power might be exercised by the States, by and with the consent of Congress, and subject to its control." Thus, then, it manifestly appears, that in relation to manufactures, the framers of the Constitution positively refused to confer upon the Federal Government, any power whatever; that the power to lay duties, &c. was conferred for the sake of revenue alone, and was not intended to embrace the power to lay duties "to discourage the importation of particular articles to enable the manufacturers here to supply us on as good terms as could be obtained from a foreign market; and, finally, that the whole subject was left in the hands of the several States, with the restriction, "that no State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any impost or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing their inspection laws." This power, it appears, was expressly inserted for the purpose of enabling the States to protect their own manufactures; and this, it seems, was the only provision which the friends of domestic industry could obtain. It is vain to allege that the powers retained by the States on this subject, are inadequate to the effectual accomplishment of the object. If this were so, it would only shew the necessity of some further provision on this subject; but surely it will not be pretended that it would justify the usurpation, by Congress, of a power, not only not granted by the Constitution, but purposely withheld.

We think, however, that this exposition of the Constitution places the protection of manufactures on the true foundation, on which it should stand in such a government as ours. Nothing can be more monstrous, than that the industry of one or more States in this confederacy, should be made profitable at the expense of others, and this must be the inevitable result of any scheme of legislation by the General Government, calculated to promote manufactures by restrictions upon commerce or agriculture. But leave manufactures where agriculture and other domestic pursuits have been wisely left by the Constitution-with the several States— and ample security is furnished that no preference will be given to one pursuit over another, and if it should be deemed advisable in any particular State, to extend encouragement to manufactures, either by direct appropriations of money, or in the way pointed out in the article of the Constitution above quoted, that this will be done, not at the expense of the rest of the Union, but of the particular State whose citizens are to derive the advantages of those pursuits. Should Massachusetts, for instance, find it to her advantage to engage in the manufacture of woollens or cottons, or Pennsylvania be desirous of encouraging the working of her iron mines, let those States grant bounties out of their own treasuries, to the persons engaged in these pursuits; and should it be deemed advisable to encourage their manufactures by duties, "discouraging the importation of similar articles" in these respective States, let them make an application to Congress, whose consent would doubtless be readily given to any acts of those States, having these objects in view. The manufacturers of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania would thus be encouraged at the expense of the people of

these States respectively. But when they claim to do more than this to encourage their industry at the expense of the industry of the people of the other States, to promote the Manufactures of the North, at the expense of the Agriculture of the South, by restrictions upon Commerce-in a word, to secure a monopoly for their manufactures, not only in their own market, but throughout the United States, then we say, that the claim is unjust, and cannot be granted consistently with the principles of the Constitution, or the great ends of a Confederated Government. We shall not stop to inquire whether, as has been urged with great force, that provision of the Constitution which confers the power upon Congress "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries," does not, by a necessary implication, deny to Congress the power of promoting the useful arts, (which include both agriculture and manufactures) by any other means than those here specified. It is sufficient for our purpose to shew, that the power of promoting manufactures as a distinct substantive object of legislation has no where been granted to Congress. As to the incidental protection that may be derived from the rightful exercise of the power, either of regulating commerce, or of imposing taxes, duties and imposts, for the legitimate purposes of government-this certainly may be as freely enjoyed by manufactures as it must be by every other branch of domestic industry. But as the power to regulate commerce, conferred expressly for its security, cannot be fairly exerted for its destruction, so neither can it be perverted to the purpose of building up manufacturing establishments-an object entirely beyond the jurisdiction of the Federal Government-so also the power to levy taxes, duties, imposts and excises, expressly given for the purpose of raising revenue, cannot be used for the discouragement of importations, for the purpose of promoting manufactures, without a gross and palpable violation of the plain meaning and intent of the federal compact. Acts may be passed on these subjects, falsely purporting, on their face, to have been enacted for the purposes of raising revenue and regulating commerce; but if in truth they are designed, (as the acts of 1824, 1828, and 1832, confessedly and avowedly have been,) for an entirely different purpose, viz: for the encouragement and promotion of manufactures, the violation of the Constitution is not less gross, deliberate and palpable, because it assumes the most dangerous of all forms, a violation by perversion, the use of a power granted for one purpose, for another and a dif ferent purpose, in relation to which Congress has no power to act at all. On the whole, even from the very brief and imperfect view which we have here taken of this subject, we think we have demonstrated that the protecting system is as GROSS and PALPABLE a VIOLATION of the CONSTITUTION, according to its true spirit, intent and meaning, as it is unquestionably UNEQUAL, OPPRESSIVE and UNJUST in its bearing upon the great interests of the country, and the several sections of the Union.

But great as are the evils of the American System, fatal as it assuredly must be to the prosperity of a large portion of the Union, and gross as is the violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution which it perpetrates, the consequences which must inevitably result from the establishment of the pernicious principles on which it is founded, are evils of still greater magnitude. An entire change in the character of the government is the natural and necessary consequences of the application to the Constitution of those latitudinous rules of construction, from which this system derives its existence, and which must "consolidate the States by degress into one sovereignty; the obvious tendency and inevitable result of which would be to transform the present representative system of the United States into a monarchy."*

We fearlessly appeal to all considerate men, whether it be, in the nature of things, possible to hold together such a confederacy as ours, by any means short of a military despotism, after it has degenerated into a CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT-that is to say, after it shall come to be its established policy to exercise a general legislative control over the interests and pursuits of the whole American people.

Can any man be so infatuated as to believe, that Congress could regulate wisely the whole labor and capital of this vast confederaey? Would it not be a burden too grievous to be borne, that a great central government, necessarily ignorant of the condition of the remote parts of the country, and regardless perhaps of their prosperity, should undertake to interfere with their domestic pursuits, to control their labor, to regulate their property, and to treat them in all respects as DEPENDANT COLONIES, governed not with referance to their own interests, but the interests of others? If such a state of things must be admitted to be altogether intolerable, we confidently appeal to the sober judgment and patriotic feelings of every man who values our free institutions and desires to preserve them-whether the progress of the government towards this result has not of late years been rapid and alarming? and whether, if the downward course of our affairs cannot be at once arrested-the consummation of this system is not at hand? No sooner had Congress assumed the power of building up manufactures, by successive tariffs-calculated and intended to drive men from agriculture and commerce into more favored pursuits-than internal improvements sprung at once into vigorous existence. Pensions have been enlarged to an extent not only before unknown in any civilized country, but they have been established on such principles, as manifest the settled purpose of bestowing the public treasure in gratuities to particular classes of persons and particular sections of country. Roads and canals have been commenced and surveys made in certain quarters of the Union, on a scale of magnificence, which evinces a like determination to distribute the public wealth into new and favored channels; and it is in entire accordance both with the theory and practice of this new system,

* Madison's_Report.

that the General Government should absorb all the authority of the States, and eventually become the grand depository of the powers, and the general guardian and distributer of the wealth of the whole Union. It is known to all who have marked the course of our national affairs that Congress has undertaken to create a BANK, and have already assumed jurisdiction over science and the arts, over education and charities, over roads and canals, and almost every other subject formerly considered as appertaining exclusively to the States, and that they claim and exercise an unlimited control over the appropriation of the public lands as well as of the public money. On looking indeed to the legislation of the last ten years, it is impossible to resist the conviction that a fatal change has taken place in the whole policy and entire operation of the Federal Government-that in every one of its departments it is both in theory and practice rapidly verging towards Consolidation.-Asserting judicial supremacy over the sovereign States, extending EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE and influence to the remotest ramifications of society, and assuming legislative control over every object of local concernment, thereby reducing the States to petty corporations. shorn of their sovereignty, mere parts of one great whole, standing in the same relation to the Union as a county or parish to the State of which it is a subordinate part.

Such is the true character, and such the inevitable tendencies of the AMERICAN SYSTEM. And when the case thus plainly stated, is brought home to the bosoms of patriotic men, surely it is not possible to avoid the conclusion, that a political system founded on such principles must bear within it the seeds of premature dissolution and that though it may for a season be extended, enlarged and strengthened, through the corrupting influence of patronage and power, until it shall have embraced in its serpent folds all the great interests of the State, still the time must come when the people, deprived of all other means of escape, will rise up in their might, and release themselves from this thraldom, by one of those violent convulsions, whereby society is uprooted from its foundations, and the edict of REFORM is written in BLOOD.

Against this system South Carolina has remonstrated in the most earnest terms. As early as 1820, there was hardly a district or parish in the whole State from which memorials were not forwarded to Congress, the general language of which was, that the protecting system was "utterly subversive of their rights and interests."-Again in 1823 and 1827, the people of this State rose up almost as one man, and declared to Congress and the world, "that the protecting system was unconstitutional, oppressive and unjust." But these repeated remonstrances were answered only by repeated injuries and insults-by the enacting of the tariffs of 1824 and 1828. To give greater dignity, and if possible more effect to these appeals, the Legislature, in December, 1825, solemnly declared, "that it was an unconstitutional exercise of power on the part of Congress to lay duties to protect domestic manufactures;" and in 1828, they caused to be presented to the Senate of the United States, and claimed to have it recorded on its Journals, the solemn

PROTEST of the State of South Carolina, denouncing this system as "utterly unconstitutional, grossly unequal and oppressive, and such an abuse of power as was incompatible with the principles of a free government, and the great ends of civil society," and that they were "then only restrained from the assertion of the sovereign rights of the State, by the hope that the magnanimity and justice of the good people of the Union would effect an abandonment of a system partial in its nature, unjust in its operation, and not within the powers delegated to Congress." And finally, in December, 1830, it was Resolved, "That the several Acts of Congress imposing duties on imports, for the protection of domestic manufactures, are highly dangerous, and oppressive violations of the constitutional compact; and that whenever the States which are suffering under the oppression shall lose all reasonable hope of redress from the wisdom and justice of the Federal Government, it will be their right and duty to interpose, in their sovereign capacity, for the purpose of arresting the progress of the evil occasioned by the said unconstitutional acts."

Nor has South Carolina stood alone in the expression of these sentiments: Georgia and Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi, and North Carolina have raised their voices in earnest remonstrances and repeated warnings. Virginia, in 1828, in responding to South Carolina, declared "that the Constitution of the United States, being a federative compact between sovereign States, in construing which no common arbiter is known, each State has a right to construe the compact for itself; and that Virginia, as one of the high contracting parties, feels itself bound to declare, and does hereby most solemnly declare its deliberate conviction, that the acts of Congress usually denominated the Tariff Laws, passed avowedly for the protection of domestic manufactures, are not authorized by the plain construction, true intent and meaning of the Constitution."

Georgia, through her Legislature, pronounced this system to be one "which was grinding down the resources of one class of the States to build up and advance the prosperity of another of the same confederacy-and which they solemnly believed to be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Federal Constitution," and declared it to be the right of the several states, in case of any infraction of the general compact, "to complain, remonstrate, and even refuse obedience to any measure of the General Government manifestly against and in violation of the Constitution; that otherwise the law might be violated with impunity, and without redress, as often as the majority might think proper to transcend their powers, and the parts injured would be bound to yield an implicit obedience to the measure, however unconstitutional, which must tend to annihilate all sovereignty and independence of the States and consolidate all power in the General Government, which never was designed nor intended by the framers of the Constitution."

Alabama also protested against "the attempt to exclude the foreign in favor of the domestic fabrics, as the exercise of a power not granted by the Constitution," and concluded by stating "that