Sir, as to the honorable member's wresting the victory from us, or as to his ability to sustain the administration in this policy, there may be some doubt about that. I trust the citadel will yet be stormed, and carried, by the force of public opinion, and that no Hector will be able to defend its walls.
But now, Sir, I must advert to a declaration of the honorable member, which, I confess, did surprise me. The honorable member says, that, personally, he and myself have been on friendly terms, but that we always differed on great constitutional questions. Sir, this is astounding. And yet I was partly prepared for it; for I sat here the other day, and held my breath, while the honorable gentleman declared, and repeated, that he had always belonged to the State-rights party. And he means, by what he has declared to-day, that he has always given to the Constitution a construction more limited, better guarded, less favorable to the extension of the powers of this government, than that which I have given to it. He has always interpreted it according to the strict doctrines of the school of State rights! Sir, if the honorable member ever belonged, until very lately, to the State-rights party, the connection was very much like a secret marriage. And never was secret better kept. Not only were the espousals not acknowledged, but all suspicion was avoided. There was no known familiarity, or even kindness, between them. On the contrary, they acted like parties who were not at all fond of each other's company.
Sir, is there a man in my hearing, among all the gentlemen now surrounding us, many of whom, of both houses, have been here many years, and know the gentleman and myself perfectly,—is there one who ever heard, supposed, or dreamed that the honorable member belonged to the State-rights party before the year 1825? Can any such connection be proved upon him, can he prove it upon himself, before that time?
Sir, I will show you, before I resume my seat, that it was not until after the gentleman took his seat in the chair which you now occupy, that any public manifestation, or intimation, was ever given by him of his having embraced the peculiar doctrines of the State-rights party. The truth is, Sir, the honorable gentleman had acted a very important and useful part during the war. But the war terminated. Toward the end of the session of 1814-15, we received the news of peace. This closed the Thirteenth Congress. In the fall of 1815, the Fourteenth Congress assembled. It was full of ability, and the honorable gentleman stood high among its distinguished members. He remained in the House, Sir, through the whole of that Congress; and now, Sir, it is easy to show that, during those two years, the honorable gentleman took a decided lead in all those great measures which he has since so often denounced as unconstitutional and oppressive, the bank, the tariff, and internal improvements. The war being terminated, the gentleman's mind turned itself toward internal administration and improvement. He surveyed the whole country, contemplated its resources, saw what it was capable of becoming, and held a political faith not so narrow and contracted as to restrain him from useful and efficient action. He was, therefore, at once a full length ahead of all others in measures which were national, and which required a broad and liberal construction of the Constitution. This is historic truth. Of his agency in the bank, and other measures connected with the currency, I have already spoken, and I do not understand him to deny any thing I have said, in that particular. Indeed, I have said nothing capable of denial.
Now allow me a few words upon the tariff. The tariff of 1816 was distinctly a South Carolina measure. Look at the votes, and you will see it. It was a tariff for the benefit of South Carolina interests, and carried through Congress by South Carolina votes and South Carolina influence. Even the minimum, Sir, the so-much-reproached, the abominable minimum, that subject of angry indignation and wrathful rhetoric, is of Southern origin, and has a South Carolina parentage.
Sir, the contest on that occasion was chiefly between the cotton-growers at home, and the importers of cotton fabrics from India. These India fabrics were made from the cotton of that country. The people of this country were using cotton fabrics not made of American cotton, and, so far, they were diminishing the demand for such cotton. The importation of India cottons was then very large, and this bill was designed to put an end to it, and, with the help of the minimum, it did put an end to it. The cotton manufactures of the North were then in their infancy. They had some friends in Congress, but, if I recollect, the majority of Massachusetts members and of New England members were against this cotton tariff of 1816. I remember well, that the main debate was between the importers of India cottons, in the North, and the cotton-growers of the South. The gentleman cannot deny the truth of this, or any part of it. Boston opposed this tariff, and Salem opposed it, warmly and vigorously. But the honorable member supported it, and the law passed. And now be it always remembered, Sir, that that act passed on the professed ground of protection; that it had in it the minimum principle, and that the honorable member, and other leading gentlemen from his own State, supported it, voted for it, and carried it through Congress.
And now, Sir, we come to the doctrine of internal improvement, that other usurpation, that other oppression, which has come so near to justifying violent disruption of the government, and scattering the fragments of the Union to the four winds. Have the gentleman's State-rights opinions always kept him aloof from such unhallowed infringements of the Constitution? He says he always differed with me on constitutional questions. How was it in this most important particular? Has he here stood on the ramparts, brandishing his glittering sword against assailants, and holding out a banner of defiance? Sir, it is an indisputable truth, that he is himself the man, the ipse that first brought forward in Congress a scheme of general internal improvement, at the expense and under the authority of this government. He, Sir, is the very man, the ipsissimus ipse, who considerately, and on a settled system, began these unconstitutional measures, if they be unconstitutional. And now for the proof.
The act incorporating the Bank of the United States was passed in April, 1816. For the privileges of the charter, the proprietors of the bank were to pay to government a bonus, as it was called, of one million five hundred thousand dollars, in certain instalments. Government also took seven millions in the stock of the bank. Early in the next session of Congress, that is, in December, 1816, the honorable member moved, in the House of Representatives, that a committee be appointed to consider the propriety of setting apart this bonus, and also the dividends on the stock belonging to the United States, as a permanent fund for internal improvement. The committee was appointed, and the honorable member was made its chairman. He thus originated the plan, and took the lead in its execution. Shortly afterwards, he reported a bill carrying out the objects for which the committee had been appointed. This bill provided that the dividends on the seven millions of bank stock belonging to government, and also the whole of the bonus, should be permanently pledged as a fund for constructing roads and canals; and that this fund should be subject to such specific appropriations as Congress might subsequently make.
This was the bill; and this was the first project ever brought forward in Congress for a system of internal improvements. The bill goes the whole doctrine at a single jump. The Cumberland Road, it is true, was already in progress; and for that the gentleman had also voted. But there were, and are now, peculiarities about that particular expenditure which sometimes satisfy scrupulous consciences; but this bill of the gentleman's, without equivocation or saving clause, without if, or and, or but, occupied the whole ground at once, and announced internal improvement as one of the objects of this government, on a grand and systematic plan. The bill, Sir, seemed indeed too strong. It was thought by persons not esteemed extremely jealous of State rights to evince too little regard to the will of the States. Several gentlemen opposed the measure in that shape, on that account; and among them Colonel Pickering, then one of the Representatives from Massachusetts. Even Timothy Pickering could not quite sanction, or concur in, the honorable gentleman's doctrines to their full extent, although he favored the measure in its general character. He therefore prepared an amendment, as a substitute; and his substitute provided for two very important things not embraced in the original bill:—
First, that the proportion of the fund to be expended in each State, respectively, should be in proportion to the number of its inhabitants.