American politics (non-partisan) from the beginning to date

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

Now, it strikes me, sir, that there is no maintaining these votes but upon the power of internal improvement, in its broadest sense. In truth, these bills for surveys and estimates have always been considered as test questions. They show who is for and who against internal improvement. This law itself went the whole length, and assumed the full and complete power. The gentleman’s vote sustained that power, in every form in which the various propositions to amend presented it. He went for the entire and unrestrained authority, without consulting the states, and without agreeing to any proportionate distribution. And now, suffer me to remind you, Mr. President, that it is this very same power, thus sanctioned, in every form, by the gentleman’s own opinion, that is so plain and manifest a usurpation, that the state of South Carolina is supposed to be justified in refusing submission to any laws carrying the power into effect. Truly, sir, is not this a little too hard? May we not crave some mercy, under favor and protection of the gentleman’s own authority? Admitting that a road or a canal must be written down flat usurpation as ever was committed, may we find no mitigation in our respect for his place, and his vote, as one that knows the law?

The tariff which South Carolina had an efficient hand in establishing in 1816, and this asserted power of internal improvement—advanced by her in the same year, and, as we have seen, approved and sanctioned by her representatives in 1824,—these two measures are the great grounds on which she is now thought to be justified in breaking up the Union, if she sees fit to break it up.

I may now safely say, I think, that we have had the authority of leading and distinguished gentlemen from South Carolina in support of the doctrine of internal improvement. I repeat that, up to 1824, I, for one, followed South Carolina; but when that star in its ascension veered off in an unexpected direction, I relied on its light no longer. [Here the Vice-President said, Does the Chair understand the gentleman from Massachusetts to say that the person now occupying the chair of the Senate has changed his opinion on the subject of internal improvement?] From nothing ever said to me, sir, have I had reason to know of any change in the opinions of the person filling the chair of the Senate. If such change has taken place, I regret it; I speak generally of the state of South Carolina. Individuals we know there are who hold opinions favorable to the power. An application for its exercise in behalf of a public work in South Carolina itself is now pending, I believe, in the other house, presented by members from that state.

I have thus, sir, perhaps not without some tediousness of detail, shown that, if I am in error on the subject of internal improvements, how and in what company I fell into that error. If I am wrong, it is apparent who misled me.

I go to other remarks of the honorable member—and I have to complain of an entire misapprehension of what I said on the subject of the national debt—though I can hardly perceive how any one could misunderstand me. What I said was, not that I wished to put off the payment of the debt, but, on the contrary, that I had always voted for every measure for its reduction, as uniformly as the gentleman himself. He seems to claim the exclusive merit of a disposition to reduce the public charge; I do not allow it to him. As a debt, I was, I am, for paying it; because it is a charge on our finances, and on the industry of the country. But I observed that I thought I perceived a morbid fervor on that subject; an excessive anxiety to pay off the debt; not so much because it is a debt simply, as because, while it lasts, it furnishes one objection to disunion. It is a tie of common interest while it lasts. I did not impute such motive to the honorable member himself; but that there is such a feeling in existence I have not a particle of doubt. The most I said was, that if one effect of the debt was to strengthen our Union, that effect itself was not regretted by me, however much others might regret it. The gentleman has not seen how to reply to this otherwise than by supposing me to have advanced the doctrine that a national debt is a national blessing. Others, I must hope, will find less difficulty in understanding me. I distinctly and pointedly cautioned the honorable member not to understand me as expressing an opinion favorable to the continuance of the debt. I repeated this caution, and repeated it more than once—but it was thrown away.

On yet another point I was still more unaccountably misunderstood. The gentleman had harangued against “consolidation.” I told him, in reply, that there was one kind of consolidation to which I was attached, and that was, the consolidation of our Union; and that this was precisely that consolidation to which I feared others were not attached; that such consolidation was the very end of the constitution—the leading object, as they had informed us themselves, which its framers had kept in view. I turned to their communication, and read their very words,—“the consolidation of the Union,”—and expressed my devotion to this sort of consolidation. I said in terms that I wished not, in the slightest degree, to augment the powers of this government; that my object was to preserve, not to enlarge; and that, by consolidating the Union, I understood no more than the strengthening of the Union and perpetuating it. Having been thus explicit; having thus read, from the printed book, the precise words which I adopted, as expressing my own sentiments, it passes comprehension, how any man could understand me as contending for an extension of the powers of the government, or for consolidation in the odious sense in which it means an accumulation, in the federal government, of the powers properly belonging to the states.

I repeat, sir, that, in adopting the sentiments of the framers of the constitution, I read their language audibly, and word for word; and I pointed out the distinction, just as fully as I have now done, between the consolidation of the Union and that other obnoxious consolidation which I disclaimed; and yet the honorable gentleman misunderstood me. The gentleman had said that he wished for no fixed revenue—not a shilling. If, by a word, he could convert the Capitol into gold, he would not do it. Why all this fear of revenue? Why, sir, because, as the gentleman told us, it tends to consolidation. Now, this can mean neither more or less than that a common revenue is a common interest, and that all common interests tend to hold the union of the states together. I confess I like that tendency; if the gentleman dislikes it, he is right in deprecating a shilling’s fixed revenue. So much, sir, for consolidation.

As well as I recollect the course of his remarks, the honorable gentleman next recurred to the subject of the tariff. He did not doubt the word must be of unpleasant sound to me, and proceeded, with an effort neither new nor attended with new success, to involve me and my votes in inconsistency and contradiction. I am happy the honorable gentleman has furnished me an opportunity of a timely remark or two on that subject. I was glad he approached it, for it is a question I enter upon without fear from any body. The strenuous toil of the gentleman has been to raise an inconsistency between my dissent to the tariff, in 1824 and my vote in 1828. It is labor lost. He pays undeserved compliment to my speech in 1824; but this is to raise me high, that my fall, as he would have it, in 1828 may be the more signal. Sir, there was no fall at all. Between the ground I stood on in 1824 and that I took in 1828, there was not only no precipice, but no declivity. It was a change of position, to meet new circumstances, but on the same level. A plain tale explains the whole matter. In 1816, I had not acquiesced in the tariff, then supported by South Carolina. To some parts of it, especially, I felt and expressed great repugnance. I held the same opinions in 1821, at the meeting in Faneuil Hall, to which the gentleman has alluded. I said then, and say now, that, as an original question, the authority of Congress to exercise the revenue power, with direct reference to the protection of manufactures, is a questionable authority, far more questionable in my judgment, than the power of internal improvements. I must confess, sir, that, in one respect, some impression has been made on my opinions lately. Mr. Madison’s publication has put the power in a very strong light. He has placed it, I must acknowledge, upon grounds of construction and argument which seem impregnable. But even if the power were doubted, on the face of the constitution itself, it had been assumed and asserted in the first revenue law ever passed under the same constitution; and, on this ground, as a matter settled by contemporaneous practice, I had refrained from expressing the opinion that the tariff laws transcended constitutional limits, as the gentleman supposes. What I did say at Faneuil Hall, as far as I now remember, was, that this was originally matter of doubtful construction. The gentleman himself, I suppose, thinks there is no doubt about it, and that the laws are plainly against the constitution. Mr. Madison’s letters, already referred to, contain, in my judgment, by far the most able exposition extant of this part of the constitution. He has satisfied me, so far as the practice of the government had left it an open question.

With a great majority of the representatives of Massachusetts, I voted against the tariff of 1824. My reasons were then given, and I will not now repeat them. But notwithstanding our dissent, the great states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky went for the bill, in almost unbroken column, and it passed. Congress and the president sanctioned it, and it became the law of the land. What, then, were we to do? Our only option was either to fall in with this settled course of public policy, and to accommodate ourselves to it as well as we could, or to embrace the South Carolina doctrine, and talk of nullifying the statute by state interference.

The last alternative did not suit our principles, and, of course, we adopted the former. In 1827, the subject came again before Congress, on a proposition favorable to wool and woolens. We looked upon the system of protection as being fixed and settled. The law of 1824 remained. It had gone into full operation, and in regard to some objects intended by it, perhaps most of them had produced all its expected effects. No man proposed to repeal it—no man attempted to renew the general contest on its principle. But, owing to subsequent and unforeseen occurrences, the benefit intended by it to wool and woolen fabrics had not been realized. Events, not known here when the law passed, had taken place, which defeated its object in that particular respect. A measure was accordingly brought forward to meet this precise deficiency, to remedy this particular defect. It was limited to wool and woolens. Was ever any thing more reasonable? If the policy of the tariff laws had become established in principle as the permanent policy of the government, should they not be revised and amended, and made equal, like other laws, as exigencies should arise, or justice require? Because we had doubted about adopting the system, were we to refuse to cure its manifest defects after it became adopted, and when no one attempted its repeal? And this, sir, is the inconsistency so much bruited. I had voted against the tariff of 1824—but it passed; and in 1827 and 1828, I voted to amend it in a point essential to the interest of my constituents. Where is the inconsistency? Could I do otherwise?