tained the government in so bold a measure, if it had attempted it. No practical statesman could, at that epoch, have proposed such a measure. The boldest measure practicable was the resolution introduced by Mr. Webster, in 1816, prohibiting Congress from receiving, or paying away, the notes of any non-specie paying banks, in the collection or disbursement of its

revenues.

But two methods of relieving the embarrassments of the government, and of compelling the banks to resume specie payments, were then possible; one, a national bankrupt law, and the other, a national bank. Mr. Calhoun was, as now, opposed to the former, as harsh, and unconstitutional; for, evidently, if the States have the right to incorporate banks, the exercise of that right cannot be controlled by the action of the Federal government, as it would be, by including them within the operations of a bankrupt law. Nothing remained, then, but a national bank. Mr. Calhoun, then, finally, with the greatest reluctance, went with the Republican administration, and the leading Republicans of the time, in support of a national bank. But, even then, he was unfavorable to a bank, regarding the question as one of bank or no-bank.

"In supporting the bank of 1816," he says, in a speech in the Senate, in 1837, "I openly declared, that, as a question de novo, I would be decidedly against the bank, and would be the last to give it my support. I also stated, that, in supporting the bank then, I yielded to the necessity of the case, growing out of the then existing and long established connexion between the government and the banking system. I took the ground, even at that early period, that, so long as the connexion existed, so long as the government received and paid away bank-notes as money,- it was bound to regulate their value, and had no alternative but the establishment of a national bank. I found the connexion existing before my time, and over which I could have no control. I yielded to the necessity, in order to correct the disordered state of the currency, which had fallen exclusively under the control of the States," Speeches, p. 263.

Mr. Calhoun is eminently a practical statesman.

Al

though possessing uncommon powers of generalization, as well as of acute analysis, and disposed always to look to first principles, yet he is always ready to yield, when necessary, to the force of circumstances. Though never, properly speaking, a bank man, and opposed to a national bank in principle, as a measure of independent and permanent policy, yet, in the circumstances in which he found the government and the country, in 1816, he could support a bank; and we, certainly, as strongly opposed as we are to the whole banking system, see not how he could have done better; for we are decidedly of the opinion, that, if the Federal government will treat bank-notes as money, receive them and pay them away, it is bound to regulate them, and a national bank seems, and always has seemed to us, the only feasible method of doing it.

In the third question, relating to the Tariff and Internal Improvements, Mr. Calhoun had also occasion to take part. In regard to the Tariff, the question, in 1816, was not a question of laying a tariff of duties for protection, but that of adjusting the war tariff to the relations of peace. The war had been the occasion of calling into existence various manufacturing establishments, which, supported by the high war duties, had attained to a state of considerable prosperity. It was feared, that peace, and a reduction of duties, would, by allowing a large increase of foreign importations, crush these incipient establishments, to the ruin of their proprietors, and the serious injury of the country. The country had suffered much, in the early part of the war, from its inability to meet at once the demands for consumption, created by the sudden diminution of foreign importations. To guard against this evil, to save the establishments already in existence, and to continue the stimulus which had already been given to the manufacturing industry of the country, a discrimination was called for, in the new tariff, in favor of such articles as were, or might be, the growth and manufacture of our own country. It was not a question of laying new duties, but as to the degree of discrimination to be

exercised in reducing, or taking off, already existing duties. Mr. Calhoun supported, or rather assented to, the discriminations demanded by the manufacturers.

It is probable, and we feel fully assured, that, if the broad, naked question of protection had then come up, and Congress had been called upon, as it was in 1824 and 1828, to adjust its tariff expressly with a view to protection, Mr. Calhoun would, even then, have been. opposed to the protective, or, more properly, restrictive, system. But he does not appear, at that period, to have fully investigated the subject, and we think that he yielded more than he should have done. Then was the time to have resisted the system; and the only practical error we have found in Mr. Calhoun's long career as a statesman is, that he did not resist it. To say, as some do, that he is the father of the system, and that he fastened it upon the country, is not true; and the moment the question came up, in regard to a tariff, not for revenue, but for protection, he was found, where he has continued, in opposition to the system. The tariff of 1816 was a tariff for revenue; revenue was its sole object; and it touched the question of protection only incidentally, only in not reducing the duties on certain articles so low as they possibly might and would have been, if, in adjusting them, no reference had been had to the demands of the manufacturers. But even this was too much.

We do not find, that Mr. Calhoun ever committed himself to the constitutionality of the vast system of Internal Improvements by the Federal government, which was commenced soon after the return of peace; but we have little doubt, that, for a moment, he shared in the strong tendencies of the times. The effect of the war had been to draw off attention from the States, and to concentrate it on the Federal government; at least, this was the fact, so far as the Republican party was concerned. During the war, the rights of the States were defended by the Federalists. War has always a centralizing tendency, and, of course, the party waging and sustaining the war will always feel this tendency the

most. Add to this, that the party in favor of the war meets resistance, not only from individuals, but from States acting as States, which was the case in the war with England; and it is easy to see, that it will be led to restrict, as much as possible, the sphere of State action, and to enlarge and consolidate the powers of the Federal government. Now this is precisely what actually occurred. The Republican party, originally inclining to the States' Rights doctrines, and distrustful of the centralization of power in the Federal government, was the party that declared and sustained the war. In doing this, it had been forced to sustain the Federal government against the Federal party, and the States in which that party was in the ascendency. All its habits and feelings came thus to be on the side of the Federal government, and to carry it away by a strong tendency towards centralization. Its members. were strongly impressed, not with the necessity of maintaining the reserved rights of the States, but with the value of the Union, and the necessity of a strong and efficient central government. The Hartford Convention, which was got up as a sort of safety valve, as a means of letting off the superfluous steam which a violent opposition to the government and the war had generated in New England, had made many fear for the stability of the Union, and turn their attention to the means of consolidating and strengthening it. A vast system of public works, carried on by the Federal government, extending through all parts of the Union, and connecting all the extremities with the centre, and affording facilities to internal trade and intercourse, would obviously tend to this end. Men's minds were dazzled, and they began to dream of a great, a splendid Republic, one and indivisible, under a government fostering all interests, literature and science, prepared for all the emergencies of war, and all the arts of peace.

That Mr. Calhoun, for a time, shared this tendency, then the tendency of the Republican party, we have no doubt, and that he was, for a time, disposed to countenance it, we think not unlikely; but, if so, he soon cor

rected himself, and resumed the genuine States' Rights doctrine, a doctrine which divides, with us, the exercise of the powers of government between two coordinate governments, the State government and the Federal, leaving to the State the exercise of all the functions of government, except those expressly committed by the States to the Federal government.

Mr. Calhoun's career, as Secretary of War, deserves a full and extended notice, but we are obliged to pass it over with a single remark. He found the Department in the utmost disorder and confusion, and in a very few months he wholly reörganized it, increasing its efficiency, while at the same time retrenching very considerably its expenses. He here showed, in his reörganization and administration of the War Department, during the seven years of his secretariship, those remarkable administrative powers, unequalled by any executive officer we have ever had, and never surpassed by any one in modern times, unless perhaps by Napoleon. As much as we admire Mr. Calhoun, as a clear, profound, and original thinker, as the able and manly parliamentary orator, as the philosophical politician, we are far more impressed by his consummate ability as an administrative officer. He has remarkable powers of combination; sees, at once, precisely what is requisite to be done; and is unerring in the selection of his means and agents. We have no other statesman that can challenge comparison with him. He knows how to accomplish his ends, to establish a rigid accountability in every department, and to render it all but impossible for his agents to prove unfaithful or dishonest. Not a single defalcation took place in his department during the time he was at its head, and of the millions of dollars that passed through the hands of his subordinates, not a cent was lost to the government. One is tempted to ask the "sage of Lindenwold," whether he can say as much of the four years that it was his good fortune to be at the head of the Federal administration?

We have dwelt the longer on this period of Mr. Calhoun's career, because it was in this period that he