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great extent, supply themselves with cordage abroad. This, of course, will diminish the consumption at home, and thus injure the hemp-grower, and at the same time the manufacturer of cordage. Again, there may be reason to fear that, as the duty is not raised on cordage manufactured abroad, such cordage may be imported in greater or less degree in the place of the unmanufactured article. Whatever view we take, therefore, of this hemp duty, it appears to me altogether objectionable.

Much has been said of the protection which the navigation of the country has received from the discriminating duties on tonnage, and the exclusive enjoyment of the coasting trade. In my opinion, neither of these measures has materially sustained the shipping interest of the United States. I do not concur in the sentiments on that point quoted from Dr. Seybert's statistical work. Dr. Seybert was an intelligent and worthy man, and compiled a valuable book; but he was engaged in public life at a time when it was more fashionable than it has since become, to ascribe efficacy to discriminating duties. The shipping interest in this country has made its way by its own enterprise. By its own vigorous exertion it spread itself over the seas, and by the same exertion it still holds its place there. It seems idle to talk of the benefit and advantage of discriminating duties, when they operate against us on one side of the ocean quite as much as they operate for us on the other. To suppose that two nations, having intercourse with each other, can secure each to itself a decided advantage in that intercourse, is little less than absurdity; and this is the absurdity of discriminating duties. Still less reason is there for the idea, that our own ship-owners hold the exclusive enjoyment of the coasting trade only by virtue of the law which prevents foreigners from sharing it. Look at the rate of freights. Look at the manner in which this coasting trade is conducted by our own vessels, and the competition which subsists between them. In a majority of instances, probably, these vessels are owned, in whole or in part, by those who navigate them. These owners are at home at one end of the voyage; and repairs and supplies are thus obtained in the cheapest and most economical manner. No foreign vessels would be able to partake in this trade, even by the aid of preferences and bounties.

The shipping interest of this country requires only an open

field, and a fair chance. Every thing else it will do for itself. But it has not a fair chance while it is so severely taxed in whatever enters into the necessary expense of building and equipment. In this respect, its rivals have advantages which may in the end prove to be decisive against us. I entreat the Senate to examine and weigh this subject, and not go on, blindly, to unknown consequences. The English ship-owner is carefully regarded by his government, and aided and succored, whenever and wherever necessary, by a sharp-sighted policy. Both he and the American ship-owner obtain their hemp from Russia. But observe the difference. The duty on hemp in England is but twenty-one dollars; here, it is proposed to make it sixty, notwithstanding its cost here is necessarily enhanced by an additional freight, proportioned to a voyage longer than that which brings it to the English consumer, by the whole breadth of the Atlantic.

Sir, I wish to invoke the Senate's attention, earnestly, to the subject; I would awaken the regard of the whole government, more and more, not only on this but on all occasions, to this great national interest; an interest which lies at the very foundation both of our commercial prosperity and our naval achievement.

petitors with the government in the sale of land. My own opinion has uniformly been, that the public lands should be offered freely, and at low prices; so as to encourage settlement and cultivation as rapidly as the increasing population of the country is competent to extend settlement and cultivation. Every actual settler should be able to buy good land, at a cheap rate; but, on the other hand, speculation by individuals on a large scale should not be encouraged, nor should the value of all lands, sold and unsold, be reduced to nothing, by throwing new and vast quantities into the market at prices merely nominal.

I now proceed, Sir, to some of the opinions expressed by the gentleman from South Carolina. Two or three topics were touched by him, in regard to which he expressed sentiments in which I do not at all concur.

In the first place, Sir, the honorable gentleman spoke of the whole course and policy of the government towards those who have purchased and settled the public lands, and seemed to think this policy wrong. He held it to have been, from the first, hard and rigorous; he was of opinion, that the United States had acted towards those who had subdued the Western wilderness in the spirit of a step-mother; that the public domain had been improperly regarded as a source of revenue; and that we had rigidly compelled payment for that which ought to have been given away. He said we ought to have imitated the example of other governments, which had acted on a much more liberal system than ours, in planting colonies. He dwelt, particularly, upon the settlement of America by colonies from Europe; and reminded us, that their governments had not exacted from those colonies payment for the soil. In reference to them, he said, it had been thought that the conquest of the wilderness was itself an equivalent for the soil, and he lamented that we had not fol lowed that example, and pursued the same liberal course towards our own emigrants to the West.

Now, Sir, I deny, altogether, that there has been any thing harsh or severe in the policy of the government towards the new States of the West. On the contrary, I maintain that it has uniformly pursued towards those States a liberal and enlightened system, such as its own duty allowed and required, and such as their interest and welfare demanded. The government

has been no step-mother to the new States. She has not been careless of their interests, nor deaf to their requests; but from the first moment when the territories which now form those States were ceded to the Union, down to the time in which I am now speaking, it has been the invariable object of the government, to dispose of the soil according to the true spirit of the obligation under which it received it; to hasten its settlement and cultivation, as far and as fast as practicable; and to rear the new communities into new and independent States, at the earliest moment of their being able, by their numbers, to form a regular government.

I do not admit, Sir, that the analogy to which the gentleman refers us is just, or that the cases are at all similar. There is no resemblance between the cases, upon which a statesman can found an argument. The original North American colonists either fled from Europe, like our New England ancestors, to avoid persecution, or came hither at their own charges, and often at the ruin of their fortunes, as private adventurers. Generally speaking, they derived neither succor nor protection from their governments at home. Wide, indeed, is the difference between those cases and ours. From the very origin of the government, these Western lands, and the just protection of those who had settled or should settle on them, have been the leading objects in our policy, and have led to expenditures, both of blood and treasure, not inconsiderable; not, indeed, exceeding the importance of the object, and not yielded grudgingly; but yet entitled to be regarded as great, though necessary sacrifices, made for high, proper ends. The Indian title has been extinguished at the expense of many millions. Is that nothing? There is still a much more material consideration. These colonists, if we are to call them so, in passing the Alleghanies, did not pass beyond the care and protection of their own government. Whereever they went, the public arm was still stretched over them. A parental government at home was still ever mindful of their condition and their wants, and nothing was spared which a just sense of their necessities required. Is it forgotten that it was one of the most arduous duties of the government, in its earliest years, to defend the frontiers against the Northwestern Indians? Are the sufferings and misfortunes under Harmar and St. Clair not worthy to be remembered? Do the occurrences

connected with these military efforts show an unfeeling neglect of Western interests? And here, Sir, what becomes of the gentleman's analogy? What English armies accompanied our ancestors to clear the forests of a barbarous foe? What treasures of the exchequer were expended in buying up the original title to the soil? What governmental arm held its ægis over our fathers' heads, as they pioneered their way in the wilderness? Sir, it was not till General Wayne's victory, in 1794, that it could be said we had conquered the savages. It was not till that period that the government could have considered itself as having established an entire ability to protect those who should undertake the conquest of the wilderness.

And here, Sir, at the epoch of 1794, let us pause and survey the scene, as it actually existed thirty-five years ago. Let us look back and behold it. Over all that is now Ohio there then stretched one vast wilderness, unbroken except by two small spots of civilized culture, the one at Marietta and the other at Cincinnati. At these little openings, hardly each a pin's point upon the map, the arm of the frontier-man had levelled the forest and let in the sun. These little patches of earth, themselves almost overshadowed by the overhanging boughs of that wilderness which had stood and perpetuated itself, from century to century, ever since the creation, were all that had then been rendered verdant by the hand of man. In an extent of hundreds and thousands of square miles, no other surface of smiling green attested the presence of civilization. The hunter's path crossed mighty rivers, flowing in solitary grandeur, whose sources lay in remote and unknown regions of the wilderness. It struck upon the north on a vast inland sea, over which the wintry tempests raged as on the ocean; all around was bare creation. It was fresh, untouched, unbounded, magnificent wilderness.

And, Sir, what is it now? Is it imagination only, or can it possibly be fact, that presents such a change as surprises and astonishes us when we turn our eyes to what Ohio now is? Is it reality, or a dream, that, in so short a period even as thirty-five years, there has sprung up, on the same surface, an independent State with a million of people? A million of inhabitants! an amount of population greater than that of all the cantons of Switzerland; equal to one third of all the people of the United States when they undertook to accomplish their independence.

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