At this time circumstances have changed—popular revolutions both in France and Great Britain have perhaps curbed the spirit of conquest in Great Britain, and France may have enough to do to govern her kingdom of Algiers. But Spain is again convulsed with a civil war for the succession to her crown; she has irretrievably lost all her colonies on both continents of America. It is impossible that she should hold much longer a shadow of dominion over the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico; nor can those islands, in their present condition, form independent nations, capable of protecting themselves. They must for ages remain at the mercy of Great Britain or of these United States, or of both; Great Britain is even now about to interfere in this war for the Spanish succession. If by the utter imbecility of the Mexican confederacy this revolt of Texas should lead immediately to its separation from that Republic, and its annexation to the United States, I believe it impossible that Great Britain should look on while this operation is performing with indifference. She will see that it must shake her own whole colonial power on this continent, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Caribbean Seas, like an earthquake; she will see, too, that it endangers her own abolition of slavery in her own colonies. A war for the restoration of slavery where it has been abolished, if successful in Texas, must extend over all Mexico; and the example will threaten her with imminent danger of a war of colours in her own islands. She will take possession of Cuba and of Porto Rico, by cession from Spain or by the batteries from her wooden walls; and if you ask her by what authority she has done it, she will ask you, in return, by what authority you have extended your sea-coast from the Sabine to the Rio Bravo. She will ask you a question more perplexing, namely—by what authority you, with freedom, independence, and democracy upon your lips, are waging a war of extermination to forge new manacles and fetters, instead of those which are falling from the hands and feet of man. She will carry emancipation and abolition with her in every fold of her flag; while your stars, as they increase in numbers, will be overcast with the murky vapours of oppression, and the only portion of your banners visible to the eye will be the blood-stained stripes of the taskmaster.
Mr. Chairman, are you ready for all these wars? A Mexican war? a war with Great Britain, if not with France? a general Indian war? a servile war? and, as an inevitable consequence of them all, a civil war? For it must ultimately terminate in a war of colours as well as of races. And do you imagine that while with your eyes open you are wilfully kindling, and then closing your eyes and blindly rushing into them; do you imagine that while, in the very nature of things, your own Southern and Southwestern States must be the Flanders of these complicated wars, the battle-field upon which the last great conflict must be fought between slavery and emancipation; do you imagine that your Congress will have no constitutional authority to interfere with the institution of slavery in any way in the States of this Confederacy? Sir, they must and will interfere with it—perhaps to sustain it by war; perhaps to abolish it by treaties of peace; and they will not only possess the constitutional power so to interfere, but they will be bound in duty to do it by the express provisions of the Constitution itself. For the instant that your slaveholding States become the theatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that instant the war powers of Congress extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every way by which it can be interfered with, from a claim of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to the cession of the State burdened with slavery to a foreign power.
* * * * * *
B.
GENERAL AND STATE FINANCES.
Statement of Moneys received into the Treasury from all sources, for the year 1832.
| Dollars. Cts. | ||
| From the Customs | 22,178,735 30 | |
| Public Lands | 2,623,381 03 | |
| From dividends on Stock in the Bank of the United States | 490,000 00 | |
| Sales of Stock in Bank of the United States | 169,000 00 | |
| Arrears of direct tax | 6,791 13 | |
| Arrears of internal revenue | 11,630 65 | |
| Fees on Letters Patent | 14,160 00 | |
| Cents coined at the Mint | 21,845 40 | |
| Fines, penalties, and forfeitures | 8,868 04 | |
| Surplus emoluments of officers of the Customs | 31,965 46 | |
| Postage on letters | 244 95 | |
| Consular receipts | 1,884 52 | |
| Interest on debts due by Banks to United States | 136 00 | |
| Persons unknown, said to be due to United States | 500 00 | |
| Moneys obtained from the Treasury on forged documents | 115 00 | |
| Moneys previously advanced for Biennial Register | 37 00 | |
| Securing Light-house on the Brandy-wine Shoal | 1,000 00 | |
| Light-house on Mahon's Ditch, Delaware | 4,975 00 | |
| Balance of advances in the War Department, repaid | 15,679 24 | |
| ————— | ||
| 119,832 39 | ||
| Deduction, &c. | 1,889 50 | |
| ————— | 117,942 89 | |
| —————— | ||
| 25,579,059 22 | ||