manufactories," it ought to be our own policy, now we are a nation, to prevent. And while we protest against Mr. Cambreleng's bill as destructive to the interests of our citizens, we ought not to forget, that it would impair the independence of our country.

Mr. Speaker, the sum of the whole matter contained in these resolutions is this; - that a system of encouragement and protection to domestic manufactures was, long ago, deliberately adopted by the national government; that under the shadow -I should rather say, under the sunshine- of that system, vast amounts of the capital and industry of Massachusetts have been invested and engaged in these manufactories, and in the production of those supplies for which a manufacturing population creates a market; and that the abandonment of this system will lead to the destruction of much of that capital, and to the diversion and depression of much of that industry. And it is no answer to this position, even if it were true, that the system was originally inexpedient and impolitic, or that it was founded upon false and ill-considered principles. Why, Sir, would it be quite consolatory to our farmers, our mechanics, our tradesfolk, and laboring poor, when they should be deprived of the means of sending their children to school, perhaps even of giving them comfortable food and clothing at home, by the reduction of their prices, their wages, and their earnings and profits of all sorts, to show them that volume of Adam Smith, which the gentleman from Gloucester threatened to read to us the other day, and point them to the page and paragraph in which it is clearly demonstrated that upon every principle of political economy they ought to be now more prosperous and thriving than ever; that it was under the existence of the Protecting System they ought to have felt these pinchings of poverty and of want, but that, by its abandonment, they ought forthwith to be restored to abundance and wealth? Would the wise saws and plausible sentences of a Professor of Economics render them entirely satisfied with this change of condition, or work the more soothing miracle of convincing them that it was only changed for the better? Would that labored report of Mr. Cambreleng's, with all its facts and all its fancy, completely

reconcile them to their wretchedness, and even make them in love with their misery? Or is it that little lying title of the bill which is looked to as the antidote of the bane beneath it? The wants of the government! Sir, that significant phrase, properly and truly applied, has been, and would again be, a perfect open sesame to the purses of the people. Their last dol lar and their last drop of blood would be alike at the service of the country, whenever they were really wanted.

But what have the wants of the government to do with this matter? Because there is more money in the treasury of the nation than the newly conceived constitutional scruples of a particular administration will permit it to spend, or even than its unscrupulous and corrupt extravagance will suffer it to squander, shall the pockets of the citizen be rifled, or the earnings of his industry be curtailed? In order to reduce the public revenue some six or seven million a year, shall an annual production of private labor and capital, amounting, by the enor mous estimate of Mr. Cambreleng himself, to three hundred millions, be subjected to ruin or even to risk? Is this good statesmanship? Is this sound policy? Can no other Ways and Means be devised, which would answer the purpose with less loss and more certainty? A surplus in the public purse, is, doubtless, a great evil; but I imagine, Sir, the people, if it were put to them, would decide that a deficit in their own was a greater. The people of Massachusetts, I know, would so decide. They would respond to the deceptive argument, which is placed at the head of the bill, against which we are now protesting, in the language of one of their own statesmen, which, though written more than four years ago, has a singular, and almost prophetic applicability to the case before us. They would say in the words of Mr. Adams, in his masterly report on manufactures in 1833,-"It is the right of the citizen, and not the necessities of the community, which constitutes the fundamental principle upon which the obligation to protect the interest of the manufacturer, or of any other member of society, is incumbent upon the nation." "It is the interest of the citi zen, and not the wants of the country, which circumscribes the legitimate objects of protection."

Particular pains seem to have been taken, in the course of this debate, Mr. Speaker, to hold up an idea to the House, that our distinguished Senator, Mr. Webster, has been guilty of some gross inconsistency in relation to this protecting system. I have already alluded to one expression of this kind. But that was but trivial and unworthy of comment, compared with many other and more general strictures to the same effect. We were elegantly told, for instance, the other day, that Daniel Webster, having expended his whole power in defending the principles of Free Trade in 1824, had since found himself unable to answer his own arguments, and had been forced to eat his own words. Sir, this charge is old and stale; too old and too stale, I should have supposed, to have had any temptation for the originality and ingenuity of the gentleman from whom it fell. Why, as long ago as the famous Debate on Mr. Foot's Resolution in the Senate of the United States, this same charge was made by Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina. It was, even then, old and stale, Sir. But fortunately, it was not then made behind Mr. Webster's back, and in that ever-memorable speech in reply to Mr. Hayne, which still stands unparalleled on the pages of American eloquence, he indignantly and triumphantly repelled it.

It is not, however, to be wondered at, that it should be revived and repeated by one who has taken occasion, in the same breath, to re-construct the charge of "an accursed policy," which was brought against the tariff by that same distinguished nullifier, in the hardly softer terms of " an infernal system." The charges belong together, and will doubtless be appreciated together by the people of Massachusetts. Sir, the speeches of Mr. Webster on the subject of the Tariff, in 1824, and in 1828, are now bound up together in the same volume, and, as if to challenge, certainly to facilitate, the closest and most searching criticism, they have been placed side by side, without a single intervening page. I commend them to the fresh reading of the gentleman from Gloucester, and, indeed, of the whole House. They will amply repay it; richly reward it. And no candid reader, I am persuaded, let his opinions about politics generally, or the protecting system in particular, be what they may, will rise from their perusal, without acknowledging, at once, the utter injustice, the entire

falseness of such a charge. The course of Mr. Webster, Sir, in relation to the Tariff, and I might as well say, in relation to almost every other question of national policy, has been the course of Massachusetts. Massachusetts, in common with the other New England States, opposed the tariff at its origin, and continued to oppose it until after the act of 1824,-an act by which it was virtually declared that a protecting system was thereafter to be considered as the settled policy of the country. From that moment her opposition ceased, and her citizens generally, instead of persevering in unavailing efforts to destroy that system, resorted to the more prudent and more patriotic course of accommodating themselves to it. They invested large amounts of capital under its inducements, and their interests soon became inseparably identified with its preservation. And for such preservation, both in letter and in spirit, she has ever since voted. Such has been the course of Massachusetts, and such has been the course of her distinguished Senator, and the whole sum of their inconsistency is contained in the acknowledged fact, that they would not take part in pulling down upon their own heads, and upon the heads of thousands of citizens who had been compelled to seek its shelter, a vast and costly structure, merely because they had declined to approve its model, or to assist in laying its corner-stone.

Mr. Speaker, the career of Mr. Webster is before the country; it may be his whole career. Rumors are already rife of his intention to retire from public life, temporarily at least, perhaps forever. Let him retire when he will, he needs no defence, he requires no eulogy, he fears no investigation. He has not, indeed, squared his consistency upon the modern fashionable block. He has left it to others to suit their sentiments to the times, or to reserve all knowledge of those sentiments within their own breast. He has left it to others to pander to popular prejudices, to fan popular discontents, to stimulate the poor against the rich, to sacrifice principle to policy, and to follow the shadow of consistency by abandoning its substance. His course is before the country, and let him retire when he will-may it be still a distant, distant day he will leave light, imperishable, unfading light, behind him; and that not only gilding his own memory, and

casting glory upon the Commonwealth of his adoption, but cheering and guiding and illuminating the path of Constitutional patriotism throughout all generations. Other stars, Sir, may have reached a higher ascension, may have sparkled with a more dazzling lustre, may have shot with a wilder fire. Meteors, too, may have flashed, and flamed, and glared, and cost a moment's wonder or a moment's fear, and passed away. But as long as our glorious Constitution shall be borne up upon the waves of time, and its banner of Union and Liberty be seen streaming to the winds, in every moment of doubt, in every hour of danger, the passengers and the pilot will be found turning alike fo their direction to our own NORTHERN STAR- always clear, always above the horizon

"Of whose true-fixed and resting quality,
There is no fellow in the firmament."

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, let me express the hope that the resolutions on your table may not only pass, and pass in their present shape, but pass, too, with the general and cordial assent of the House. Sir, if from any spot on the wide surface of this Union a sound of undivided, unbroken, unanimous remonstrance ought to go up to the National Councils against the measure to which these resolutions relate, it is from this very spot. If, upon any occasion, the voices of all political parties, and of all personal and public interests throughout this Commonwealth, ought to lose their conflicting tones, and leave their jarring discords, and mingle in one deep diapason of deprecation and protest, it is upon this very occasion. Here, in the hall of the Representatives of Massachusetts, assembled to watch over the interests and to provide for the welfare of the whole people,- here, when those interests and that welfare are menaced with destruction, a voice, as it were of one man in unity, as it were of that whole people in volume, ought to be uttered; —and here, it would seem to me, if those Representatives are true to their trusts and faithful to their constituents, such a voice ought to be uttered now. And notwithstanding some symptoms of opposition in other stages of this business, and notwithstanding