CHAPTER XLV.

The bare reading of these passages from the Journals of the Congress of the old confederation, shows how erroneous Mr. Webster was in these portions of his speech:

"At the foundation of the constitution of these new northwestern States, we are accustomed, sir, to praise the lawgivers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked, and lasting character, than the ordinance of '87. That instrument, was drawn by Nathan Dane, then, and now, a citizen of Massachusetts. It was adopted, as I think I have understood, without the slightest alteration; and certainly it has happened to few men to be the authors of a political measure of more large and enduring consequence. It fixed, for ever, the character of the population in the vast regions northwest of the Ohio, by excluding from them involuntary servitude. It impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to bear up any other than free men. It laid the interdict against personal servitude, in original compact, not only deeper than all local law, but deeper, also, than all localconstitutions. Under the circumstances then existing, I look upon this original and seasonable provision, as a real good attained. We see its consequences at this moment, and we shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow. It was a great and salutary measure of prevention. Sir, I should fear the rebuke of no intelligent gentleman of Kentucky, were I to ask whether if such an ordinance could have been applied to his own State, while it yet was a wilderness, and before Boon had passed the gap of the Alleghany, he does not suppose it would have contributed to the ultimate greatness of that commonwealth? It is, at any rate, not to be doubted, that where it did apply it has produced an effect not easily to be described, or measured in the growth of the States, and the extent and increase of their population. Now, sir, this great measure again was carried by the north, and by the north alone. There were, indeed, individuals elsewhere favorable to it; but it was supported as a measure, entirely by the votes of the northern States. If New England had been governed by the narrow and selfish views now ascribed to her, this very measure was, of all others, the best calculated to thwart her purposes. It was, of all things, the very means of rendering certain a vast emigration from her own population to the west. She looked to that consequence only to disregard it. She deemed the regulation a most useful one to the States that would spring up on the territory, and advantageous to the country at large. She adhered to the principle of it perseveringly, year after year, until it was finally accomplished."An attempt has been made to transfer, from the North to the South, the honor of this exclusion of slavery from the northwestern territory. The journal, without argument or comment, refutes such attempt. The cession by Virginia was made, March, 1784. On the 19th of April following, a committee, consisting of Messrs. Jefferson, Chase, and Howell, reported a plan for a temporary government of the territory, in which was this article: 'that, after the year 1800, there shall be neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been convicted.' Mr. Speight, of North Carolina, moved to strike out this paragraph. The question was put, according to the form then practised: 'Shall these words stand, as part of the plan,' &c.? New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—seven States, voted in the affirmative. Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, in the negative. North Carolina was divided. As the consent of nine States was necessary, the words could not stand, and were struck out accordingly. Mr. Jefferson voted for the clause, but was overruled by his colleagues."In March, the next year [1785], Mr. King of Massachusetts, seconded by Mr. Ellery of Rhode Island, proposed the formerly rejected article, with this addition: 'And that this regulation shall be an article of compact, and remain a fundamental principle of the constitutions between the thirteen original States, and each of the States described in the resolve,' &c. On this clause, which provided the adequate and thorough security, the eight northern States at that time voted affirmatively, and the four southern States negatively. The votes of nine States were not yet obtained, and thus, the provision was again rejected by the southern States. The perseverance of the north held out, and two years afterwards the object was attained."

"An attempt has been made to transfer, from the North to the South, the honor of this exclusion of slavery from the northwestern territory. The journal, without argument or comment, refutes such attempt. The cession by Virginia was made, March, 1784. On the 19th of April following, a committee, consisting of Messrs. Jefferson, Chase, and Howell, reported a plan for a temporary government of the territory, in which was this article: 'that, after the year 1800, there shall be neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been convicted.' Mr. Speight, of North Carolina, moved to strike out this paragraph. The question was put, according to the form then practised: 'Shall these words stand, as part of the plan,' &c.? New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—seven States, voted in the affirmative. Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, in the negative. North Carolina was divided. As the consent of nine States was necessary, the words could not stand, and were struck out accordingly. Mr. Jefferson voted for the clause, but was overruled by his colleagues.

"In March, the next year [1785], Mr. King of Massachusetts, seconded by Mr. Ellery of Rhode Island, proposed the formerly rejected article, with this addition: 'And that this regulation shall be an article of compact, and remain a fundamental principle of the constitutions between the thirteen original States, and each of the States described in the resolve,' &c. On this clause, which provided the adequate and thorough security, the eight northern States at that time voted affirmatively, and the four southern States negatively. The votes of nine States were not yet obtained, and thus, the provision was again rejected by the southern States. The perseverance of the north held out, and two years afterwards the object was attained."

This is shown to be all erroneous in relation to this ordinance. It was not first drawn by Mr. Dane, but by Mr. Jefferson, and that nearly two years before Mr. Dane came into Congress. It was not passed by the North alone, but equally by the South—there being but eight States present at the passing, and they equally of the North and the South—and the South voting unanimously for it, both as States and as individual members, while the North had one member against it. It was not baffled two years for the want of nine States; if so, and nine States had been necessary, it would not have been passed when it was, and never by free State votes alone. There were but eight States (both Northern and Southern) present at the passing; and there were not nine free States in the confederacy at that time. There were but thirteen in all: and the half of these, as nearly as thirteen can be divided, were slave States. The fact is, that the South only delayed its vote for the antislavery clause in the ordinance for want of the provision in favor of recovering fugitives from service. As soon as that was added, she took the lead again for the ordinance—a fact which gives great emphasis to the corresponding provision in the constitution.

Mr. Webster was present when I read these extracts, and said nothing. He neither reaffirmed his previous statement, that Mr. Dane was the author of the ordinance, and that "this great measure was carried by the North, and by the North alone." He said nothing; nor did he afterwards correct the errors of his speech: and they now remain in it; and have given occasion to a very authentic newspaper contradiction of his statement, copied, like my statement to the Senate, from the Journals of the old Congress. It was by Edward Coles, Esq., formerly of Virginia, and private secretary to President Madison, afterwards governor of the State of Illinois, and now a citizen of Pennsylvania, resident ofPhiladelphia. He made his correction through the National Intelligencer, of Washington City; and being drawn from the same sources it agrees entirely with my own. And thus the South is entitled to the credit of originating and passing this great measure—a circumstance to be remembered and quoted, as showing the South at that time in taking the lead in curtailing and restricting the existence of slavery. The cause of Mr. Webster's mistakes may be found in the fact that the ordinance was three times before the old Congress, and once (the third time) in the hands of a committee of which Mr. Dane was a member. It was first reported by a committee of three (April, 1784) of which two were from slave states, (Mr. Jefferson of Virginia and Mr. Chase of Maryland,) Mr. Howard, of Rhode Island; and this, as stated, was nearly two years before Mr. Dane became a member. The antislavery clause was then dropped, there being but six States for it. The next year, the antislavery clause, with some modification, was moved by Mr. Rufus King, and sent as a proposition to a committee: but did not ripen into a law. Afterwards the whole ordinance was passed as it now stands, upon the report of a committee of six, of whom Mr. Dane was one; but not the chairman.

Closely connected with this question of authorship to which Mr. Webster's remarks give rise, was another which excited some warm discussion—the topic of slavery—and the effect of its existence or non-existence in different States. Kentucky and Ohio were taken for examples, and the superior improvement and population of Ohio were attributed to its exemption from the evils of slavery. This was an excitable subject, and the more so because the wounds of the Missouri controversy, in which the North was the undisputed aggressor, were still tender, and hardly scarred over. Mr. Hayne answered with warmth and resented as a reflection upon the slave States this disadvantageous comparison. I replied to the same topic myself, and said:

"I was on the subject of slavery, as connected with the Missouri question, when last on the floor. The senator from South Carolina [Mr. Hayne] could see nothing in the question before the Senate, nor in any previous part of the debate, to justify the introduction of that topic. Neither could I. He thought he saw the ghost of the Missouri question brought in among us. So did I. He was astonished at the apparition. I was not: for a close observance of the signs in the West had prepared me for this development from the East. I was well prepared for that invective against slavery, and for that amplification of the blessings of exemption from slavery, exemplified in the condition of Ohio, which the senator from Massachusetts indulged in, and which the object in view required to be derived from the Northeast. I cut the root of that derivation by reading a passage from the Journals of the old Congress; but this will not prevent the invective and encomium from going forth to do their office; nor obliterate the line which was drawn between the free State of Ohio and the slave State of Kentucky. If the only results of this invective and encomium were to exalt still higher the oratorical fame of the speaker, I should spend not a moment in remarking upon them. But it is not to be forgotten that the terrible Missouri agitation took its rise from the "substance of two speeches" delivered on this floor; and since that time, antislavery speeches, coming from the same political and geographical quarter, are not to be disregarded here. What was said upon that topic was certainly intended for the north side of the Potomac and Ohio; to the people, then, of that division of the Union, I wish to address myself, and to disabuse them of some erroneous impressions. To them I can truly say, that slavery, in the abstract, has but few advocates or defenders in the slave-holding States, and that slavery as it is, an hereditary institution descended upon us from our ancestors, would have fewer advocates among us than it has, if those who have nothing to do with the subject would only let us alone. The sentiment in favor of slavery was much weaker before those intermeddlers began their operations than it is at present. The views of leading men in the North and the South were indisputably the same in the earlier periods of our government. Of this our legislative history contains the highest proof. The foreign-slave trade was prohibited in Virginia, as soon as the Revolution began. It was one of her first acts of sovereignty. In the convention of that State which adopted the federal constitution, it was an objection to that instrument that it tolerated the African slave-trade for twenty years. Nothing that has appeared since has surpassed the indignant denunciations of this traffic by Patrick Henry, George Mason, and others, in that convention."Sir, I regard with admiration, that is to say, with wonder, the sublime morality of those who cannot bear the abstract contemplation of slavery, at the distance of five hundred or a thousand miles off. It is entirely above, that is to say, it affects a vast superiority over the morality of the primitive Christians, the apostles of Christ, and Christ himself. Christ and the apostles appeared in a province of the Roman empire, when that empire was called the Roman world, and that world was filled with slaves. Forty millions was the estimated number, being one-fourth of the whole population. Single individuals held twenty thousand slaves. A freed man, one who had himself been a slave, died thepossessor of four thousand—such were the numbers. The rights of the owners over this multitude of human beings was that of life and death, without protection from law or mitigation from public sentiment. The scourge, the cross, the fish-pond, the den of the wild beast, and the arena of the gladiator, was the lot of the slave, upon the slightest expression of the master's will. A law of incredible atrocity made all slaves responsible with their own lives for the life of their master; it was the law that condemned the whole household of slaves to death, in case of the assassination of the master—a law under which as many as four hundred have been executed at a time. And these slaves were the white people of Europe and of Asia Minor, the Greeks and other nations, from whom the present inhabitants of the world derive the most valuable productions of the human mind. Christ saw all this—the number of the slaves—their hapless condition—and their white color, which was the same with his own; yet he said nothing against slavery; he preached no doctrines which led to insurrection and massacre; none which, in their application to the state of things in our country, would authorize an inferior race of blacks to exterminate that superior race of whites, in whose ranks he himself appeared upon earth. He preached no such doctrines, but those of a contrary tenor, which inculcated the duty of fidelity and obedience on the part of the slave—humanity and kindness on the part of the master. His apostles did the same. St. Paul sent back a runaway slave. Onesimus, to his owner, with a letter of apology and supplication. He was not the man to harbor a runaway, much less to entice him from his master; and, least of all, to excite an insurrection."

"Sir, I regard with admiration, that is to say, with wonder, the sublime morality of those who cannot bear the abstract contemplation of slavery, at the distance of five hundred or a thousand miles off. It is entirely above, that is to say, it affects a vast superiority over the morality of the primitive Christians, the apostles of Christ, and Christ himself. Christ and the apostles appeared in a province of the Roman empire, when that empire was called the Roman world, and that world was filled with slaves. Forty millions was the estimated number, being one-fourth of the whole population. Single individuals held twenty thousand slaves. A freed man, one who had himself been a slave, died thepossessor of four thousand—such were the numbers. The rights of the owners over this multitude of human beings was that of life and death, without protection from law or mitigation from public sentiment. The scourge, the cross, the fish-pond, the den of the wild beast, and the arena of the gladiator, was the lot of the slave, upon the slightest expression of the master's will. A law of incredible atrocity made all slaves responsible with their own lives for the life of their master; it was the law that condemned the whole household of slaves to death, in case of the assassination of the master—a law under which as many as four hundred have been executed at a time. And these slaves were the white people of Europe and of Asia Minor, the Greeks and other nations, from whom the present inhabitants of the world derive the most valuable productions of the human mind. Christ saw all this—the number of the slaves—their hapless condition—and their white color, which was the same with his own; yet he said nothing against slavery; he preached no doctrines which led to insurrection and massacre; none which, in their application to the state of things in our country, would authorize an inferior race of blacks to exterminate that superior race of whites, in whose ranks he himself appeared upon earth. He preached no such doctrines, but those of a contrary tenor, which inculcated the duty of fidelity and obedience on the part of the slave—humanity and kindness on the part of the master. His apostles did the same. St. Paul sent back a runaway slave. Onesimus, to his owner, with a letter of apology and supplication. He was not the man to harbor a runaway, much less to entice him from his master; and, least of all, to excite an insurrection."

This allusion to the Missouri controversy, and invective against the free States for their part in it, brought a reply from Mr. Webster, showing what their conduct had been at the first introduction of the slavery topic in the Congress of the United States, and that they totally refused to interfere between master and slave in any way whatever. This is what he said:

"When the present constitution was submitted for the ratification of the people, there were those who imagined that the powers of the government which it proposed to establish might, perhaps, in some possible mode, be exerted in measures tending to the abolition of slavery. This suggestion would, of course, attract much attention in the southern conventions. In that of Virginia, Governor Randolph said:"'I hope there is none here who, considering the subject in the calm light of philosophy, will make an objection dishonorable to Virginia—that, at the moment they are securing the rights of their citizens, an objection is started, that there is a spark of hope that those unfortunate men now held in bondage may, by the operation of the general government, be made free.'"At the very first Congress, petitions on the subject were presented, if I mistake not, from different States. The Pennsylvania society for promoting the abolition of slavery, took a lead, and laid before Congress a memorial, praying Congress to promote the abolition by such powers as it possessed. This memorial was referred, in the House of Representatives, to a select committee consisting of Mr. Foster of New Hampshire; Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Huntington of Connecticut; Mr. Lawrence of New-York; Mr. Sinnickson of New Jersey; Mr. Hartley of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Parker of Virginia; all of them, sir, as you will observe, northern men, but the last. This committee made a report, which was committed to a committee of the whole house, and there considered and discussed on several days; and being amended, although in no material respect, it was made to express three distinct propositions on the subject of slavery and the slave-trade. First, in the words of the constitution, that Congress could not, prior to the year 1808, prohibit the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States, then existing, should think proper to admit. Second, that Congress had authority to restrain the citizens of the United States from carrying on the African slave-trade, for the purpose of supplying foreign countries. On this proposition, our laws against those who engage in that traffic, are founded. The third proposition, and that which bears on the present question, was expressed in the following terms:"'Resolved, That Congress have no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them in any of the States; it remaining with the several States alone to provide rules and regulations therein, which humanity and true policy may require.'"This resolution received the sanction of the House of Representatives so early as March, 1790. And now, sir, the honorable member will allow me to remind him, that not only were the select committee who reported the resolution, with a single exception, all northern men, but also that of the members then composing the House of Representatives, a large majority, I believe nearly two thirds, were northern men also."The house agreed to insert these resolutions in its journal, and, from that day to this, it has never been maintained or contended that Congress had any authority to regulate, or interfere with, the condition of slaves in the several States. No northern gentleman, to my knowledge, has moved any such question in either house of Congress."The fears of the South, whatever fears they might have entertained, were allayed and quieted by this early decision; and so remained, till they were excited afresh, without cause, but for collateral and indirect purposes. When it became necessary, or was thought so, by some political persons, to find an unvarying ground for the exclusionof northern men from confidence and from lead in the affairs of the republic, then, and not till then, the cry was raised, and the feeling industriously excited, that the influence of northern men in the public councils would endanger the relation of master and slave. For myself I claim no other merit than that this gross and enormous injustice towards the whole North, has not wrought upon me to change my opinions, or my political conduct. I hope I am above violating my principles, even under the smart of injury and false imputations. Unjust suspicions and undeserved reproach, whatever pain I may experience from them, will not induce me, I trust, nevertheless, to overstep the limits of constitutional duty, or to encroach on the rights of others. The domestic slavery of the South I leave where I find it—in the hands of their own governments. It is their affair, not mine. Nor do I complain of the peculiar effect which the magnitude of that population has had in the distribution of power under this federal government. We know, sir, that the representation of the states in the other house is not equal. We know that great advantage, in that respect, is enjoyed by the slaveholding States; and we know, too, that the intended equivalent for that advantage, that is to say, the imposition of direct taxes in the same ratio, has become merely nominal; the habit of the government being almost invariably to collect its revenues from other sources, and in other modes. Nevertheless, I do not complain: nor would I countenance any movement to alter this arrangement of representation. It is the original bargain, the compact—let it stand: let the advantage of it be fully enjoyed. The Union itself is too full of benefit to be hazarded in propositions for changing its original basis. I go for the constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is. But I am resolved not to submit, in silence, to accusations, either against myself individually, or against the North, wholly unfounded and unjust; accusations which impute to us a disposition to evade the constitutional compact, and to extend the power of the government over the internal laws and domestic condition of the States. All such accusations, wherever and whenever made, all insinuations of the existence of any such purposes, I know, and feel to be groundless and injurious. And we must confide in southern gentlemen themselves; we must trust to those whose integrity of heart and magnanimity of feeling will lead them to a desire to maintain and disseminate truth, and who possess the means of its diffusion with the southern public; we must leave it to them to disabuse that public of its prejudices. But, in the mean time, for my own part, I shall continue to act justly, whether those towards whom justice is exercised, receive it with candor or with contumely."

"'I hope there is none here who, considering the subject in the calm light of philosophy, will make an objection dishonorable to Virginia—that, at the moment they are securing the rights of their citizens, an objection is started, that there is a spark of hope that those unfortunate men now held in bondage may, by the operation of the general government, be made free.'

"At the very first Congress, petitions on the subject were presented, if I mistake not, from different States. The Pennsylvania society for promoting the abolition of slavery, took a lead, and laid before Congress a memorial, praying Congress to promote the abolition by such powers as it possessed. This memorial was referred, in the House of Representatives, to a select committee consisting of Mr. Foster of New Hampshire; Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Huntington of Connecticut; Mr. Lawrence of New-York; Mr. Sinnickson of New Jersey; Mr. Hartley of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Parker of Virginia; all of them, sir, as you will observe, northern men, but the last. This committee made a report, which was committed to a committee of the whole house, and there considered and discussed on several days; and being amended, although in no material respect, it was made to express three distinct propositions on the subject of slavery and the slave-trade. First, in the words of the constitution, that Congress could not, prior to the year 1808, prohibit the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States, then existing, should think proper to admit. Second, that Congress had authority to restrain the citizens of the United States from carrying on the African slave-trade, for the purpose of supplying foreign countries. On this proposition, our laws against those who engage in that traffic, are founded. The third proposition, and that which bears on the present question, was expressed in the following terms:

"'Resolved, That Congress have no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them in any of the States; it remaining with the several States alone to provide rules and regulations therein, which humanity and true policy may require.'

"This resolution received the sanction of the House of Representatives so early as March, 1790. And now, sir, the honorable member will allow me to remind him, that not only were the select committee who reported the resolution, with a single exception, all northern men, but also that of the members then composing the House of Representatives, a large majority, I believe nearly two thirds, were northern men also.

"The house agreed to insert these resolutions in its journal, and, from that day to this, it has never been maintained or contended that Congress had any authority to regulate, or interfere with, the condition of slaves in the several States. No northern gentleman, to my knowledge, has moved any such question in either house of Congress.

"The fears of the South, whatever fears they might have entertained, were allayed and quieted by this early decision; and so remained, till they were excited afresh, without cause, but for collateral and indirect purposes. When it became necessary, or was thought so, by some political persons, to find an unvarying ground for the exclusionof northern men from confidence and from lead in the affairs of the republic, then, and not till then, the cry was raised, and the feeling industriously excited, that the influence of northern men in the public councils would endanger the relation of master and slave. For myself I claim no other merit than that this gross and enormous injustice towards the whole North, has not wrought upon me to change my opinions, or my political conduct. I hope I am above violating my principles, even under the smart of injury and false imputations. Unjust suspicions and undeserved reproach, whatever pain I may experience from them, will not induce me, I trust, nevertheless, to overstep the limits of constitutional duty, or to encroach on the rights of others. The domestic slavery of the South I leave where I find it—in the hands of their own governments. It is their affair, not mine. Nor do I complain of the peculiar effect which the magnitude of that population has had in the distribution of power under this federal government. We know, sir, that the representation of the states in the other house is not equal. We know that great advantage, in that respect, is enjoyed by the slaveholding States; and we know, too, that the intended equivalent for that advantage, that is to say, the imposition of direct taxes in the same ratio, has become merely nominal; the habit of the government being almost invariably to collect its revenues from other sources, and in other modes. Nevertheless, I do not complain: nor would I countenance any movement to alter this arrangement of representation. It is the original bargain, the compact—let it stand: let the advantage of it be fully enjoyed. The Union itself is too full of benefit to be hazarded in propositions for changing its original basis. I go for the constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is. But I am resolved not to submit, in silence, to accusations, either against myself individually, or against the North, wholly unfounded and unjust; accusations which impute to us a disposition to evade the constitutional compact, and to extend the power of the government over the internal laws and domestic condition of the States. All such accusations, wherever and whenever made, all insinuations of the existence of any such purposes, I know, and feel to be groundless and injurious. And we must confide in southern gentlemen themselves; we must trust to those whose integrity of heart and magnanimity of feeling will lead them to a desire to maintain and disseminate truth, and who possess the means of its diffusion with the southern public; we must leave it to them to disabuse that public of its prejudices. But, in the mean time, for my own part, I shall continue to act justly, whether those towards whom justice is exercised, receive it with candor or with contumely."

This is what Mr. Webster said on the subject of slavery; and although it was in reply to an invective of my own, excited by the recent agitation of the Missouri question, I made no answer impugning its correctness; and must add that I never saw any thing in Mr. Webster inconsistent with what he then said; and believe that the same resolves could have been passed in the same way at any time during the thirty years that I was in Congress.

But the topic which became the leading feature of the whole debate; and gave it an interest which cannot die, was that of nullification—the assumed right of a state to annul an act of Congress—then first broached in our national legislature—and in the discussion of which Mr. Webster and Mr. Hayne were the champion speakers on opposite sides—the latter understood to be speaking the sentiments of the Vice-President, Mr. Calhoun. This new turn in the debate was thus brought about: Mr. Hayne, in the sectional nature of the discussion which had grown up, made allusions to the conduct of New England during the war of 1812; and especially to the assemblage known as the Hartford Convention, and to which designs unfriendly to the Union had been attributed. This gave Mr. Webster the rights both of defence and of retaliation; and he found material for the first in the character of the assemblage, and for the second in the public meetings which had taken place in South Carolina on the subject of the tariff—and at which resolves were passed, and propositions adopted significant of resistance to the act; and, consequently, of disloyalty to the Union. He, in his turn, made allusions to these resolves and propositions, until he drew out Mr. Hayne into their defence, and into an avowal of what has since obtained the current name of "Nullification;" although at the time (during the debate) it did not at all strike me as going the length which it afterwards avowed; nor have I ever believed that Mr. Hayne contemplated disunion, in any contingency, as one of its results. In entering upon the argument, Mr. Webster first summed up the doctrine, as he conceived it to be avowed, thus:

"I understand the honorable gentleman from South Carolina to maintain, that it is a right of the State legislature to interfere, whenever, in their judgment, this government transcends its constitutional limits, and to arrest the operation of its laws."I understand him to maintain this right, as a right existing under the constitution; not as a right to overthrow it, on the ground of extremenecessity, such as would justify violent revolution."I understand him to maintain an authority, on the part of the States, thus to interfere, for the purpose of correcting the exercise of power by the general government, of checking it, and of compelling it to conform to their opinion of the extent of its powers."I understand him to maintain that the ultimate power of judging of the constitutional extent of its own authority is not lodged exclusively in the general government, or any branch of it; but that, on the contrary, the States may lawfully decide for themselves, and each State for itself, whether, in a given case, the act of the general government transcends its power."I understand him to insist that, if the exigency of the case, in the opinion of any State government, require it, such State government may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an act of the general government, which it deems plainly and palpably unconstitutional."

"I understand him to maintain this right, as a right existing under the constitution; not as a right to overthrow it, on the ground of extremenecessity, such as would justify violent revolution.

"I understand him to maintain an authority, on the part of the States, thus to interfere, for the purpose of correcting the exercise of power by the general government, of checking it, and of compelling it to conform to their opinion of the extent of its powers.

"I understand him to maintain that the ultimate power of judging of the constitutional extent of its own authority is not lodged exclusively in the general government, or any branch of it; but that, on the contrary, the States may lawfully decide for themselves, and each State for itself, whether, in a given case, the act of the general government transcends its power.

"I understand him to insist that, if the exigency of the case, in the opinion of any State government, require it, such State government may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an act of the general government, which it deems plainly and palpably unconstitutional."

Mr. Hayne, evidently unprepared to admit, or fully deny, the propositions as broadly laid down, had recourse to a statement of his own; and, adopted for that purpose, the third resolve of the Virginia resolutions of the year 1798—reaffirmed in 1799. He rose immediately and said that, for the purpose of being clearly understood, he would state that his proposition was in the words of the Virginia resolution; and read it—

"That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact, as no farther valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them."

Thus were the propositions stated, and argued—each speaker taking his own proposition for his text; which in the end, (and as the Virginia resolutions turned out to be understood in the South Carolina sense) came to be identical. Mr. Webster, at one point, giving to his argument a practical form, and showing what the South Carolina doctrine would have accomplished in New England if it had been acted upon by the Hartford Convention, said:

"Let me here say, sir, that, if the gentleman's doctrine had been received and acted upon in New England, in the times of the embargo and non-intercourse, we should probably not now have been here. The government would, very likely, have gone to pieces, and crumbled into dust. No stronger case can ever arise than existed under those laws; no States can ever entertain a clearer conviction than the New England States then entertained; and if they had been under the influence of that heresy of opinion, as I must call it which the honorable member espouses, this Union would, in all probability, have been scattered to the four winds. I ask the gentleman, therefore, to apply his principles to that case; I ask him to come forth and declare, whether, in his opinion, the New England States would have been justified in interfering to break up the embargo system, under the conscientious opinions which they held upon it? Had they a right to annul that law? Does he admit or deny? If that which is thought palpably unconstitutional in South Carolina, justifies that State in arresting the progress of the law, tell me, whether that which was thought palpably unconstitutional also in Massachusetts, would have justified her in doing the same thing? Sir, I deny the whole doctrine. It has not a foot of ground in the constitution to stand on. No public man of reputation ever advanced it in Massachusetts, in the warmest times, or could maintain himself upon it there at any time."

He argued that the doctrine had no foundation either in the constitution, or in the Virginia resolutions—that the constitution makes the federal government act upon citizens within the States, and not upon the States themselves, as in the old confederation: that within their constitutional limits the laws of Congress were supreme—and that it was treasonable to resist them with force: and that the question of their constitutionality was to be decided by the Supreme Court. On this point, he said:

"The people, then, sir, erected this government. They gave it a constitution; and in that constitution they have enumerated the powers which they bestow on it. They have made it a limited government. They have defined its authority. They have restrained it to the exercise of such powers as are granted; and all others, they declare, are reserved to the States or to the people. But, sir, they have not stopped here. If they had, they would have accomplished but half their work. No definition can be so clear as to avoid possibility of doubt; no limitation so precise as to exclude all uncertainty. Who then shall construe this grant of the people? Who shall interpret their will, where it may be supposed they have left it doubtful? With whom do they repose this ultimate right of deciding on the powers of the government? Sir, they have settled all this in the fullest manner. They have left it with the government itself,in its appropriate branches. Sir, the very chief end, the main design, for which the whole constitution was framed and adopted was, to establish a government that should not be obliged to act through State agency, or depend on State opinion and State discretion. The people had had quite enough of that kind of government under the confederacy. Under that system, the legal action, the application of law to individuals, belonged exclusively to the States. Congress could only recommend; their acts were not of binding force, till the States had adopted and sanctioned them. Are we in that condition still? Are we yet at the mercy of State discretion, and State construction? Sir, if we are, then vain will be our attempt to maintain the constitution under which we sit. But, sir, the people have wisely provided, in the constitution itself, a proper, suitable mode and tribunal for settling questions of constitutional law. There are, in the constitution, grants of powers to Congress, and restrictions on these powers. There are, also, prohibitions on the States. Some authority must, therefore, necessarily exist, having the ultimate jurisdiction to fix and ascertain the interpretation of these grants, restrictions, and prohibitions. The constitution has, itself, pointed out, ordained, and established, that authority. How has it accomplished this great and essential end? By declaring, sir, that 'the constitution, and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.'"This, sir, was the first great step. By this, the supremacy of the constitution and laws of the United States is declared. The people so will it. No State law is to be valid which comes in conflict with the constitution or any law of the United States. But who shall decide this question of interference? To whom lies the last appeal? This, sir, the constitution itself decides also, by declaring 'that the judicial power shall extend to all cases arising under the constitution and laws of the United States.' These two provisions, sir, cover the whole ground. They are, in truth, the key-stone of the arch. With these, it is a constitution; without them it is a confederacy. In pursuance of these clear and express provisions, Congress established, at its very first session, in the Judicial Act, a mode for carrying them into full effect, and for bringing all questions of constitutional power to the final decision of the Supreme Court. It then, sir, became a government. It then had the means of self-protection; and, but for this, it would, in all probability, have been now among things which are past. Having constituted the government, and declared its powers, the people have farther said, that, since somebody must decide on the extent of these powers, the government shall itself decide; subject, always, like other popular governments, to its responsibility to the people. And now, sir, I repeat, how is it that a State legislature acquires any power to interfere? Who or what gives them the right to say to the people, 'we, who are your agents and servants for one purpose, will undertake to decide that your other agents and servants, appointed by you for another purpose, have transcended the authority you gave them?' The reply would be, I think, not impertinent: who made you judge over another's servants? To their own masters they stand or fall."

"This, sir, was the first great step. By this, the supremacy of the constitution and laws of the United States is declared. The people so will it. No State law is to be valid which comes in conflict with the constitution or any law of the United States. But who shall decide this question of interference? To whom lies the last appeal? This, sir, the constitution itself decides also, by declaring 'that the judicial power shall extend to all cases arising under the constitution and laws of the United States.' These two provisions, sir, cover the whole ground. They are, in truth, the key-stone of the arch. With these, it is a constitution; without them it is a confederacy. In pursuance of these clear and express provisions, Congress established, at its very first session, in the Judicial Act, a mode for carrying them into full effect, and for bringing all questions of constitutional power to the final decision of the Supreme Court. It then, sir, became a government. It then had the means of self-protection; and, but for this, it would, in all probability, have been now among things which are past. Having constituted the government, and declared its powers, the people have farther said, that, since somebody must decide on the extent of these powers, the government shall itself decide; subject, always, like other popular governments, to its responsibility to the people. And now, sir, I repeat, how is it that a State legislature acquires any power to interfere? Who or what gives them the right to say to the people, 'we, who are your agents and servants for one purpose, will undertake to decide that your other agents and servants, appointed by you for another purpose, have transcended the authority you gave them?' The reply would be, I think, not impertinent: who made you judge over another's servants? To their own masters they stand or fall."

With respect to the Virginia resolutions, on which Mr. Hayne relied, Mr. Webster disputed the interpretation put upon them—claimed for them an innocent and justifiable meaning—and exempted Mr. Madison from the suspicion of having penned a resolution asserting the right of a State legislature to annul an act of Congress, and thereby putting it in the power of one State to destroy a form of government which he had just labored so hard to establish. To this effect he said:

"I wish now, sir, to make a remark upon the Virginia resolutions of 1798. I cannot undertake to say how these resolutions were understood by those who passed them. Their language is not a little indefinite. In the case of the exercise, by Congress, of a dangerous power, not granted to them, the resolutions assert the right, on the part of the State, to interfere, and arrest the progress of the evil. This is susceptible of more than one interpretation. It may mean no more than that the States may interfere by complaint and remonstrance; or by proposing to the people an alteration of the federal constitution. This would all be quite unobjectionable; or, it may be, that no more is meant than to assert the general right of revolution, as against all governments, in cases of intolerable oppression. This no one doubts; and this, in my opinion, is all that he who framed the resolutions could have meant by it: for I shall not readily believe that he (Mr. Madison) was ever of opinion that a State, under the constitution, and in conformity with it, could, upon the ground of her own opinion of its unconstitutionality, however clear and palpable she might think the case, annul a law of Congress, so far as it should operate on herself, by her own legislative power."

Mr. Hayne, on his part, disclaimed all imitation of the Hartford Convention; and gave (as the practical part of his doctrine) the pledge of forcible resistance to any attempt to enforce unconstitutional laws. He said:

"Sir, unkind as my allusion to the Hartford Convention has been considered by its supporters, I apprehend that this disclaimer of the gentleman will be regarded as 'the unkindest cut of all.' When the gentleman spoke of the Carolina conventions of Colleton and Abbeville, let me tell him that he spoke of that which neverhad existence, except in his own imagination. There have, indeed, been meetings of the people in those districts, composed, sir, of as high-minded and patriotic men as any country can boast; but we have had no 'convention' as yet; and when South Carolina shall resort to such a measure for the redress of her grievances, let me tell the gentleman that, of all the assemblies that have ever been convened in this country, the Hartford Convention is the very last we shall consent to take as an example; nor will it find more favor in our eyes, from being recommended to us by the senator from Massachusetts. Sir, we would scorn to take advantage of difficulties created by a foreign war, to wring from the federal government a redress even of our grievances. We are standing up for our constitutional rights, in a time of profound peace; but if the country should, unhappily, be involved in a war to-morrow, we should be found flying to the standard of our country—first driving back the common enemy, and then insisting upon the restoration of our rights."The gentleman has called upon us to carry out our scheme practically. Now, sir, if I am correct in my view of this matter, then it follows, of course, that the right of a State being established, the federal government is bound to acquiesce in a solemn decision of a State, acting in its sovereign capacity, at least so far as to make an appeal to the people for an amendment to the constitution. This solemn decision of a State (made either through its legislature, or a convention, as may be supposed to be the proper organ of its sovereign will—a point I do not propose now to discuss) binds the federal government, under the highest constitutional obligation, not to resort to any means of coercion against the citizens of the dissenting State. How, then, can any collision ensue between the federal and State governments, unless, indeed, the former should determine to enforce the law by unconstitutional means? What could the federal government do, in such a case? Resort, says the gentleman, to the courts of justice. Now, can any man believe that, in the face of a solemn decision of a State, that an act of Congress is 'a gross, palpable, and deliberate violation of the constitution,' and the interposition of its sovereign authority to protect its citizens from the usurpation, that juries could be found ready merely to register the decrees of the Congress, wholly regardless of the unconstitutional character of their acts? Will the gentleman contend that juries are to be coerced to find verdicts at the point of the bayonet? And if not, how are the United States to enforce an act solemnly pronounced to be unconstitutional? But, if the attempt should be made to carry such a law into effect, by force, in what would the case differ from an attempt to carry into effect an act nullified by the courts, or to do any other unlawful and unwarrantable act? Suppose Congress should pass an agrarian law, or a law emancipating our slaves, or should commit any other gross violation of our constitutional rights, will any gentleman contend that the decision of every branch of the federal government, in favor of such laws, could prevent the States from declaring them null and void, and protecting their citizens from their operation?"Sir, if Congress should ever attempt to enforce any such laws, they would put themselves so clearly in the wrong, that no one could doubt the right of the State to exert its protecting power."Sir, the gentleman has alluded to that portion of the militia of South Carolina with which I have the honor to be connected, and asked how they would act in the event of the nullification of the tariff law by the State of South Carolina? The tone of the gentleman, on this subject, did not seem to me as respectful as I could have desired. I hope, sir, no imputation was intended."[Mr. Webster: "Not at all; just the reverse."]"Well, sir, the gentleman asks what their leaders would be able to read to them out of Coke upon Littleton, or any other law book, to justify their enterprise? Sir, let me assure the gentleman that, whenever any attempt shall be made from any quarter, to enforce unconstitutional laws, clearly violating our essential rights, our leaders (whoever they may be) will not be found reading black letter from the musty pages of old law books. They will look to the constitution, and when called upon, by the sovereign authority of the State, to preserve and protect the rights secured to them by the charter of their liberties, they will succeed in defending them, or 'perish in the last ditch.'"

"The gentleman has called upon us to carry out our scheme practically. Now, sir, if I am correct in my view of this matter, then it follows, of course, that the right of a State being established, the federal government is bound to acquiesce in a solemn decision of a State, acting in its sovereign capacity, at least so far as to make an appeal to the people for an amendment to the constitution. This solemn decision of a State (made either through its legislature, or a convention, as may be supposed to be the proper organ of its sovereign will—a point I do not propose now to discuss) binds the federal government, under the highest constitutional obligation, not to resort to any means of coercion against the citizens of the dissenting State. How, then, can any collision ensue between the federal and State governments, unless, indeed, the former should determine to enforce the law by unconstitutional means? What could the federal government do, in such a case? Resort, says the gentleman, to the courts of justice. Now, can any man believe that, in the face of a solemn decision of a State, that an act of Congress is 'a gross, palpable, and deliberate violation of the constitution,' and the interposition of its sovereign authority to protect its citizens from the usurpation, that juries could be found ready merely to register the decrees of the Congress, wholly regardless of the unconstitutional character of their acts? Will the gentleman contend that juries are to be coerced to find verdicts at the point of the bayonet? And if not, how are the United States to enforce an act solemnly pronounced to be unconstitutional? But, if the attempt should be made to carry such a law into effect, by force, in what would the case differ from an attempt to carry into effect an act nullified by the courts, or to do any other unlawful and unwarrantable act? Suppose Congress should pass an agrarian law, or a law emancipating our slaves, or should commit any other gross violation of our constitutional rights, will any gentleman contend that the decision of every branch of the federal government, in favor of such laws, could prevent the States from declaring them null and void, and protecting their citizens from their operation?

"Sir, if Congress should ever attempt to enforce any such laws, they would put themselves so clearly in the wrong, that no one could doubt the right of the State to exert its protecting power.

"Sir, the gentleman has alluded to that portion of the militia of South Carolina with which I have the honor to be connected, and asked how they would act in the event of the nullification of the tariff law by the State of South Carolina? The tone of the gentleman, on this subject, did not seem to me as respectful as I could have desired. I hope, sir, no imputation was intended."

[Mr. Webster: "Not at all; just the reverse."]

"Well, sir, the gentleman asks what their leaders would be able to read to them out of Coke upon Littleton, or any other law book, to justify their enterprise? Sir, let me assure the gentleman that, whenever any attempt shall be made from any quarter, to enforce unconstitutional laws, clearly violating our essential rights, our leaders (whoever they may be) will not be found reading black letter from the musty pages of old law books. They will look to the constitution, and when called upon, by the sovereign authority of the State, to preserve and protect the rights secured to them by the charter of their liberties, they will succeed in defending them, or 'perish in the last ditch.'"

I do not pretend to give the arguments of the gentlemen, or even their substance, but merely to state their propositions and their conclusions. For myself, I did not believe in any thing serious in the new interpretation given to the Virginia resolutions—did not believe in any thing practical from nullification—did not believe in forcible resistance to the tariff laws from South Carolina—did not believe in any scheme of disunion—believed, and still believe, in the patriotism of Mr. Hayne: and as he came into the argument on my side in the article of the public lands, so my wishes were with him, and I helped him where I could. Of this desire to help, and disbelief in disunion, I gave proof, in ridiculing, as well as I could, Mr. Webster's fine peroration to liberty and union, and really thought it out of place—a fine piece of rhetoric misplaced, for want of circumstances to justify it. He had concluded thus:

"When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not seehim shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards; but every where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart—LibertyandUnion, now and for ever, one and inseparable!"

These were noble sentiments, oratorically expressed, but too elaborately and too artistically composed for real grief in presence of a great calamity—of which calamity I saw no sign; and therefore deemed it a fit subject for gentle castigation: and essayed it thus:

"I proceed to a different theme. Among the novelties of this debate, is that part of the speech of the senator from Massachusetts which dwells with such elaboration of declamation and ornament, upon the love and blessings of union—the hatred and horror of disunion. It was a part of the senator's speech which brought into full play the favorite Ciceronian figure of amplification. It was up to the rule in that particular. But, it seemed to me, that there was another rule, and a higher, and a precedent one, which it violated. It was the rule of propriety; that rule which requires the fitness of things to be considered; which requires the time, the place, the subject, and the audience, to be considered; and condemns the delivery of the argument, and all its flowers, if it fails in congruence to these particulars. I thought the essay upon union and disunion had so failed. It came to us when we were not prepared for it; when there was nothing in the Senate, nor in the country to grace its introduction; nothing to give, or to receive, effect to, or from, the impassioned scene that we witnessed. It may be, it was the prophetic cry of the distracted daughter of Priam, breaking into the council, and alarming its tranquil members with vaticinations of the fall of Troy; but to me, it all sounded like the sudden proclamation for an earthquake, when the sun, the earth, the air, announced no such prodigy; when all the elements of nature were at rest, and sweet repose pervading the world. There was a time, and you, and I, and all of us, did see it, sir, when such a speech would have found, in its delivery, every attribute of a just and rigorous propriety! It was at a time, when the five-striped banner was waving over the land of the North! when the Hartford Convention was in session! when the language in the capitol was, "Peaceably, if we can; forcibly, if we must!" when the cry, out of doors, was, "the Potomac the boundary; the negro States by themselves! The Alleghanies the boundary; the Western savages by themselves! The Mississippi the boundary, let Missouri be governed by a prefect, or given up as a haunt for wild beasts!" That time was the fit occasion for this speech; and if it had been delivered then, either in the hall of the House of Representatives, or in the den of the Hartford Convention, or in the highway among the bearers and followers of the five-striped banner, what effects must it not have produced! What terror and consternation among the plotters of disunion! But, here, in this loyal and quiet assemblage, in this season of general tranquillity and universal allegiance, the whole performance has lost its effect for want of affinity, connection, or relation, to any subject depending, or sentiment expressed, in the Senate; for want of any application, or reference, to any event impending in the country."

I do not quote this passage for any thing that I now see out of place in that peroration; but for a quite different purpose—for the purpose of showing that I was slow to believe in any design to subvert this Union—that at the time of this great debate (February and March, 1830) I positively discredited it, and publicly proclaimed my incredulity. I did not want to believe it. I repulsed the belief. I pushed aside every circumstance that Mr. Webster relied on, and softened every expression that Mr. Hayne used, and considered him as limiting (practically) his threatened resistance to the tariff act, to the kind of resistance which Virginia made to the alien and sedition laws—which was an appeal to the reason, judgment and feelings of the other States—and which had its effect in the speedy repeal of those laws. Mr. Calhoun had not then uncovered his position in relation to nullification. I knew that Mr. Webster was speaking at him in all that he said to Mr. Hayne: but I would believe nothing against him except upon his own showing, or undoubted evidence. Although not a favorite statesman with me, I felt admiration for his high intellectual endowments, and respect for the integrity and purity of his private life. Mr. Hayne I cordially loved; and believed, and still believe, in the loyalty of his intentions to the Union. They were both from the South—that sister Carolina, of which the other was my native State, and in both of which I have relatives and hereditary friends—andfor which I still have the affections which none but the wicked ever lose for the land of their birth: and I felt as they did in all that relates to the tariff—except their remedy. But enough for the present. The occasion will come, when we arrive at the practical application of the modern nullification doctrine, to vindicate the constitution from the political solecism of containing within itself a suicidal principle, and to vindicate the Virginia resolutions, and their authors (and, in their own language), from the "anarchical and preposterous" interpretation which has been put upon their words.

A tax on Salt is an odious measure, hated by all people and in all time, and justly, because being an article of prime necessity, indispensable to man and to beast, and bountifully furnished them by the Giver of all good, the cost should not be burthened, nor the use be stinted by government regulation; and the principles of fair taxation would require it to be spared, because it is an agent, and a great one, in the development of many branches of agricultural and mechanical industry which add to the wealth of the country and produce revenue from the exports and consumption to which they give rise. People hate the salt tax, because they are obliged to have the salt, and cannot evade the tax: governments love the tax for the same reason—because people are obliged to pay it. This would seem to apply to governments despotic or monarchial, and not to those which are representative and popular. But representative governments sometimes have calamities—war for example—when subjects of taxation diminish as need for revenue increases: and then representative governments, like others, must resort to the objects which will supply its necessities. This has twice been the case with the article of salt in the United States. The duty on that article was carried up to a high tax in thequasiwar with France (1798), having been small before; and then only imposed as a war measure—to cease as soon as the war was over. But all governments work alike on the imposition and release of taxes—easy to get them on in a time of necessity—hard to get them off when the necessity has passed. So of this first war tax on salt. The "speck of war" with France, visible above the horizon in '98, soon sunk below it; and the sunshine of peace prevailed. In the year 1800—two years after the duty was raised to its maximum—the countries were on the most friendly terms; but it was not until 1807, and under the whole power of Mr. Jefferson's administration, that this temporary tax was abolished; and with it the whole system of fishing bounties and allowances founded upon it.

In the war of 1812, at the commencement of the war with Great Britain, it was renewed, with its concomitant of fishing bounties and allowances; but still as a temporary measure, limited to the termination of the war which induced it, and one year thereafter. The war terminated in 1815, and the additional year expired in 1816; but before the year was out, the tax was continued, not for a definite period, but without time—on the specious argument that, if a time was fixed, it would be difficult to get it off before the time was out: but if unfixed, it would be easy to get it off at any time: and all agreed that that was to be soon—that a temporary continuance of all the taxes was necessary until the revenue, deranged by the war, should become regular and adequate. It was continued on this specious argument—and remained in full until General Jackson's administration—and, in part, until this day (1850)—the fishing bounties and allowances in full: and that is the working of all governments in the levy and repeal of taxes. I found the salt tax in full force when I came to the Senate in 1820, strengthened by time, sustained by a manufacturing interest, and by the fishing interest (which made the tax a source of profit in the supposed return of the duty in the shape of bounties and allowances): and by the whole American system; which took the tax into its keeping, as a protection to a branch of home industry. I found efforts being made in each House to suppress this burthen upon a prime necessary of life; and, in the session 1829-'30, delivered a speech in support of the laudable endeavor, of which these are some parts:

"Mr. Benton commenced his speech, by saying that he was no advocate for unprofitable debate,and had no ambition to add his name to the catalogue of barren orators; but that there were cases in which speaking did good; cases in which moderate abilities produced great results, and he believed the question of repealing the salt tax to be one of those cases. It had certainly been so in England. There the salt tax had been overthrown by the labors of plain men, under circumstances much more unfavorable to their undertaking than exist here. The English salt tax had continued one hundred and fifty years. It was cherished by the ministry, to whom it yielded a million and a half sterling of revenue; it was defended by the domestic salt makers, to whom it gave a monopoly of the home market; it was consecrated by time, having subsisted for five generations; it was fortified by the habits of the people, who were born, and had grown gray under it; and it was sanctioned by the necessities of the State, which required every resource of rigorous taxation. Yet it was overthrown; and the overthrow was effected by two debates, conducted, not by the orators whose renown has filled the world—not by Sheridan, Burke, Pitt, and Fox—but by plain, business men—Mr. Calcraft, Mr. Curwen, and Mr. Egerton. These patriotic members of the British Parliament commenced the war upon the British salt tax in 1817, and finished it in 1822. They commenced with the omens and auspices all against them, and ended with complete success. They abolished the salt taxin toto. They swept it all off, bravely rejecting all compromises when they had got their adversaries half vanquished, and carrying their appeals home to the people, until they had roused a spirit before which the ministry quailed, the monopolizers trembled, the Parliament gave way, and the tax fell. This example is encouraging; it is full of consolation and of hope; it shows what zeal and perseverance can do in a good cause: it shows that the cause of truth and justice is triumphant when its advocates are bold and faithful. It leads to the conviction that the American salt tax will fall as the British tax did, as soon as the people shall see that its continuance is a burthen to them, without adequate advantage to the government, and that its repeal is in their own hands."The enormous amount of the tax was the first point to which Mr. B. would direct his attention. He said it was near three hundred per cent. upon Liverpool blown, and four hundred per cent. upon alum salt; but as the Liverpool was a very inferior salt, and not much used in the West, he would confine his observations to the salt of Portugal and the West Indies, called by the general name of alum. The import price of this salt was from eight to nine cents a bushel of fifty-six pounds each, and the duty upon that bushel was twenty cents. Here was a tax of upwards of two hundred per cent. Then the merchant had his profit upon the duty as well as the cost of the article: and when it went through the hands of several merchants before it got to the consumer, each had his profit upon it; and whenever this profit amounted to fifty per cent. upon the duty, it was upwards of one hundred per cent. upon the salt. Then, the tariff laws have deprived the consumer of thirty-four pounds in the bushel, by substituting weight for measure, and that weight a false one. The true weight of a measured bushel of alum salt is eighty-four pounds; but the British tariff laws, for the sake of multiplying the bushels, and increasing the product of the tax, substituted weight for measure; and our tariff laws copied after them, and adopted their standard of fifty-six pounds to the bushel."Mr. B. entered into statistical details, to show the aggregate amount of this tax, which he stated to be enormous, and contrary to every principle of taxation, even if taxes were so necessary as to justify the taxing of salt. He stated the importation of foreign salt, in 1829, at six millions of bushels, round numbers; the value seven hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, and the tax at twenty cents a bushel, one million two hundred thousand dollars, the merchant's profit upon that duty at fifty per cent. is six hundred thousand dollars; and the secret or hidden tax, in the shape of false weight for true measure, at the rate of thirty pounds in the bushel, was four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Here, then, is taxation to the amount of about two millions and a quarter of dollars, upon an article costing seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and that article one of prime necessity and universal use, ranking next after bread, in the catalogue of articles for human subsistence."The distribution of this enormous tax upon the different sections of the Union, was the next object of Mr. B.'s inquiry; and, for this purpose, he viewed the Union under three great divisions—the Northeast, the South, and the West. To the northeast, and especially to some parts of it, he considered the salt tax to be no burthen, but rather a benefit and a money-making business. The fishing allowances and bounties produced this effect. In consideration of the salt duty, the curers and exporters of fish are allowed money out of the treasury, to the amount, as it was intended, of the salt duty paid by them; but it has been proved to be twice as much. The annual allowance is about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the aggregate drawn from the treasury since the first imposition of the salt duty in 1789, is shown by the treasury returns to be five millions of dollars. Much of this is drawn by undue means, as is shown by the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, at the commencement of the present session, page eight of the annual report on the finances. The Northeast makes much salt at home, and chiefly by solar evaporation, which fits it for curing fish and provisions. Much of it is proved, by the returns of the salt makers, to be used in the fisheries, while the fisheries are drawing money from the treasury under the laws which intended to indemnify them for the duty paid on foreign salt.To this section of the Union, then, the salt tax is not felt as a burthen."Let us proceed to the South. In this section there are but few salt works, and no bounties or allowances, as there are no fisheries. The consumers are thrown almost entirely upon the foreign supply, and chiefly use the Liverpool blown. The import price of this is about fifteen cents a bushel; the weight and strength is less than that of alum salt; and the tax falls heavily and directly upon the people, to the whole amount of their consumption. It is a heavy burthen upon the South."The West is the last section to be viewed, and it will be found to be the true seat of the most oppressive operations of the salt tax. The domestic supply is high in price, deficient in quantity, and altogether unfit for one of the greatest purposes for which salt is there wanted—curing provisions for exportation. A foreign supply is indispensable, and alum salt is the kind used. The import price of this kind, from the West Indies, is nine cents a bushel; from Portugal, eight cents a bushel. At these prices, the West could be supplied with this salt at New Orleans, if the duty was abolished; but, in consequence of the duty, it costs thirty-seven and a half cents per bushel there, being four times the import price of the article, and seventy-five cents per bushel at Louisville and other central parts of the valley of the Mississippi. This enormous price, resolved into its component parts, is thus made up: 1. Eight or nine cents a bushel for the salt. 2. Twenty cents for duty. 3. Eight or ten cents for merchant's profit at New Orleans. 4. Sixteen or seventeen cents for freight to Louisville. 5. Fifteen or twenty cents for the second merchant's profit, who counts his per centum on his whole outlay. In all, about seventy-five cents for a bushel of fifty pounds, which, if there was no duty, and the tariff regulations of weight for measure abolished, would be bought in New Orleans, by the measured bushel of eighty pounds weight, for eight or nine cents, and would be brought up the river, by steamboats, at the rate of thirty-three and a third cents per hundred weight. It thus appears that the salt tax falls heaviest upon the West. It is an error to suppose that the South is the greatest sufferer. The West wants it for every purpose the South does, and two great purposes besides—curing provision for export, and salting stock. The West uses alum salt, and on this the duty is heaviest, because the price is lower, and the weight greater. Twenty cents on salt which costs eight or nine cents a bushel is a much heavier duty than on that which costs fifteen cents; and then the deception in the substitution of weight for measure is much greater in alum salt, which weighs so much more than the Liverpool blown. Like the South, the West receives no bounties or allowances on account of the salt duties. This may be fair in the South, where the imported salt is not re-exported upon fish or provisions; but it is unfair in the West, where the exportation of beef, pork, bacon, cheese, and butter, is prodigious, and the foreign salt re-exported upon the whole of it."Mr. B. then argued, with great warmth, that the provision curers and exporters were entitled to the same bounties and allowances with the exporters of fish. The claims of each rested upon the same principle, and upon the principle of all drawbacks—that of a reimbursement of the duty which was paid on the imported salt when re-exported on fish and provisions. The same principle covers the beef and pork of the farmer, which covers the fish of the fisherman; and such was the law in the beginning. The first act of Congress, in the year 1789, which imposed a duty upon salt, allowed a bounty, in lieu of a drawback, on beef and pork exported, as well as fish. The bounty was the same in each case; it was five cents a quintal on dried fish, five cents a barrel on pickled fish, and five on beef and pork. As the duty on salt was increased, the bounties and allowances were increased also. Fish and salted beef and pork fared alike for the first twenty years."They fared alike till the revival of the salt tax at the commencement of the late war. Then they parted company; bounties and allowances were continued to the fisheries, and dropped on beef and pork; and this has been the case ever since. The exporters of fish are now drawing at the rate of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum, as a reimbursement for their salt tax; while exporters of provisions draw nothing. The aggregate of the fishing bounties and allowances, actually drawn from the treasury, exceeds five millions of dollars; while the exporters of provisions, who get nothing, would have been entitled to draw a greater sum; for the export in salted provisions exceeds the value of exported fish."Mr. B. could not quit this part of his subject, without endeavoring to fix the attention of the Senate upon the provision trade of the West. He took this trade in its largest sense, as including the export trade of beef, pork, bacon, cheese, and butter, to foreign countries, especially the West Indies; the domestic trade to the Lower Mississippi and the Southern States; the neighborhood trade, as supplying the towns in the upper States, the miners in Missouri and the Upper Mississippi, the army and the navy; and the various professions, which, being otherwise employed, did not raise their own provisions. The amount of this trade, in this comprehensive view, was prodigious, and annually increasing, and involving in its current almost the entire population of the West, either as the growers and makers of the provisions, the curers, exporters, or consumers. The amount could scarcely be ascertained. What was exported from New Orleans was shown to be great; but it was only a fraction of the whole trade. He declared it to be entitled to the favorable consideration of Congress, and that the repeal of the salt duty was the greatest favor, if an act of justice ought to comeunder the name of favor, which could be rendered it, as the salt was necessary in growing the hogs and cattle, as well as in preparing the beef and pork for market. A reduction in the price of salt, next to a reduction in the price of land, was the greatest blessing which the federal government could now confer upon the West. Mr. B. referred to the example of England, who favored her provision curers, and permitted them to import alum salt free of duty, for the encouragement of the provision trade, even when her own salt manufacturers were producing an abundant and superfluous supply of common salt. He showed that she did more; that she extended the same relief and encouragement to the Irish; and he read from the British statute book an act of the British Parliament, passed in 1807, entitled 'An act to encourage the export of salted beef and pork from Ireland,' which allowed a bounty of ten pence sterling on every hundred weight of beef and pork so exported, in consideration of the duty paid on the salt which was used in the curing of it. He stated, that, at a later period, the duty had been entirely repealed, and the Irish, in common with other British subjects, allowed a free trade with all the world, in salt; and then demanded, in the most emphatic manner, if the people of the West could not obtain from the American Congress the justice which the oppressed Irish had procured from a British Parliament, composed of hereditary nobles, and filled with representatives of rotten boroughs, and slavish retainers of the king's ministers."The 'American system' has taken the salt tax under its shelter and protection. The principles of that system, as I understand them, and practise upon them, are to tax, through the custom-house, the foreign rivals of our own essential productions, when, by that taxation, an adequate supply of the same article, as good and as cheap, can be made at home. These were the principles of the system (Mr. B. said) when he was initiated, and, if they had changed since, he had not changed with them; and he apprehended a promulgation of the change would produce a schism amongst its followers. Taking these to be the principles of the system, let the salt tax be brought to its test. In the first place, the domestic manufacture had enjoyed all possible protection. The duty was near three hundred per cent. on Liverpool salt, and four hundred upon alum salt; and to this must be added, so far as relates to all the interior manufactories, the protection arising from transportation, frequently equal to two or three hundred per cent. more. This great and excessive protection has been enjoyed, without interruption, for the last eighteen years, and partially for twenty years longer. This surely is time enough for the trial of a manufacture which requires but little skill or experience to carry it on. Now for the results. Have the domestic manufactories produced an adequate supply for the country? They have not; nor half enough. The production of the last year (1829) as shown in the returns to the Secretary of the Treasury, is about five millions of bushels; the importation of foreign salt, for the same period, as shown by the custom-house returns, is five million nine hundred and forty-five thousand five hundred and forty-seven bushels. This shows the consumption to be eleven millions of bushels, of which five are domestic. Here the failure in the essential particular of an adequate supply is more than one half. In the next place, how is it in point of price? Is the domestic article furnished as cheap as the foreign? Far from it, as already shown, and still further, as can be shown. The price of the domestic, along the coast of the Atlantic States, varies, at the works, from thirty-seven and a half to fifty cents; in the interior, the usual prices, at the works, are from thirty-three and a third cents to one dollar for the bushel of fifty pounds, which can nearly be put into a half bushel measure. The prices of the foreign salt, at the import cities, as shown in the custom-house returns for 1829, are, for the Liverpool blown, about fifteen cents for the bushel of fifty-six pounds; for Turk's Island and other West India salt, about nine cents; for St. Ubes and other Portugal salt, about eight cents; for Spanish salt, Bay of Biscay and Gibraltar, about seven cents; from the Island of Malta, six cents. Leaving out the Liverpool salt, which is made by boiling, and, therefore, contains slack and bittern, a septic ingredient, which promotes putrefaction, and renders that salt unfit for curing provisions, and which is not used in the West, and the average price of the strong, pure, alum salt, made by solar evaporation, in hot climates, is about eight cents to the bushel. Here, then, is another lamentable failure. Instead of being sold as cheap as the foreign, the domestic salt is from four to twelve times the price of alum salt. The last inquiry is as to the quality of the domestic article. Is it as good as the foreign? This is the most essential application of the test: and here again the failure is decisive. The domestic salt will not cure provisions for exportation (the little excepted which is made, in the Northeast, by solar evaporation), nor for consumption in the South, nor for long keeping at the army posts, nor for voyages with the navy. For all these purposes it is worthless, and useless, and the provisions which are put up in it are lost, or have to be repacked, at a great expense, in alum salt. This fact is well known throughout the West, where too many citizens have paid the penalty of trusting to domestic salt, to be duped or injured by it any longer."And here he submitted to the Senate, that the American system, without a gross departure from its original principles, could not cover this duty any longer. It has had the full benefit of that system in high duties, imposed for a long time, on foreign salt; it had not produced an adequate supply for the country, nor half a supply; nor at as cheap a rate, by three hundred or one thousand per cent.; and what it did supplyso far from being equal in quantity, could not even be used as a substitute for the great and important business of the provision trade. The amount of so much of that trade as went to foreign countries, Mr. B. showed to be sixty-six thousand barrels of beef, fifty-four thousand barrels of pork, two millions of pounds of bacon, two millions of pounds of butter, and one million of pounds of cheese; and he considered the supply for the army and navy, and for consumption in the South, to exceed the quantity exported."It cannot be necessary here to dilate upon the uses of salt. But, in repealing that duty in England, it was thought worthy of notice that salt was necessary to the health, growth, and fattening of hogs, cattle, sheep, and horses; that it was a preservative of hay and clover, and restored moulded and flooded hay to its good and wholesome state, and made even straw and chaff available as food for cattle. The domestic salt makers need not speak of protection against alum salt. No quantity of duty will keep it out. The people must have it for the provision trade; and the duty upon that kind of salt is a grievous burthen upon them, without being of the least advantage to the salt makers."Mr. B. said, there was no argument which could be used here, in favor of continuing this duty, which was not used, and used in vain, in England; and many were used there, of much real force, which cannot be used here. The American system, by name, was not impressed into the service of the tax there, but its doctrines were; and he read a part of the report of the committee on salt duties, in 1817, to prove it. It was the statement of the agent of the British salt manufacturers, Mr. William Horne, who was sworn and examined as a witness. He said: 'I will commence by referring to the evidence I gave upon the subject of rock salt, in order to establish the presumption of the national importance of the salt trade, arising from the large extent of British capital employed in the trade, and the considerable number of persons dependant upon it for support. I, at the same time, stated that the salt trade was in a very depressed state, and that it continued to fall off. I think it cannot be doubted that the salt trade, in common with all staple British manufactures, is entitled to the protection of government; and the British manufacturers of salt consider that, in common with other manufacturers of this country, they are entitled to such protection, in particular from a competition at home with foreign manufacturers; and, in consequence, they hope to see a prohibitory duty on foreign salt.'"Such was the petition of the British manufacturers. They urged the amount of their capital, the depressed state of their business, the number of persons dependent upon it for support, the duty of the government to protect it, the necessity for a prohibitory duty on foreign salt, and the fact that they were making more than the country could consume. The ministry backed them with a call for the continuance of the revenue, one million five hundred thousand pounds sterling, derived from the salt tax; and with a threat to lay that amount upon something else, if it was taken off of salt. All would not do. Mr. Calcraft, and his friends, appealed to the rights and interests of the people, as overruling considerations in questions of taxation. They denounced the tax itself as little less than impiety, and an attack upon the goodness and wisdom of God, who had filled the bowels of the earth, and the waves of the sea, with salt for the use and blessing of man, and to whom it was denied, its use clogged and fettered, by odious and abominable taxes. They demanded the whole repeal; and when the ministry and the manufacturers, overpowered by the voice of the people, offered to give up three fourths of the tax, they bravely resisted the proposition, stood out for total repeal, and carried it."Mr. B. could not doubt a like result here, and he looked forward, with infinite satisfaction, to the era of a free trade in salt. The first effect of such a trade would be, to reduce the price of alum salt, at the import cities, to eight or nine cents a bushel. The second effect would be, a return to the measured bushel, by getting rid of the tariff regulation, which substituted weight for measure, and reduced eighty-four pounds to fifty. The third effect would be, to establish a great trade, carried on by barter, between the inhabitants of the United States and the people of the countries which produce alum salt, to the infinite advantage and comfort of both parties. He examined the operation of this barter at New Orleans. He said, this pure and superior salt, made entirely by solar evaporation, came from countries which were deficient in the articles of food, in which the West abounded. It came from the West Indies, from the coasts of Spain and Portugal, and from places in the Mediterranean; all of which are at this time consumers of American provisions, and take from us beef, pork, bacon, rice, corn, corn meal, flour, potatoes, &c. Their salt costs them almost nothing. It is made on the sea beach by the power of the sun, with little care and aid from man. It is brought to the United States as ballast, costing nothing for the transportation across the sea. The duty alone prevents it from coming to the United States in the most unbounded quantity. Remove the duty, and the trade would be prodigious. A bushel of corn is worth more than a sack of salt to the half-starved people to whom the sea and the sun give as much of this salt as they will rake up and pack away. The levee at New Orleans would be covered—the warehouses would be crammed with salt; the barter trade would become extensive and universal, a bushel of corn, or of potatoes, a few pounds of butter, or a few pounds of beef or pork, would purchase a sack of salt; the steamboats would bring it up for a trifle; and all the upper States of the Great Valley, where salt is so scarce, so dear, and so indispensable for rearing stock and curing provisions,in addition to all its obvious uses, would be cheaply and abundantly supplied with that article. Mr. B. concluded with saying, that, next to the reduction of the price of public lands, and the free use of the earth for labor and cultivation, he considered the abolition of the salt tax, and a free trade in foreign salt, as the greatest blessing which the federal government could now bestow upon the people of the West."

"The enormous amount of the tax was the first point to which Mr. B. would direct his attention. He said it was near three hundred per cent. upon Liverpool blown, and four hundred per cent. upon alum salt; but as the Liverpool was a very inferior salt, and not much used in the West, he would confine his observations to the salt of Portugal and the West Indies, called by the general name of alum. The import price of this salt was from eight to nine cents a bushel of fifty-six pounds each, and the duty upon that bushel was twenty cents. Here was a tax of upwards of two hundred per cent. Then the merchant had his profit upon the duty as well as the cost of the article: and when it went through the hands of several merchants before it got to the consumer, each had his profit upon it; and whenever this profit amounted to fifty per cent. upon the duty, it was upwards of one hundred per cent. upon the salt. Then, the tariff laws have deprived the consumer of thirty-four pounds in the bushel, by substituting weight for measure, and that weight a false one. The true weight of a measured bushel of alum salt is eighty-four pounds; but the British tariff laws, for the sake of multiplying the bushels, and increasing the product of the tax, substituted weight for measure; and our tariff laws copied after them, and adopted their standard of fifty-six pounds to the bushel.

"Mr. B. entered into statistical details, to show the aggregate amount of this tax, which he stated to be enormous, and contrary to every principle of taxation, even if taxes were so necessary as to justify the taxing of salt. He stated the importation of foreign salt, in 1829, at six millions of bushels, round numbers; the value seven hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, and the tax at twenty cents a bushel, one million two hundred thousand dollars, the merchant's profit upon that duty at fifty per cent. is six hundred thousand dollars; and the secret or hidden tax, in the shape of false weight for true measure, at the rate of thirty pounds in the bushel, was four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Here, then, is taxation to the amount of about two millions and a quarter of dollars, upon an article costing seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and that article one of prime necessity and universal use, ranking next after bread, in the catalogue of articles for human subsistence.

"The distribution of this enormous tax upon the different sections of the Union, was the next object of Mr. B.'s inquiry; and, for this purpose, he viewed the Union under three great divisions—the Northeast, the South, and the West. To the northeast, and especially to some parts of it, he considered the salt tax to be no burthen, but rather a benefit and a money-making business. The fishing allowances and bounties produced this effect. In consideration of the salt duty, the curers and exporters of fish are allowed money out of the treasury, to the amount, as it was intended, of the salt duty paid by them; but it has been proved to be twice as much. The annual allowance is about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the aggregate drawn from the treasury since the first imposition of the salt duty in 1789, is shown by the treasury returns to be five millions of dollars. Much of this is drawn by undue means, as is shown by the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, at the commencement of the present session, page eight of the annual report on the finances. The Northeast makes much salt at home, and chiefly by solar evaporation, which fits it for curing fish and provisions. Much of it is proved, by the returns of the salt makers, to be used in the fisheries, while the fisheries are drawing money from the treasury under the laws which intended to indemnify them for the duty paid on foreign salt.To this section of the Union, then, the salt tax is not felt as a burthen.

"Let us proceed to the South. In this section there are but few salt works, and no bounties or allowances, as there are no fisheries. The consumers are thrown almost entirely upon the foreign supply, and chiefly use the Liverpool blown. The import price of this is about fifteen cents a bushel; the weight and strength is less than that of alum salt; and the tax falls heavily and directly upon the people, to the whole amount of their consumption. It is a heavy burthen upon the South.

"The West is the last section to be viewed, and it will be found to be the true seat of the most oppressive operations of the salt tax. The domestic supply is high in price, deficient in quantity, and altogether unfit for one of the greatest purposes for which salt is there wanted—curing provisions for exportation. A foreign supply is indispensable, and alum salt is the kind used. The import price of this kind, from the West Indies, is nine cents a bushel; from Portugal, eight cents a bushel. At these prices, the West could be supplied with this salt at New Orleans, if the duty was abolished; but, in consequence of the duty, it costs thirty-seven and a half cents per bushel there, being four times the import price of the article, and seventy-five cents per bushel at Louisville and other central parts of the valley of the Mississippi. This enormous price, resolved into its component parts, is thus made up: 1. Eight or nine cents a bushel for the salt. 2. Twenty cents for duty. 3. Eight or ten cents for merchant's profit at New Orleans. 4. Sixteen or seventeen cents for freight to Louisville. 5. Fifteen or twenty cents for the second merchant's profit, who counts his per centum on his whole outlay. In all, about seventy-five cents for a bushel of fifty pounds, which, if there was no duty, and the tariff regulations of weight for measure abolished, would be bought in New Orleans, by the measured bushel of eighty pounds weight, for eight or nine cents, and would be brought up the river, by steamboats, at the rate of thirty-three and a third cents per hundred weight. It thus appears that the salt tax falls heaviest upon the West. It is an error to suppose that the South is the greatest sufferer. The West wants it for every purpose the South does, and two great purposes besides—curing provision for export, and salting stock. The West uses alum salt, and on this the duty is heaviest, because the price is lower, and the weight greater. Twenty cents on salt which costs eight or nine cents a bushel is a much heavier duty than on that which costs fifteen cents; and then the deception in the substitution of weight for measure is much greater in alum salt, which weighs so much more than the Liverpool blown. Like the South, the West receives no bounties or allowances on account of the salt duties. This may be fair in the South, where the imported salt is not re-exported upon fish or provisions; but it is unfair in the West, where the exportation of beef, pork, bacon, cheese, and butter, is prodigious, and the foreign salt re-exported upon the whole of it.

"Mr. B. then argued, with great warmth, that the provision curers and exporters were entitled to the same bounties and allowances with the exporters of fish. The claims of each rested upon the same principle, and upon the principle of all drawbacks—that of a reimbursement of the duty which was paid on the imported salt when re-exported on fish and provisions. The same principle covers the beef and pork of the farmer, which covers the fish of the fisherman; and such was the law in the beginning. The first act of Congress, in the year 1789, which imposed a duty upon salt, allowed a bounty, in lieu of a drawback, on beef and pork exported, as well as fish. The bounty was the same in each case; it was five cents a quintal on dried fish, five cents a barrel on pickled fish, and five on beef and pork. As the duty on salt was increased, the bounties and allowances were increased also. Fish and salted beef and pork fared alike for the first twenty years.

"They fared alike till the revival of the salt tax at the commencement of the late war. Then they parted company; bounties and allowances were continued to the fisheries, and dropped on beef and pork; and this has been the case ever since. The exporters of fish are now drawing at the rate of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum, as a reimbursement for their salt tax; while exporters of provisions draw nothing. The aggregate of the fishing bounties and allowances, actually drawn from the treasury, exceeds five millions of dollars; while the exporters of provisions, who get nothing, would have been entitled to draw a greater sum; for the export in salted provisions exceeds the value of exported fish.

"Mr. B. could not quit this part of his subject, without endeavoring to fix the attention of the Senate upon the provision trade of the West. He took this trade in its largest sense, as including the export trade of beef, pork, bacon, cheese, and butter, to foreign countries, especially the West Indies; the domestic trade to the Lower Mississippi and the Southern States; the neighborhood trade, as supplying the towns in the upper States, the miners in Missouri and the Upper Mississippi, the army and the navy; and the various professions, which, being otherwise employed, did not raise their own provisions. The amount of this trade, in this comprehensive view, was prodigious, and annually increasing, and involving in its current almost the entire population of the West, either as the growers and makers of the provisions, the curers, exporters, or consumers. The amount could scarcely be ascertained. What was exported from New Orleans was shown to be great; but it was only a fraction of the whole trade. He declared it to be entitled to the favorable consideration of Congress, and that the repeal of the salt duty was the greatest favor, if an act of justice ought to comeunder the name of favor, which could be rendered it, as the salt was necessary in growing the hogs and cattle, as well as in preparing the beef and pork for market. A reduction in the price of salt, next to a reduction in the price of land, was the greatest blessing which the federal government could now confer upon the West. Mr. B. referred to the example of England, who favored her provision curers, and permitted them to import alum salt free of duty, for the encouragement of the provision trade, even when her own salt manufacturers were producing an abundant and superfluous supply of common salt. He showed that she did more; that she extended the same relief and encouragement to the Irish; and he read from the British statute book an act of the British Parliament, passed in 1807, entitled 'An act to encourage the export of salted beef and pork from Ireland,' which allowed a bounty of ten pence sterling on every hundred weight of beef and pork so exported, in consideration of the duty paid on the salt which was used in the curing of it. He stated, that, at a later period, the duty had been entirely repealed, and the Irish, in common with other British subjects, allowed a free trade with all the world, in salt; and then demanded, in the most emphatic manner, if the people of the West could not obtain from the American Congress the justice which the oppressed Irish had procured from a British Parliament, composed of hereditary nobles, and filled with representatives of rotten boroughs, and slavish retainers of the king's ministers.

"The 'American system' has taken the salt tax under its shelter and protection. The principles of that system, as I understand them, and practise upon them, are to tax, through the custom-house, the foreign rivals of our own essential productions, when, by that taxation, an adequate supply of the same article, as good and as cheap, can be made at home. These were the principles of the system (Mr. B. said) when he was initiated, and, if they had changed since, he had not changed with them; and he apprehended a promulgation of the change would produce a schism amongst its followers. Taking these to be the principles of the system, let the salt tax be brought to its test. In the first place, the domestic manufacture had enjoyed all possible protection. The duty was near three hundred per cent. on Liverpool salt, and four hundred upon alum salt; and to this must be added, so far as relates to all the interior manufactories, the protection arising from transportation, frequently equal to two or three hundred per cent. more. This great and excessive protection has been enjoyed, without interruption, for the last eighteen years, and partially for twenty years longer. This surely is time enough for the trial of a manufacture which requires but little skill or experience to carry it on. Now for the results. Have the domestic manufactories produced an adequate supply for the country? They have not; nor half enough. The production of the last year (1829) as shown in the returns to the Secretary of the Treasury, is about five millions of bushels; the importation of foreign salt, for the same period, as shown by the custom-house returns, is five million nine hundred and forty-five thousand five hundred and forty-seven bushels. This shows the consumption to be eleven millions of bushels, of which five are domestic. Here the failure in the essential particular of an adequate supply is more than one half. In the next place, how is it in point of price? Is the domestic article furnished as cheap as the foreign? Far from it, as already shown, and still further, as can be shown. The price of the domestic, along the coast of the Atlantic States, varies, at the works, from thirty-seven and a half to fifty cents; in the interior, the usual prices, at the works, are from thirty-three and a third cents to one dollar for the bushel of fifty pounds, which can nearly be put into a half bushel measure. The prices of the foreign salt, at the import cities, as shown in the custom-house returns for 1829, are, for the Liverpool blown, about fifteen cents for the bushel of fifty-six pounds; for Turk's Island and other West India salt, about nine cents; for St. Ubes and other Portugal salt, about eight cents; for Spanish salt, Bay of Biscay and Gibraltar, about seven cents; from the Island of Malta, six cents. Leaving out the Liverpool salt, which is made by boiling, and, therefore, contains slack and bittern, a septic ingredient, which promotes putrefaction, and renders that salt unfit for curing provisions, and which is not used in the West, and the average price of the strong, pure, alum salt, made by solar evaporation, in hot climates, is about eight cents to the bushel. Here, then, is another lamentable failure. Instead of being sold as cheap as the foreign, the domestic salt is from four to twelve times the price of alum salt. The last inquiry is as to the quality of the domestic article. Is it as good as the foreign? This is the most essential application of the test: and here again the failure is decisive. The domestic salt will not cure provisions for exportation (the little excepted which is made, in the Northeast, by solar evaporation), nor for consumption in the South, nor for long keeping at the army posts, nor for voyages with the navy. For all these purposes it is worthless, and useless, and the provisions which are put up in it are lost, or have to be repacked, at a great expense, in alum salt. This fact is well known throughout the West, where too many citizens have paid the penalty of trusting to domestic salt, to be duped or injured by it any longer.

"And here he submitted to the Senate, that the American system, without a gross departure from its original principles, could not cover this duty any longer. It has had the full benefit of that system in high duties, imposed for a long time, on foreign salt; it had not produced an adequate supply for the country, nor half a supply; nor at as cheap a rate, by three hundred or one thousand per cent.; and what it did supplyso far from being equal in quantity, could not even be used as a substitute for the great and important business of the provision trade. The amount of so much of that trade as went to foreign countries, Mr. B. showed to be sixty-six thousand barrels of beef, fifty-four thousand barrels of pork, two millions of pounds of bacon, two millions of pounds of butter, and one million of pounds of cheese; and he considered the supply for the army and navy, and for consumption in the South, to exceed the quantity exported.

"It cannot be necessary here to dilate upon the uses of salt. But, in repealing that duty in England, it was thought worthy of notice that salt was necessary to the health, growth, and fattening of hogs, cattle, sheep, and horses; that it was a preservative of hay and clover, and restored moulded and flooded hay to its good and wholesome state, and made even straw and chaff available as food for cattle. The domestic salt makers need not speak of protection against alum salt. No quantity of duty will keep it out. The people must have it for the provision trade; and the duty upon that kind of salt is a grievous burthen upon them, without being of the least advantage to the salt makers.

"Mr. B. said, there was no argument which could be used here, in favor of continuing this duty, which was not used, and used in vain, in England; and many were used there, of much real force, which cannot be used here. The American system, by name, was not impressed into the service of the tax there, but its doctrines were; and he read a part of the report of the committee on salt duties, in 1817, to prove it. It was the statement of the agent of the British salt manufacturers, Mr. William Horne, who was sworn and examined as a witness. He said: 'I will commence by referring to the evidence I gave upon the subject of rock salt, in order to establish the presumption of the national importance of the salt trade, arising from the large extent of British capital employed in the trade, and the considerable number of persons dependant upon it for support. I, at the same time, stated that the salt trade was in a very depressed state, and that it continued to fall off. I think it cannot be doubted that the salt trade, in common with all staple British manufactures, is entitled to the protection of government; and the British manufacturers of salt consider that, in common with other manufacturers of this country, they are entitled to such protection, in particular from a competition at home with foreign manufacturers; and, in consequence, they hope to see a prohibitory duty on foreign salt.'

"Such was the petition of the British manufacturers. They urged the amount of their capital, the depressed state of their business, the number of persons dependent upon it for support, the duty of the government to protect it, the necessity for a prohibitory duty on foreign salt, and the fact that they were making more than the country could consume. The ministry backed them with a call for the continuance of the revenue, one million five hundred thousand pounds sterling, derived from the salt tax; and with a threat to lay that amount upon something else, if it was taken off of salt. All would not do. Mr. Calcraft, and his friends, appealed to the rights and interests of the people, as overruling considerations in questions of taxation. They denounced the tax itself as little less than impiety, and an attack upon the goodness and wisdom of God, who had filled the bowels of the earth, and the waves of the sea, with salt for the use and blessing of man, and to whom it was denied, its use clogged and fettered, by odious and abominable taxes. They demanded the whole repeal; and when the ministry and the manufacturers, overpowered by the voice of the people, offered to give up three fourths of the tax, they bravely resisted the proposition, stood out for total repeal, and carried it.

"Mr. B. could not doubt a like result here, and he looked forward, with infinite satisfaction, to the era of a free trade in salt. The first effect of such a trade would be, to reduce the price of alum salt, at the import cities, to eight or nine cents a bushel. The second effect would be, a return to the measured bushel, by getting rid of the tariff regulation, which substituted weight for measure, and reduced eighty-four pounds to fifty. The third effect would be, to establish a great trade, carried on by barter, between the inhabitants of the United States and the people of the countries which produce alum salt, to the infinite advantage and comfort of both parties. He examined the operation of this barter at New Orleans. He said, this pure and superior salt, made entirely by solar evaporation, came from countries which were deficient in the articles of food, in which the West abounded. It came from the West Indies, from the coasts of Spain and Portugal, and from places in the Mediterranean; all of which are at this time consumers of American provisions, and take from us beef, pork, bacon, rice, corn, corn meal, flour, potatoes, &c. Their salt costs them almost nothing. It is made on the sea beach by the power of the sun, with little care and aid from man. It is brought to the United States as ballast, costing nothing for the transportation across the sea. The duty alone prevents it from coming to the United States in the most unbounded quantity. Remove the duty, and the trade would be prodigious. A bushel of corn is worth more than a sack of salt to the half-starved people to whom the sea and the sun give as much of this salt as they will rake up and pack away. The levee at New Orleans would be covered—the warehouses would be crammed with salt; the barter trade would become extensive and universal, a bushel of corn, or of potatoes, a few pounds of butter, or a few pounds of beef or pork, would purchase a sack of salt; the steamboats would bring it up for a trifle; and all the upper States of the Great Valley, where salt is so scarce, so dear, and so indispensable for rearing stock and curing provisions,in addition to all its obvious uses, would be cheaply and abundantly supplied with that article. Mr. B. concluded with saying, that, next to the reduction of the price of public lands, and the free use of the earth for labor and cultivation, he considered the abolition of the salt tax, and a free trade in foreign salt, as the greatest blessing which the federal government could now bestow upon the people of the West."

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