But it is said, a measure of this sort is necessary to create employment for the people. Why, sir, where are the handles of the plough? Are they unfit for young gentlemen to touch? Or will they rather choose to enter your military academies, where the sons of the rich are educated at the expense of the poor, and where so many political janissaries are every year turned out, always ready for war, and to support the powers that be—equal to the strelitzes of Moscow or St. Petersburg. I do not speak now of individuals, of course, but of the tendency of the system—the hounds follow the huntsman because he feeds them, and bears the whip. I speak of the system. I concur most heartily, sir, in the censure which has been passed upon the greediness of office, which stands a stigma on the present generation. Men from whom we might expect, and from whom I did expect, better things, crowd the ante-chamber of the palace, for every vacant office; nay, even before men are dead, their shoes are wanted for some barefooted office-seeker. How mistaken was the old Roman, the old consul, who, whilst he held the plough by one hand, and death held the other, exclaimed, “Diis immortalibus sero!”
Our fathers, how did they acquire their property? By straightforward industry, rectitude, and frugality. How did they become dispossessed of their property? By indulging in speculative hopes and designs; seeking the shadow whilst they lost the substance; and now, instead of being, as they were, men of respectability, men of substance, men capable and willing to live independently and honestly, and hospitably too—for who so parsimonious as the prodigal who has nothing to give?—what have we become? A nation of sharks, preying on one another through the instrumentality of this paper system, which, if Lycurgus had known of it, he would unquestionably have adopted, in preference to his iron money, if his object had been to make the Spartans the most accomplished knaves as well as to keep them poor.
The manufacturer of the east may carry his woolens or his cottons, or his coffins, to what market he pleases—I do not buy of him. Self-defence is the first law of nature. You drive us into it. You create heats and animosities among this great family, who ought to live like brothers; and, after you have got this temper of mind roused among the southern people, do you expect to come among us to trade, and expect us to buy your wares? Sir, not only shall we not buy them, but we shall take such measures (I will not enter into the detail of them now) as shall render it impossible for you to sell them. Whatever may be said here of the “misguided counsels,” as they have been termed, “of the theorists of Virginia,” they have, so far as regards this question, the confidence of united Virginia. We are asked—Does the south lose any thing by this bill—why do you cry out? I put it, sir, to any man from any part of the country, from the gulf of Mexico, from the Balize, to the eastern shore of Maryland—which, I thank Heaven, is not yet under the government of Baltimore, and will not be, unless certain theories should come into play in that state, which we have lately heard of, and a majority of men, told by the head, should govern—whether the whole country between the points I have named, is not unanimous in opposition to this bill. Would it not be unexampled, that we should thus complain, protest, resist, and that all the while nothing should be the matter? Are our understandings (however low mine may be rated, much sounder than mine are engaged in this resistance), to be rated so low, as that we are to be made to believe that we are children affrighted by a bugbear? We are asked, however, why do you cry out? it is all for your good. Sir, this reminds me of the mistresses of George II., who, when they were insulted by the populace on arriving in London (as all such creatures deserve to be, by every mob), put their heads out of the window, and said to them in their broken English, “Goot people, we be come for your goots;” to which one of the mob rejoined—“Yes, and for our chattels too, I fancy.” Just so it is with the oppressive exactions proposed and advocated by the supporters of this bill, on the plea of the good of those who are its victims. * * *
I had more to say, Mr. Speaker, could I have said it, on this subject. But I cannot sit down without asking those, who were once my brethren of the church, the elders of the young family of this good old republic of the thirteen states, if they can consent to rivet upon us this system, from which no benefit can possibly result to themselves. I put it to them as descendants of the renowned colony of Virginia; as children sprung from her loins; if for the sake of all the benefits, with which this bill is pretended to be freighted to them, granting such to be the fact for argument’s sake, they could consent to do such an act of violence to the unanimous opinion, feelings, prejudices, if you will, of the whole Southern States, as to pass it? I go farther. I ask of them what is there in the condition of the nation at this time, that calls for the immediate adoption of this measure? Are the Gauls at the gate of the capitol? If they are, the cacklings of the Capitoline geese will hardly save it. What is there to induce us to plunge into the vortex of those evils so severely felt in Europe from this very manufacturing and paper policy? For it is evident that, if we go into this system of policy, we must adopt the European institutions also. We have very good materials to work with; we have only to make our elective king president for life, in the first place, and then to make the succession hereditary in the family of the first that shall happen to have a promising son. For a king we can be at no loss—ex quovis ligno—any block will do for him. The senate may, perhaps, be transmuted into a house of peers, although we should meet with more difficulty than in the other case; for Bonaparte himself was not more hardly put to it, to recruit the ranks of his mushroom nobility, than we should be to furnish a house of peers. As for us, we are the faithful commons, ready made to hand; but with all our loyalty, I congratulate the house—I congratulate the nation—that, although this body is daily degraded by the sight of members of Congress manufactured into placemen, we have not yet reached such a point of degradation as to suffer executive minions to be manufactured into members of congress. We have shut that door; I wish we could shut the other also. I wish we could have a perpetual call of the house in this view, and suffer no one to get out from its closed doors. The time is peculiarly inauspicious for the change in our policy which is proposed by this bill. We are on the eve of an election that promises to be the most distracted that this nation has ever yet undergone. It may turn out to be a Polish election. At such a time, ought any measure to be brought forward which is supposed to be capable of being demonstrated to be extremely injurious to one great portion of this country, and beneficial in proportion to another? Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. There are firebrands enough in the land, without this apple of discord being cast into this assembly. Suppose this measure is not what it is represented to be; that the fears of the south are altogether illusory and visionary; that it will produce all the good predicted of it—an honorable gentleman from Kentucky said yesterday—and I was sorry to hear it, for I have great respect for that gentleman, and for other gentlemen from that state—that the question was not whether a bare majority should pass the bill, but whether the majority or the minority should rule. The gentleman is wrong, and, if he will consider the matter rightly, he will see it. Is there no difference between the patient and the actor? We are passive: we do not call them to act or to suffer, but we call upon them not so to act as that we must necessarily suffer; and I venture to say, that in any government, properly constituted, this very consideration would operate conclusively, that if the burden is to be laid on 102, it ought not to be laid by 105. We are the eel that is being flayed, while the cook-maid pats us on the head, and cries, with the clown in King Lear, “Down, wantons, down.” There is but one portion of the country which can profit by this bill, and from that portion of the country comes this bare majority in favor of it. I bless God that Massachusetts and old Virginia are once again rallying under the same banner, against oppressive and unconstitutional taxation; for, if all the blood be drawn from out the body, I care not whether it be by the British parliament or the American congress; by an emperor or a king abroad, or by a president at home.
Under these views, and with feelings of mortification and shame at the very weak opposition I have been able to make to this bill, I entreat gentlemen to consent that it may lie over, at least, until the next session of congress. We have other business to attend to, and our families and affairs need our attention at home; and indeed I, sir, would not give one farthing for any man who prefers being here to being at home; who is a good public man and a bad private one. With these views and feelings, I move you, sir, that the bill be indefinitely postponed.
Edward Everett.
The example of the Northern to the Southern Republics of America.
The great triumphs of constitutional freedom, to which our independence has furnished the example, have been witnessed in the southern portion of our hemisphere. Sunk to the last point of colonial degradation, they have risen at once into the organization of three republics. Their struggle has been arduous; and eighteen years of checkered fortune have not yet brought it to a close. But we must not infer, from their prolonged agitation, that their independence is uncertain; that they have prematurely put on the toga virilis of freedom. They have not begun too soon; they have more to do. Our war of independence was shorter;—happily we were contending with a government, that could not, like that of Spain, pursue an interminable and hopeless contest, in defiance of the people’s will. Our transition to a mature and well adjusted constitution was more prompt than that of our sister republics; for the foundations had long been settled, the preparation long made. And when we consider that it is our example, which has aroused the spirit of independence from California to Cape Horn; that the experiment of liberty, if it had failed with us, most surely would not have been attempted by them; that even now our counsels and acts will operate as powerful precedents in this great family of republics, we learn the importance of the post which Providence has assigned us in the world. A wise and harmonious administration of the public affairs,—a faithful, liberal, and patriotic exercise of the private duties of the citizen,—while they secure our happiness at home, will diffuse a healthful influence through the channels of national communication, and serve the cause of liberty beyond the Equator and the Andes. When we show a united, conciliatory, and imposing front to their rising states we show them, better than sounding eulogies can do, the true aspect of an independent republic; we give them a living example that the fireside policy of a people is like that of the individual man. As the one, commencing in the prudence, order, and industry of the private circle, extends itself to all the duties of social life, of the family, the neighborhood, the country; so the true domestic policy of the republic, beginning in the wise organization of its own institutions, pervades its territories with a vigilant, prudent, temperate administration; and extends the hand of cordial interest to all the friendly nations, especially to those which are of the household of liberty.
It is in this way that we are to fulfil our destiny in the world. The greatest engine of moral power, which human nature knows, is an organized, prosperous state. All that man, in his individual capacity, can do—all that he can effect by his fraternities—by his ingenious discoveries and wonders of art,—or by his influence over others—is as nothing, compared with the collective, perpetuated influence on human affairs and human happiness of a well constituted, powerful commonwealth. It blesses generations with its sweet influence;—even the barren earth seems to pour out its fruits under a system where property is secure, while her fairest gardens are blighted by despotism;—men, thinking, reasoning men, abound beneath its benignant sway;—nature enters into a beautiful accord, a better, purer asiento with man, and guides an industrious citizen to every rood of her smiling wastes;—and we see, at length, that what has been called a state of nature, has been most falsely, calumniously so denominated; that the nature of man is neither that of a savage, a hermit, nor a slave; but that of a member of a well-ordered family, that of a good neighbor, a free citizen, a well informed, good man, acting with others like him. This is the lesson which is taught in the charter of our independence; this is the lesson which our example is to teach the world.
The epic poet of Rome—the faithful subject of an absolute prince—in unfolding the duties and destinies of his countrymen, bids them look down with disdain on the polished and intellectual arts of Greece, and deem their arts to be