admit. It can no longer rely on the restrictive system. Too powerful interests are leagued against that system, to suffer it to remain as the permanent policy of the country. It may be adopted by this Congress, but it will be repealed, or essentially modified, by the next; thus keeping the country in a state of constant agitation, and business uncertain and fluctuating. The manufacturers should, therefore, demand, at least, consent to, such policy, as, from the fact of its being just to all sections and interests, will stand a good chance of being permanent. The government must rely principally on the customs for its revenues, and it will want, even under the most economical administration, every cent that it is possible to raise from them. We shall be obliged to lay as high duties as can be laid, without diminishing revenue itself. These, we take it, will average about twenty-five per cent.; higher than this, they would, we are inclined to believe, tend to diminish instead of increasing revenue; and less would not give us a revenue adequate to the wants of the government. A revenue tariff, to which nobody objects, averaging, say, twenty-five per cent. on all our imports, would afford the manufacturers all the incidental protection they would need, or should have the face to ask for. Taking this view of the case, we confess, that the tariff question does not interest us so much as it once did, and we think the controversy respecting it is in a fair way of being soon brought to a satisfactory close. But this was not always the case. The system had another aspect, which made it exceedingly unjust and oppressive to the Southern section of the country. If the manufacturing districts at the North could have taken up the main portion of the staples of the South, perhaps there would have been in the system no great sectional unfairness. But the home market they created for the Southern staples, cotton, rice, tobacco, &c., was altogether so inadequate, that it had little or no effect in determining their price. The planters had, after the adoption of the system, the same need of for eign markets that they had before. But the tariff, by restricting foreign imports, had a double effect; it lessened the foreign demand for the staples of the South, and raised the price to the planter of all manufactured articles he must purchase in return for his staples. It thus diminished his means, while it augmented the price of the articles he consumed. It bore with peculiar hardship, therefore, upon the South. The North, which manufactured, though paying the same price for the articles it consumed, did not feel it, because it was the manufacturer, and because it was further indemnified by the protective bounty. was no drawback in favor of the South. But there Nor was this all. The revenues were raised from the customs, by a tax on importations. But the imports can have no other basis than the exports of the country. A tax, therefore, on imports is effectively a tax on exports. The tax enhances the price to the consumer; and nothing is better established than that just in proportion as you enhance the price to the consumer do you diminish consumption. By diminishing the consumption, you diminish the ability of the foreigner to sell, and, of course, his ability to buy. Consequently, the exporter finds the ability of his foreign customer to buy of him diminished just in proportion as the tax on imports has diminished their consumption. He must, then, export less, or at a less profit; in either case, his means are diminished in the same proportion that the means of his customer are diminished. He must abate of his exports enough to place his foreign customer in the same condition he would be in, if the tax on his customer's wares, when imported into the country, had not been laid; which proves, that it is virtually the exports that pay the tax on the imports. Now, the exports were principally from the South. Its great staples were the basis of our imports; and, as the revenues of the government were derived from the customs, the South virtually paid all the taxes for the support of the government. The tariff was, therefore, evidently unconstitutional, because the Constitution requires the taxes to be proportioned equally among the States, according to the Federal census; and it was peculiarly oppressive to the South, because it threw upon it all the burdens of the government, while it depressed its industry, and not only exempted the North from taxation, but gave it a bounty on its industry.* - Mr. Calhoun was one of the first to see the inevitable tendency of the system, and to expose it. But what could reason and expostulation do? Mr. Clay had made the great farming States - commanding, when the others are at all divided, a majority believe it for their interest to support it, and, against New England and the South, it was adopted. The power of these great central States the sagacious General Jackson was not slow to discover; and, finding them wedded, for the moment, to the restrictive policy, he adopted it, against the interests of his own section, and against the best interests of the country, and gave it the support of his astute politics, and immense personal popularity; and, as if determined that it should be the permanent policy of the country, he was hardly seated in the Presidential chair, before he recommended the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands among the States, a measure, which, in common charity, we presume was concocted in the Albany Laboratory. In this case, Mr. Clay, at the head of the opposition, supporting the unjust, unequal, and unconstitutional measure; General Jackson and his friends also supporting it in princi * While we very strenuously contend for freedom of commerce, as between nations, we by no means give in to the modern freetrade, or laissez-faire, policy, as advocated by the late lamented William Leggett, and others. It is on other principles we found our opposition to the restrictive system. We have no confidence in what is said about individuals being the best judges of their own interests, and that all that is necessary for the peace and prosperity of a people is to leave them the natural workings of free competition. The duty of government is not simply to let us alone, to leave us to ourselves, and content itself with merely maintaining an open field for the full play of our natural selfishness. This would be for government to abdicate itself. We hold it to be the duty of government, often, to take the initiative, and by a wise and sound policy to foster and direct the industry of the country. ple, and consenting to modify it only in a few details, and these mostly in a sense unfavorable to the South, what could be done? It was the gloomiest time the country has ever seen. The Constitution had become only so much waste paper; the principles of constitutional republicanism were lost sight of, by one party and the other; and opposition and administration both seemed to agree, that any measure, which the majority of the people. were in favor of, could in all cases rightfully pass. It was a day of trial. The sage of Monticello had seen the tendency before his death, and raised his warning voice, but his countrymen paid no attention to it; the glory had departed from the Old Dominion; New England had been forced into the support of the obnoxious policy by the Middle and Western States, and, being the chief gainer by it, could not be expected to go against it; the great mass of the active politicians were more concerned about the "spoils," than they were about the wise and just administration of the government; and even the chief of the administration felt so little the responsibility of his situation, that he found ample leisure to interfere in the visiting and social relations of the families of his secretaries. What could be done to save the country? who was there to do it? There was but one man in the country, who could, or who, being able, would, at this juncture, have dared to step forth to arrest the fatal tendency, and to save the Union, the country, and republican institutions. This man was John C. Calhoun. He had the sagacity to perceive, the courage to adopt, and the energy to force the adoption, of the only practicable measure left. Going into a profound analysis of our system of government, guided by the teachings of Jefferson, he recalled to his countrymen a fact, which, since the return of peace, they had overlooked and forgotten; namely, that the Federal government is a constitutional compact, entered into by sovereign States, and, therefore, that the sovereignty with us vests not in the Federal government, but in the States, parties to the com pact. In forming the compact, the States did not part with their sovereignty, but merely formed a mutual compact, by which they solemnly stipulated, that certain specified attributes of sovereignty should be exercised henceforth, not by each State separately, but by all in common, or conjointly. In this case, the allegiance, due from the subject to the sovereign, is not due to the Federal government, but to the State. The Federal government reaches me, a subject of Massachusetts, only through the government of Massachusetts, and I therefore owe only such obedience to the Federal government, as Massachusetts has enacted. This view, of course, leaves the State free to exercise all the functions of government, except those which she has stipulated shall be exercised only conjointly with the other States of the Union. She has, then, by virtue of this reserved sovereignty, the right to set aside, in her own dominions, and so far as concerns her own subjects, any and every act of Congress, which is not authorized by the terms of the constitutional compact. The parties to the compact being equal, and there being no common umpire, each, as a matter of course, is its own judge of the infraction of the compact, and of the mode and measure of redress. The State, then, if she judged proper, had the sovereign right to set aside this obnoxious tariff enactment, in her own dominions, and prohibit her subjects, or citizens, from obeying it; and they, on their allegiance to the State, and not to the Union, would be bound to treat it as a nullity. The resistance, firm, decided, of a single State, would, of course, prove effectual; for the machinery of government would thus be stopped, as effectually as the Tribunitial veto arrested the act of the Roman Senate. We here merely state the doctrine; but we intend hereafter to take it up at length, and to do our best to determine, if possible, once for all, its soundness, or unsoundness. All we would now say is, that we have no sympathy with those political friends of Mr. Calhoun, who seek to palliate his doctrine concerning |