either uniformity or equality in the valuation? All will not be honest, and the Spanish mode will be adopted. One set of appraisers, who value low, will have a priority. In fact, if this mode should ever be adopted, it will cause great discontent, and must soon be changed. As all understand the cause to be to flatter the manufacturers with a plan which they think will be beneficial to them, but which, we all know, can never be realized, it is deception on its face, as is almost the whole of the bill now under our consideration.

"Remember, Mr. President, that the senators from Kentucky and South Carolina [Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun], have declared this bill (if it should become a law), to be permanent, and that no honorable man who shall vote for it can ever attempt a change; yet, sir, the pressure against it will be such at the next session that Congress will be compelled to revise it; and as the storm may then have passed over Congress, a new Congress, with better feelings, will be able to act with more deliberation, and may pass a law that will be generally approved. Nearly all agree that this bill is a bad bill. A similar opinion prevailed on the passage of the tariff of 1828, and yet it passed, and caused all our present danger and difficulties. All admit that the act of 1828, as it stands on our statutes, is constitutional. But the senator [Mr. Calhoun] has said that it is unconstitutional, because of the motive under which it passed; and he said that that motive was protection to the manufacturers. How, sir, I ask, are we to know the motives of men? I thought then, and think now, that the approaching election for President tended greatly to the enactments of the acts of 1824 and 1828; many of my friends thought so at the time. I have somewhere read of the minister of a king or emperor in Asia, who was anxious to be considered a man of truth, and always boasted of his veracity. He hypocritically prayed to God that he might always speak the truth. A genii appeared and told him that his prayer had been heard, touched him with his spear, and said, hereafter you will speak truth on all occasions. The next day he waited on his majesty and said, Sire, I intended to have assassinated you yesterday, but was prevented by the nod of the officer behind you, who is to kill you to-morrow. The result I will not mention. Now, Mr. President, if the same genii was to touch with his spear each of the senators who voted for the act of 1828, and an interrogator was appointed, he would ask, what induced you to give that vote? Why sir, I acted on sound principles. I believe it is the duty of every good government to promote the manufactures of the nation; all historians eulogize the kings who have done so, and censure those kings who have neglected them. I refer you to the history of Alfred. It is known that the staple of England was wool, which was sent to Flanders to be exchanged for cloths. The civil wars, by the invasions of that nation, kept them long dependent on the Flemings for the cloths they wore. At length a good king governed; and he invited Flemish manufacturers to England, and gave them great privileges. They taught the youth of England, the manufacture succeeded, and now England supplies all the world with woollen cloth. The interrogator asked another the same question. His answer might have been, that he thought the passing of the law would secure the votes of the manufacturers in favor of his friend who wanted to be the President. Another answer might have been, a large duty was imposed on an article which my constituents raised; and I voted for it, although I disliked all the residue of the bill. Sir, the motives, no doubt, were different that induced the voting for that bill, and were, as we all know, not confined to the protective system. Many voted on political grounds, as many will on this bill, and as they did on the enforcing bill. We cannot declare a bill unconstitutional, because of the motives that may govern the voters. It is idle to assign such a cause for the part that is now acting in South Carolina. I know, Mr. President, that no argument will have any effect on the passage of this bill. The high contracting parties have agreed. But I owed it to myself to make these remarks.

"Mr. Webster said, that he held the home valuation to be, to any extent, impracticable; and that it was unprecedented, and unknown in any legislation. Both the home and foreign valuation ought to be excluded as far as possible, and specific duties should be resorted to. This keeping out of view specific duties, and turning us back to the principle of a valuation was, in his view, the great vice of this bill. In England five out of six, or nine out of ten articles, pay specific duties, and the valuation is on the remnant. Among the articles which pay ad valorem duties in England are silk goods, which are imported either from India, whence they are brought to one port only; or from Europe, in which case there is a specific and an ad valorem duty; and the officer has the option to take either the one or the other. He suggested that the Senate, before they adopted the ad valorem principle, should look to the effects on the importation of the country.

"He took a view of the iron trade, to show that evil would result to that branch from a substitution of the ad valorem for the specific system of duties. He admitted himself to be unable to comprehend the elements of a home valuation, and mentioned cases where it would be impossible to find an accurate standard of valuation of this character. The plan was impracticable and illusory.

"Mr. Clayton said, I would go for this bill only for the sake of concession. The senator from South Carolina can tell whether it is likely to be received as such, and to attain the object proposed; if not, I have a plain course to pursue; I am opposed to the bill. Unless I can obtain for the manufacturers the assurance that the principle of the bill will not be disturbed, and that it will be received in the light of a concession, I shall oppose it.

"Mr. Benton objected to the home valuation, as tending to a violation of the constitution of the United States, and cited the following clause: 'Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.' All uniformity of duties and imposts, he contended, would be destroyed by this amendment. No human judgment could fix the value of the same goods at the same rate, in all the various ports of the United States. If the same individual valued the goods in every port, and every cargo in every port, he would commit innumerable errors and mistakes in the valuation; and, according to the diversity of these errors and mistakes, would be the diversity in the amount of duties and imposts laid and collected in the different ports.

"Mr. B. objected to the home valuation, because it would be injurious and almost fatal to the southern ports. He confined his remarks to New Orleans. The standard of valuation would be fifteen or twenty per cent. higher in New Orleans than in New-York, and other northern ports. All importers will go to the northeastern cities, to evade high duties at New Orleans; and that great emporium of the West will be doomed to sink into a mere exporting city, while all the money which it pays for exports must be carried off and expended elsewhere for imports. Without an import trade, no city can flourish, or even furnish a good market for exports. It will be drained of its effective cash, and deprived of its legitimate gains, and must languish far in the rear of what it would be, if enriched with the profits of an import trade. As an exporter, it will buy; as an importer, it will sell. All buying, and no selling, must impoverish cities as well as individuals. New Orleans is now a great exporting city; she exports more domestic productions than any city in the Union; her imports have been increasing, for some years; and, with fair play, would soon become next to New-York, and furnish the whole valley of the Mississippi with its immense supplies of foreign goods; but, under the influence of a home valuation, it must lose a greater part of the import trade which it now possesses. In that loss, its wealth must decline; its capacity to purchase produce for exportation must decline; and as the western produce must go there, at all events, every western farmer will suffer a decline in the value of his own productions, in proportion to the decline of the ability of New Orleans to purchase it. It was as a western citizen that he pleaded the cause of New Orleans, and objected to this measure of home valuation, which was to have the most baneful effect upon her prosperity.

"Mr. B. further objected to the home valuation, on account of the great additional expense it would create; the amount of patronage it would confer; the rivalry it would beget between importing cities; and the injury it would occasion to merchants, from the detention and handling of their goods; and concluded with saying, that the home valuation was the most obnoxious feature ever introduced into the tariff acts; that it was itself equivalent to a separate tariff of ten per cent.; that it had always been resisted, and successfully resisted, by the anti-tariff interest, in the highest and most palmy days of the American system, and ought not now to be introduced when that system is admitted to be nodding to its fall; when its death is actually fixed to the 30th day of June, 1842, and when the restoration of harmonious feelings is proclaimed to be the whole object of this bill.

"Mr. B. said this was a strange principle to bring into a bill to reduce duties. It was an increase, in a new form – an indefinable form – and would be tax upon tax, as the whole cost of getting the goods ready for a market valuation here, would have to be included: original cost, freight, insurance, commissions, duties here. It was new protection, in a new form, and in an extraordinary form, and such as never could be carried before. It had often been attempted, as as a part of the American system, but never received countenance before.

"Mr. Calhoun rose and said:

"As the question is now about to be put on the amendment offered by the senator from Kentucky, it became necessary for him to determine whether he should vote for or against it. He must be permitted again to express his regret that the senator had thought proper to move it. His objection still remained strong against it; but, as it seemed to be admitted, on all hands, that the fate of the bill depended on the fate of the amendment, feeling, as he did, a solicitude to see the question terminated, he had made up his mind, not, however, without much hesitation, not to interpose his vote against the adoption of the amendment; but, in voting for it, he wished to be distinctly understood, he did it upon two conditions: first, that no valuation would be adopted that should come in conflict with the provision in the constitution which declares that duties, excises, and imposts shall be uniform; and, in the next place, that none would be adopted which would make the duties themselves a part of the element of a home valuation. He felt himself justified in concluding that none such would be adopted; as it had been declared by the supporters of the amendment, that no such regulation was contemplated; and, in fact, he could not imagine that any such could be contemplated, whatever interpretation might be attempted hereafter to be given to the expression of the home market. The first could scarcely be contemplated, as it would be in violation of the constitution itself; nor the latter, as it would, by necessary consequence, restore the very duties, which it was the object of this bill to reduce, and would involve the glaring absurdity of imposing duties on duties, taxes on taxes. He wished the reporters for the public press to notice particularly what he said, as he intended his declaration to be part of the proceedings.

"Believing, then, for the reasons which he had stated, that it was not contemplated that any regulation of the home valuation should come in conflict with the provisions of the constitution which he had cited, nor involve the absurdity of laying taxes upon taxes, he had made up his mind to vote in favor of the amendment.

"Mr. Smith said, any declaration of the views and motives, under which any individual senator might now vote, could have no influence, in 1842; they would be forgotten long before that time had arrived. The law must rest upon the interpretation of its words alone.

"Mr. Calhoun said he could not help that; he should endeavor to do his duty.

"Mr. Clayton said there was certainly no ambiguity whatever in the phraseology of the amendment. In advocating it, he had desired to deceive no man; he sincerely hoped no one would suffer himself to be deceived by it.

"Mr. Wilkins said, if it had been his intention to have voted against the amendment, he should have remained silent; but, after the explicit declaration of the honorable gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Calhoun] of the reason of his vote, and believing, himself, that the amendment would have a different construction from that given it by the gentleman, he [Mr. W.] would as expressly state, that he would vote on the question, with the impression that it would not hereafter be expounded by the declaration of any senator on this floor, but by the plain meaning of the words in the text.

"The amendment of Mr. Clay, fixing the principle of home valuation as a part of the bill, was then adopted, by the following vote:

"Yeas. – Messrs. Bell, Black, Bibb, Calhoun, Chambers, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Foot, Frelinghuysen, Hill, Holmes, Johnson, King, Knight, Miller, Moore, Naudain, Poindexter, Prentiss, Rives, Robbins, Sprague, Tomlinson, Tyler, Wilkins. – 26.

"Nays. – Messrs. Benton, Buckner, Dallas, Dickerson, Dudley, Forsyth, Grundy, Kane, Robinson, Seymour, Silsbee, Smith, Waggaman, Webster, White, Wright. – 16."

And thus a new principle of protection, never before engrafted on the American system, and to get at which the constitution had to be violated in the article of the uniformity of duties, was established! and established by the aid of those who declared all protection to be unconstitutional, and just cause for the secession of a State from the Union! and were then acting on that assumption.

CHAPTER LXXXIII.

REVENUE COLLECTION, OR FORCE BILL

The President in his message on the South Carolina proceedings had recommended to Congress the revival of some acts, heretofore in force, to enable him to execute the laws in that State; and the Senate's committee on the Judiciary had reported a bill accordingly early in the session. It was immediately assailed by several members as violent and unconstitutional, tending to civil war, and denounced as "the bloody bill" – "the force bill," &c. Mr. Wilkins of Pennsylvania, the reporter of the bill, vindicated it from this injurious character, showed that it was made out of previous laws, and contained nothing novel but the harmless contingent authority to remove the office of the customs from one building to another in the case of need. He said:

"The Judiciary Committee, in framing it, had been particularly anxious not to introduce any novel principle – any which could not be found on the statute book. The only novel one which the bill presented was one of a very simple nature. It was that which authorized the President, under the particular circumstances which were specified in the bill, to remove the custom-house. This was the only novel principle, and care was taken that in providing for such removal no authority was given to use force.

"The committee were apprehensive that some collision might take place after the 1st of February, either between the conflicting parties of the citizens of South Carolina, or between the officers of the federal government and the citizens. And to remove, as far as possible, all chance of such collision, provision was made that the collector might, at the moment of imminent danger, remove the custom-house to a place of security; or, to use a plain phrase, put it out of harm's way. He admitted the importance of this bill; but he viewed its importance as arising not out of the provisions of the bill itself, but out of the state of affairs in South Carolina, to which the bill had reference. In this view, it was of paramount importance.

"It had become necessary to legislate on this subject; whether it was necessary to pass the bill or not, he would not say; but legislation, in reference to South Carolina, previous to the 1st of February, had become necessary. Something must be done; and it behooves the government to adopt every measure of precaution, to prevent those awful consequences which all must foresee as necessarily resulting from the position which South Carolina has thought proper to assume.

"Here nullification is declaimed, on one hand, unless we abolish our revenue system. We consenting to do this, they remain quiet. But if we go a hair's breadth towards enforcing that system, they present secession. We have secession on one hand, and nullification on the other. The senator from South Carolina admitted the other day that no such thing as constitutional secession could exist. Then civil war, disunion, and anarchy must accompany secession. No one denies the right of revolution. That is a natural, indefeasible, inherent right – a right which we have exercised and held out, by our example, to the civilized world. Who denies it? Then we have revolution by force, not constitutional secession. That violence must come by secession is certain. Another law passed by the legislature of South Carolina, is entitled a bill to provide for the safety of the people of South Carolina. It advises them to put on their armor. It puts them in military array; and for what purpose but for the use of force? The provisions of these laws are infinitely worse than those of the feudal system, so far as they apply to the citizens of Carolina. But with its operations on their own citizens he had nothing to do. Resistance was just as inevitable as the arrival of the day on the calendar. In addition to these documents, what did rumor say – rumor, which often falsifies, but sometimes utters truth. If we judge by newspaper and other reports, more men were now ready to take up arms in Carolina, than there were during the revolutionary struggle. The whole State was at this moment in arms, and its citizens are ready to be embattled the moment any attempt was made to enforce the revenue laws. The city of Charleston wore the appearance of a military depot."

The Bill was opposed with a vehemence rarely witnessed, and every effort made to render it odious to the people, and even to extend the odium to the President, and to all persons instrumental in bringing it forward, or urging it through. Mr. Tyler of Virginia, was one of its warmest opposers, and in the course of an elaborate speech, said:

"In the course of the examination I have made into this subject, I have been led to analyze certain doctrines which have gone out to the world over the signature of the President. I know that my language may be seized on by those who are disposed to carp at my course and to misrepresent me. Since I have held a place on this floor, I have not courted the smiles of the Executive; but whenever he had done any act in violation of the constitutional rights of the citizen, or trenching on the rights of the Senate, I have been found in opposition to him. When he appointed corps of editors to office, I thought it was my duty to oppose his course. When he appointed a minister to a foreign court without the sanction of the law, I also went against him, because, on my conscience, I believed that the act was wrong. Such was my course, acting, as I did, under a sense of the duty I owed to my constituents; and I will now say, I care not how loudly the trumpet may be sounded, nor how low the priests may bend their knees before the object of their idolatry, I will be at the side of the President, crying in his ear, 'Remember, Philip, thou art mortal!'

"I object to the first section, because it confers on the President the power of closing old ports of entry and establishing new ones. It has been rightly said by the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Bibb] that this was a prominent cause which led to the Revolution. The Boston port bill, which removed the custom-house from Boston to Salem, first roused the people to resistance. To guard against this very abuse, the constitution had confided to Congress the power to regulate commerce; the establishment of ports of entry formed a material part of this power, and one which required legislative enactment. Now I deny that Congress can deputize its legislative powers. If it may one, it may all; and thus, a majority here can, at their pleasure, change the very character of the government. The President might come to be invested with authority to make all laws which his discretion might dictate. It is vain to tell me (said Mr. T.) that I imagine a case which will never exist. I tell you, sir, that power is cumulative, and that patronage begets power. The reasoning is unanswerable. If you can part with your power in one instance, you may in another and another. You may confer upon the President the right to declare war; and this very provision may fairly be considered as investing him with authority to make war at his mere will and pleasure on cities, towns, and villages. The prosperity of a city depends on the position of its custom-house and port of entry. Take the case of Norfolk, Richmond, and Fredericksburg, in my own State; who doubts but that to remove the custom-house from Norfolk to Old Point Comfort, of Richmond to the mouth of Chickahominy, or of Fredericksburg to Tappahannock or Urbanna, would utterly annihilate those towns? I have no tongue to express my sense of the probable injustice of the measure. Sir, it involves the innocent with the guilty. Take the case of Charleston; what if ninety-nine merchants were ready and willing to comply with your revenue laws, and that but one man could be found to resist them; would you run the hazard of destroying the ninety-nine in order to punish one? Trade is a delicate subject to touch; once divert it out of its regular channels, and nothing is more difficult than to restore it. This measure may involve the actual property of every man, woman, and child in that city; and this, too, when you have a redundancy of millions in your treasury, and when no interest can sustain injury by awaiting the actual occurrence of a case of resistance to your laws, before you would have an opportunity to legislate.

"He is further empowered to employ the land and naval forces, to put down all 'aiders and abettors.' How far will this authority extend? Suppose the legislature of South Carolina should happen to be in session: I will not blink the question, suppose the legislature to be in session at the time of any disturbance, passing laws in furtherance of the ordinance which has been adopted by the convention of that State; might they not be considered by the President as aiders and abettors? The President might not, perhaps, march at the head of his troops, with a flourish of drums and trumpets, and with bayonets fixed, into the state-house yard, at Columbia; but, if he did so, he would find a precedent for it in English history.

"There was no ambiguity about this measure. The prophecy had already gone forth; the President has said that the laws will be obstructed. The President had not only foretold the coming difficulties, but he has also assembled an army. The city of Charleston, if report spoke true, was now a beleagured city; the cannon of Fort Pinckney are pointing at it; and although they are now quietly sleeping, they are ready to open their thunders whenever the voice of authority shall give the command. And shall these terrors be let loose because some one man may refuse to pay some small modicum of revenue, which Congress, the day after it came into the treasury, might vote in satisfaction of some unfounded claim? Shall we set so small a value upon the lives of the people? Let us at least wait to see the course of measures. We can never be too tardy in commencing the work of blood.

"If the majority shall pass this bill, they must do it on their own responsibility; I will have no part in it. When gentlemen recount the blessings of union; when they dwell upon the past, and sketch out, in bright perspective, the future, they awaken in my breast all the pride of an American; my pulse beats responsive to theirs, and I regard union, next to freedom, as the greatest of blessings. Yes, sir, 'the federal Union must be preserved.' But how? Will you seek to preserve it by force? Will you appease the angry spirit of discord by an oblation of blood? Suppose that the proud and haughty spirit of South Carolina shall not bend to your high edicts in token of fealty; that you make war upon her, hang her Governor, her legislators, and judges, as traitors, and reduce her to the condition of a conquered province – have you preserved the Union? This Union consists of twenty-four States; would you have preserved the Union by striking out one of the States – one of the old thirteen? Gentlemen had boasted of the flag of our country, with its thirteen stars. When the light of one of these stars shall have been extinguished, will the flag wave over us, under which our fathers fought? If we are to go on striking out star after star, what will finally remain but a central and a burning sun, blighting and destroying every germ of liberty? The flag which I wish to wave over me, is that which floated in triumph at Saratoga and Yorktown. It bore upon it thirteen States, of which South Carolina was one. Sir, there is a great difference between preserving Union and preserving government; the Union may be annihilated, yet government preserved; but, under such a government, no man ought to desire to live."

Mr. Webster, one of the committee which reported the bill, justly rebuked all this vituperation, and justified the bill, both for the equity of its provisions, and the necessity for enacting them. He said:

"The President, charged by the constitution with the duty of executing the laws, has sent us a message, alleging that powerful combinations are forming to resist their execution; that the existing laws are not sufficient to meet the crisis; and recommending sundry enactments as necessary for the occasion. The message being referred to the Judiciary Committee, that committee has reported a bill in compliance with the President's recommendation. It has not gone beyond the message. Every thing in the bill, every single provision, which is now complained of, is in the message. Yet the whole war is raised against the bill, and against the committee, as if the committee had originated the whole matter. Gentlemen get up and address us, as if they were arguing against some measure of a factious opposition. They look the same way, sir, and speak with the same vehemence, as they used to do when they raised their patriotic voices against what they called a 'coalition.'

"Now, sir, let it be known, once for all, that this is an administration measure; that it is the President's own measure; and I pray gentlemen to have the goodness, if they call it hard names, and talk loudly against its friends, not to overlook its source. Let them attack it, if they choose to attack it, in its origin.

"Let it be known, also, that a majority of the committee reporting the bill are friends and supporters of the administration; and that it is maintained in this house by those who are among his steadfast friends, of long standing.

"It is, sir, as I have already said, the President's own measure. Let those who oppose it, oppose it as such. Let them fairly acknowledge its origin, and meet it accordingly.

"The honorable member from Kentucky, who spoke first against the bill, said he found in it another Jersey prison-ship; let him state, then, that the President has sent a message to Congress, recommending a renewal of the sufferings and horrors of the Jersey prison-ship. He says, too, that the bill snuffs of the alien and sedition law. But the bill is fragrant of no flower except the same which perfumes the message. Let him, then, say, if he thinks so, that General Jackson advises a revival of the principles of the alien and sedition laws.

"The honorable member from Virginia [Mr. Tyler], finds out a resemblance between this bill and the Boston port bill. Sir, if one of these be imitated from the other, the imitation is the President's. The bill makes the President, he says, sole judge of the constitution. Does he mean to say that the President has recommended a measure which is to make him sole judge of the constitution? The bill, he declares, sacrifices every thing to arbitrary power – he will lend no aid to its passage – he would rather 'be a dog, and bay the moon, than such a Roman.' He did not say 'the old Roman.' Yet the gentleman well knows, that if any thing is sacrificed to arbitrary power, the sacrifice has been demanded by the 'old Roman,' as he and others have called him; by the President whom he has supported, so often and so ably, for the chief magistracy of the country. He says, too, that one of the sections is an English Botany Bay law, except that it is much worse. This section, sir, whatever it may be, is just what the President's message recommended. Similar observations are applicable to the remarks of both the honorable gentlemen from North Carolina. It is not necessary to particularize those remarks. They were in the same strain.

"Therefore, sir, let it be understood, let it be known, that the war which these gentlemen choose to wage, is waged against the measures of the administration, against the President of their own choice. The controversy has arisen between him and them, and, in its progress, they will probably come to a distinct understanding.

"Mr. President, I am not to be understood as admitting that these charges against the bill are just, or that they would be just if made against the message. On the contrary, I think them wholly unjust. No one of them, in my opinion, can be made good. I think the bill, or some similar measure, had become indispensable, and that the President could not do otherwise than to recommend it to the consideration of Congress. He was not at liberty to look on and be silent, while dangers threatened the Union, which existing laws were not competent, in his judgment, to avert.

"Mr. President, I take this occasion to say, that I support this measure, as an independent member of the Senate, in the discharge of the dictates of my own conscience. I am no man's leader; and, on the other hand, I follow no lead, but that of public duty, and the star of the constitution. I believe the country is in considerable danger; I believe an unlawful combination threatens the integrity of the Union. I believe the crisis calls for a mild, temperate, forbearing, but inflexibly firm execution of the laws. And, under this conviction, I give a hearty support to the administration, in all measures which I deem to be fair, just, and necessary. And in supporting these measures, I mean to take my fair share of responsibility, to support them frankly and fairly, without reflections on the past, and without mixing other topics in their discussion.

"Mr. President, I think I understand the sentiment of the country on this subject. I think public opinion sets with an irresistible force in favor of the Union, in favor of the measures recommended by the President, and against the new doctrines which threaten the dissolution of the Union. I think the people of the United States demand of us, who are intrusted with the government, to maintain that government; to be just, and fear not; to make all and suitable provisions for the execution of the laws, and to sustain the Union and the constitution against whatsoever may endanger them. For one, I obey this public voice; I comply with this demand of the people. I support the administration in measures which I believe to be necessary; and, while pursuing this course, I look unhesitatingly, and with the utmost confidence, for the approbation of the country."

The support which Mr. Webster gave to all the President's measures in relation to South Carolina, and his exposure of the doctrine of nullification, being the first to detect and denounce that heresy, made him extremely obnoxious to Mr. Calhoun, and his friends; and must have been the main cause of his exclusion from the confidence of Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun in the concoction of their bill, called a compromise. His motives as well as his actions were attacked, and he was accused of subserviency to the President for the sake of future favor. At the same time all the support which he gave to these measures was the regular result of the principles which he laid down in his first speeches against nullification in the debate with Mr. Hayne, and he could not have done less without being derelict to his own principles then avowed. It was a proud era in his life, supporting with transcendent ability the cause of the constitution and of the country, in the person of a chief magistrate to whom he was politically opposed bursting the bonds of party at the call of duty, and displaying a patriotism worthy of admiration and imitation. General Jackson felt the debt of gratitude and admiration which he owed him; the country, without distinction of party, felt the same; and the universality of the feeling was one of the grateful instances of popular applause and justice when great talents are seen exerting themselves for the good of the country. He was the colossal figure on the political stage during that eventful time; and his labors, splendid in their day, survive for the benefit of distant posterity.

CHAPTER LXXXIV.