yet obtain more from us. Let us undeceive him. Let us proclaim the acknowledged truth, that the treaty is prejudicial to the interests of this country. Are we not told by the Secretary of State, in the bold and confident assertion, that Don Onis was authorized to grant us much more, and that Spain dare not deny his instructions? The line of demarcation is far within his limits! If she would have then granted us more, is her position now more favorable to her in the negotiation? In our relations to foreign powers, it may be sometimes politic to sacrifice a portion of our rights to secure the residue. But is Spain such a power, as that it becomes us to sacrifice those rights? Is she entitled to it by her justice, by her observance of good faith, or by her possible annoyance of us in the event of war? She will seek, as she has sought, procrastination in the negotiation, taking the treaty as the basis. She will dare to offend us, as sbe has insulted us, by asking the disgraceful stipulation, that we shall not recognize the patriots. Let us put aside the treaty; tell her to grant us our rights, to their uttermost extent. And it she still palters, let us assert those rights by whatever measures it is for the interest of our country to adopt.

If the treaty was abandoned; if we were not on the contrary signified, too distinctly, that there was to be a continued and unremitting endeavor to obtain its revival; he would not think it advisable for this House to interpose. But, with all the information in our possession, and holding the opinions which he entertained, he thought it the bounden duty of the House to adopt the resolutions. He had acquitted himself of what he deemed a solemn duty, in bringing up the subject. Others could discharge theirs according to their own sense of them.

ON THE PROTECTION OF HOME INDUSTRY.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, APRIL 26, 1820.

[FROM the beginning of Mr. Clay's public life, as far back as his appearance in the Legislature of Kentucky, he was ever a steady, vigilant, and vigorous advocate for the protection of home industry. Amid all the fluctuations of opinion with other statesmen, and in face of all the free-trade theories of economists, he never deviated on this subject. It was a part of his natural instincts to discern the position of American capital, labor, and art, as they are affected by foreign interests of the same kind, and to sympathize with the former, when suffering disadvantage by the action of the latter upon them. Eminently practical in his views, Mr. Clay had very little respect for the abstract theories of economists.

The war of 1812 had, by necessity, built up a system of American manufactures, and when peace came, it began to totter and fall, in competition with foreign products of the same classes. The Tariff of 1816 was enacted to save it, but it proved inadequate, or not well adapted. The experience of the country for the first five years subsequent to the peace, had taught our statesmen what was wanted, and the Tariff bill of 1820 was prepared with great care, and reported by Mr. Baldwin of Pennsylvania, who was afterward promoted to the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was in support of this bill that the following speech was made. The bill passed the House by a vote of ninety to sixty-nine, but failed in the Senate by twenty-two against twenty-one-so narrow a chance doomed the country to four years more of the greatest commercial embarrassments; for it was not till the Tariff of 1824 that trade and business began to revive. Mr. Clay afterward found, by comparison, that the seven years previous to the Tariff of 1824 was a period of the greatest commercial depression, and the seven years subsequent to that event a period of the greatest commercial prosperity which the country had ever experienced. The

last four years of the first-named period-the most pinching and most distressing of the seven-were brought about by that unfortunate vote of the Senate, in 1820, of twenty-two to twenty-one. The vote of the House for the Tariff of 1820 was a decided majority. To this result, the following speech of Mr. Clay no doubt contributed in a very large measure. Probably it was the means of it. Pity that the same influence could not have been carried into the Senate; for four years of such adversity was an incalculable subtraction from the wealth of the country.]

MR. CHAIRMAN-Whatever may be the value of my opinions on the interesting subject now before us, they have not been hastily formed. It may possibly be recollected by some gentlemen that I expressed them when the existing tariff was adopted; and that I then urged, that the period of the termination of the war, during which the manufacturing industry of the country had received a powerful spring, was precisely that period when government was alike impelled, by duty and interest, to protect it against the free admission of foreign fabrics, consequent upon a state of peace. I insisted, on that occasion, that a less measure of protection would prove more efficacious, at that time, than one of greater extent at a future day. My wishes prevailed only in part; and we are now called upon to decide whether we will correct the error which, I think, we then committed.

In considering the subject, the first important inquiry that we should make is, whether it be desirable that such a portion of the capital and labor of the country should be employed in the business of manufacturing, as would furnish a supply of our necessary wants? Since the first colonization of America, the principal direction of the labor and capital of the inhabitants has been to produce raw materials for the consumption or fabrication of foreign nations. We have always had, in great abundance, the means of subsistence, but we have derived chiefly from other countries our clothes, and the instruments of defense. Except during those interruptions of commerce arising from a state of war, or from measures adopted for vindicating our commercial rights, we have experienced no very great inconvenience heretofore from this mode of supply. The lim ited amount of our surplus produce, resulting from the smallness of our numbers, and the long and arduous convulsions of Europe, secured us good markets for that surplus in her ports, or those of her colonies. But those convulsions have now ceased, and our population has reached nearly ten millions. A new epoch has arisen; and it becomes us deliberately to contemplate our own actual condition, and the relations which are likely to exist between us and the other parts of the world. The actual state of our population, and the ratio of its progressive increase, when compared with the ratio of the increase of the population of the countries which

have hitherto consumed our raw produce, seem, to me, alone to demonstrate the necessity of diverting some portion of our industry from its accustomed channel. We double our population in or about the term of twenty-five years. If there be no change in the mode of exerting our industry, we shall double, during the same term, the amount of our exportable produce. Europe, including such of her colonies as we have free access to, taken altogether, does not duplicate her population in a shorter term, probably, than one hundred years. The ratio of the increase of her capacity of consumption, therefore, is, to that of our capacity of production, as one is to four. And it is manifest, from the simple exhibition of the powers of the consuming countries, compared with those of the supplying country, that the former are inadequate to the latter. It is certainly true, that a portion of the mass of our raw produce, which we transmit to her, reverts to us in a fabricated form, and that this return augments with our increasing population. This is, however, a very inconsiderable addition to her actual ability to afford a market for the produce of our industry.

I believe that we are already beginning to experience the want of capacity in Europe to consume our surplus produce. Take the articles of cotton, tobacco, and bread-stuffs. For the latter we have scarcely any foreign demand. And is there not reason to believe that we have reached if we have not passed, the maximum of the foreign demand for the other two articles? Considerations connected with the cheapness of cotton, as a raw material, and the facility with which it can be fabricated, will probably make it to be more and more used as a substitute for other materials. But, after you allow to the demand for it the utmost extension of which it is susceptible, it is yet quite limited-limited by the number of persons who use it, by their wants and their ability to supply them. If we have not reached, therefore, the maximum of the foreign demand (as I believe we have), we must soon fully satisfy it. With respect to tobacco, that article affording an enjoyment not necessary, as food and clothes are, to human existence, the foreign demand for it is still more precarious, and I apprehend that we have already passed its limits. It appears to me, then, that, if we consult our interests merely, we ought to encourage home manufactures. But there are other motives to recommend it, of not less importance.

The wants of man may be classed under three heads: food, raiment, and defense. They are felt alike in the state of barbarism and of civilization. He must be defended against the ferocious beast of prey in the one condition, and against the ambition, violence, and injustice incident to the other. If he seeks to obtain a supply of those wants without giving an equivalent, he is a beggar or a robber; if by promising an equivalent which he can not give, he is fraudulent, and if by commerce, in which there is perfect freedom on his side, while he meets with nothing but restrictions on the other, he submits to an unjust and degrading inequality.

What is true of individuals is equally so of nations. The country, then, which relies upon foreign nations for either of those great essentials, is not, in fact, independent. Nor is it any consolation for our dependence upon other nations that they are also dependent upon us, even were it true. Every nation should anxiously endeavor to establish its absolute independence, and consequently be able to feed, and clothe, and defend itself. If it rely upon a foreign supply, that may be cut off by the caprice of the nation yielding it, by war with it, or even by war with other nations; it can not be independent. But it is not true that any other nations depend upon us in a degree any thing like equal to that of our dependence upon them for the great necessaries to which I have referred. Every other nation seeks to supply itself with them from its own resources; and so strong is the desire which they feel to accomplish this purpose, that they exclude the cheaper foreign article for the dearer home production. Witness the English policy in regard to corn. So selfish, in this respect, is the conduct. of other powers that, in some instances, they even prohibit the produce of the industry of their own colonies when it comes into competition with the produce of the parent country. All other countries but our own exclude by high duties, or absolute prohibitions, whatever they can respectively produce within themselves. The truth is, and it is in vain to disguise it, that we are a sort of independent colonies of England-politically free, commercially slaves. Gentlemen tell us of the advantage of a free exchange of the produce of the world. But they tell us of what has never existed, does not exist, and perhaps never will exist. They invoke us to give perfect freedom on our side, while, in the ports of every other nation, we are met with a code of odious restrictions, shutting out entirely a great part of our produce, and letting in only so much as they can not possibly do without. I will hereafter examine their favorite maxim, of leaving things to themselves, more particularly. At present I will only say that I too am a friend to free trade, but it must be a free trade of perfect reciprocity. If the governing consideration were cheapness; if national independence were to weigh nothing; if honor nothing; why not subsidize foreign powers to defend us? why not hire Swiss or Hessian mercernaries to protect us? why not get our arms of all kinds, as we do in part, the blankets and clothing of our soldiers, from abroad? We should probably consult economy by these dangerous expedients.

But, say gentlemen, there are to the manufacturing system some inherent objections, which should induce us to avoid its introduction into this country; and we are warned by the example of England, by her pauperism, by the vices of her population, her wars, and so forth. It would be a strange order of Providence, if it were true, that he should create necessary and indispensable wants, and yet should render us unable to supply them without the degradation or contamination of our species.

Pauperism is, in general, the effect of an overflowing population. Manufactures may undoubtedly produce a redundant population; but so may