despotic powers, than would be the adoption of this so much dreaded resolution. Pass it, and what do you do? You exercise an indisputable attribute of sovereignty, for which you are responsible to none of them. You do the same when you perform any other legislative function; no less. If the allies object to this measure, let them forbid us to take a vote in this House; let them strip us of every attribute of independent government; let them disperse us.

Will gentlemen attempt to maintain that, on the principles of the law of nations, those allies would have cause of war? If there be any principle which has been settled for ages, any which is founded in the very nature of things, it is that every independent state has the clear right to judge of the fact of the existence of other sovereign powers. I admit that there may be a state of inchoate initiative sovereignity, in which a new government, just struggling into being, can not be said yet perfectly to exist. But the premature recognition of such new government can give offense justly to no other than its ancient sovereign. The right of recognition comprehends the right to be informed; and the means of information must, of necessity, depend upon the sound discretion of the party seeking it. You may send out a commission of inquiry, and charge it with a provident attention to your own people and your own interests. Such will be the character of the proposed agency. It will not necessarily follow, that any public functionary will be appointed by the president. You merely grant the means by which the executive may act when he thinks proper. What does he tell you in his message ? That Greece is contending for her independence; that all sympathize with her; and that no power has declared against her. Pass this resolution, and what is the reply which it conveys to him? "You have sent us grateful intelligence; we feel warmly for Greece, and we grant you money, that, when you shall think it proper, when the interests of this nation shall not be jeoparded, you may depute a commissioner or public agent to Greece." The whole responsibility is then left where the Constitution puts it. A member in his place may make a speech or proposition, the House may even pass a vote, in respect to our foreign affairs, which the president, with the whole field lying full before him, would not deem it expedient to effec

tuate.

But, sir, it is not for Greece alone that I desire to see this measure adopted. It will give to her but little support, and that purely of a moral kind. It is principally for America, for the credit and character of our common country, for our own unsullied name, that I hope to see it pass. Mr. Chairman, what appearance on the page of history would a record like this exhibit? "In the month of January, in the year of our Lord and Saviour, 1824, while all European Christendom beheld, with cold and unfeeling indifference, the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United States, almost the sole, the last, the greatest depository of human hope and

human freedom, the representatives of a gallant nation, containing a million of freemen ready to fly to arms, while the people of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling, and the whole continent, by one simultaneous emotion, was rising, and solemnly and anxious supplicating and invoking high heaven to spare and succor Greece, and to invigorate her arms in her glorious cause, while temples and senate houses were alike resounding with one burst of generous and holy sympathy; in the year of our Lord and Saviour, that Saviour of Greece and of us; a proposition was offered in the American Congress to send a messenger to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with a kind expression of our good wishes and our sympathies and it was rejected!" Go home, if you can; go home if you dare, to your constituents, and tell them that you voted it down; meet, if you can, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments; that you can not tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, drove you from your purpose; that the specters of cimeters, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you and alarmed you; and that you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity. I can not bring myself to believe, that such will be the feeling of a majority of the committee. But, for myself, though every friend of the cause should desert it, and I be left to stand alone with the gentleman from Massachusetts, I will give to his resolution the poor sanction of my unqualified approbation.

ON AMERICAN INDUSTRY.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 30 AND 31, 1824.

[WE come now to one of the most elaborate compositions of Mr. Clay, on a theme in which he always felt the deepest interest. No one can read the following speech without being sensible of the patient study and profound investigation, which it must have cost the author. Simple and unadorned, as Mr. Clay's style always is, this is, nevertheless, what may be called an ornate, as well as an elaborate production. It is one of the greatest studies of his life, and the subject was worthy of it-called for it. We have before noticed the failure of the tariff bill of 1820, for lack of a single vote in the Senate, and how much depended upon it. After the close of the war of 1812, down to 1820, the country had suffered incalculably for want of adequate protection to home industry, and the loss of the tariff of 1820 was a calamity the extent of which could not be estimated. Besides the almost total paralysis of domestic trade and foreign commerce, and the painful contraction of the currency, Mr. Clay's estimate of the average depression of fifty per cent, in all kinds of property in the country, by reason of these misfortunes, was by no means extravagant. What an amazing reckoning this, if it were a just one! Four years from 1820, the country had gone on suffering in this manner, in addition to all the disadvantages of the previous four years, from 1816 to 1820. If Mr. Clay's patriotism could ever prompt him to a great effort-of which no one will doubt-it, was during the pendency of the tariff bill of 1824. The proter. tion of American manufactures was a subject of which Mr. Clay was now perfect master. He had studied it profoundly for more than twenty years, and had often advocated it, first, in the Legislature of Kentucky, and afterward, in Congress. He had closely observed the painful experience of the country from 1816 to 1824, for want of protection, and he came to the argument of the fullowing speech armed with facts, and stimulated in a high degree by his patriotic zeal. It was in this speech that his AMERICAN

SYSTEM was baptized by himself, and leaped from the font, to bear that name forever in the political history of the country. The tariff of 1824 passed both Houses of Congress, was approved by the president (somewhat reluctantly), and became a law. In reference to this tariff, Mr. Clay said, in 1832, being then in the Senate: "If I were to select any term of seven years, since the adoption of the present Constitution, which exhibited a scene of the most wide-spread dismay and desolation, it would be exactly that term of seven years which immediately preceded the establishment of the tariff of 1824; and if the term of seven years were to be selected, of the greatest prosperity which this people have enjoyed, since the establishment of their present Constitution, it would be exactly that period of seven years which immediately followed the passage of the tariff of 1824." This description of these two cycles of our history will, perhaps, be enough to commend to the profoundest consideration the following great argument of Mr. Clay, when it is considered, that it was greatly, not to say chiefly, influential, in procuring the adoption of the tariff of 1824. It is the most compact and best constructed paper that was ever written upon the subject-a condensation of Mr. Clay's thoughts, of his reasonings, and of the fruits of his researches on this theme, for a quarter of a century—all brought to bear on this occasion.]

THE gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Barbour) has embraced the occasion produced by the proposition of the gentleman from Tennessee to strike out the minimum price in the bill on cotton fabrics, to express his sentiments at large on the policy of the pending measure; and it is scarcely necessary for me to say he has evinced his usual good temper, ability, and decorum. The parts of the bill are so intermingled and interwoven together, that there can be no doubt of the fitness of this occasion to exhibit its merits or its defects. It is my intention, with the permission of the committee, to avail myself also of this opportunity, to present to its consideration those general views, as they appear to me, of the true policy of this country, which imperiously demand the passage of this bill. I am deeply sensible, Mr. Chairman, of the high responsibility of my present situation. But that responsibility inspires me with no other apprehension than that I shall be unable to fulfill my duty; with no other solicitude than that I may, at least, in some small degree, contribute to recall my country from the pursuit of a fatal policy, which appears to me inevitably to lead to its impoverishment and ruin. I do feel most awfully this responsibility. And, if it were allowable for us, at the present day, to imitate ancient examples, I would invoke the aid of the Most High. I

would anxiously and fervently implore His divine assistance; that He would be graciously pleased to shower on my country His richest blessings; and that He would sustain, on this interesting occasion, the humble individual who stands before Him, and lend him the power, moral and physical, to perform the solemn duties which now belong to his public station.

Two classes of politicians divide the people of the United States. According to the system of one, the produce of foreign industry should be subjected to no other impost than such as may be necessary to provide a public revenue; and the produce of American industry should be left to sustain itself, if it can, with no other than that incidental protection, in its competition, at home as well as abroad, with rival foreign articles. According to the system of the other class, while they agree that the imposts should be mainly, and may under any modification be safely, relied on as a fit and convenient source of public revenue, they would so adjust and arrange the duties on foreign fabrics as to afford a gradual but adequate protection to American industry, and lessen our dependence on foreign nations, by securing a certain and ultimately a cheaper and better supply of our own wants from our own abundant resources. Both classes are equally sincere in their respective opinions, equally honest, equally patriotic, and desirous of advancing the prosperity of the country. In the discussion and consideration of these opposite opinions, for the purpose of ascertaining which has the support of truth and reason, we should, therefore, exercise every indulgence, and the greatest spirit of mutual moderation and forbearance. And, in our deliberations on this great question, we should look fearlessly and truly at the actual condition of the country, retrace the causes which have brought us into it, and snatch, if possible, a view of the future. We should, above all, consult experience—the experience of other nations, as well as our own—as our truest and most unerring guide.

In casting our eyes around us, the most prominent circumstance which fixes our attention, and challenges our deepest regret, is the general distress which pervades the whole country. It is forced upon us by numerous facts of the most incontestable character. It is indicated by the diminished exports of native produce; by the depressed and reduced state of our foreign navigation; by our diminished commerce; by successive unthreshed crops of grain, perishing in our barns and barn-yards for the want of a market; by the alarming diminution of the circulating medium; by the numerous bankruptcies, not limited to the trading classes, but extending to all orders of society; by a universal complaint of the want of employment, and a consequent reduction of the wages of labor; by the ravenous pursuit after public situations, not for the sake of their honors and the performance of their public duties, but as a means of private subsistence; by the eluctant resort to the perilous use of paper money; by the intervention of legislation in the delicate relation between debtor and creditor; and above all, by the low and depressed state of the value of almost every