DOCUMENTS AND RECORDS, CONCERNING Federal RelaTIONS GENERALLY: The Tariff of PROTECTION AND PROHIBITION: CONSOLIDATION: STATES RIGHTS: NULLIFICATION: POWER OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY: SECESSION: COERCION: ALLEGIANCE SUPREMACY OF THE MAJORITY: GENERAL WELFARE: INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. Preliminary observations by the Editor, illustrative and explanatory of the preceding questions. The legislative acts and resolutions of South Carolina on these subjects, and the proceedings of the Convention of this State, occasioned by a series of usurpations on the part of Congress from the year 1820 to the present time, will be found in the documents that follow this note. They constitute by far the most prominent and important part of the legislative history of South Carolina; and they contain evidence of so much constitutional knowledge, so much able political disquisition, and so much fearless honesty both in reasoning and in conduct, that the Editor has deemed it an imperious duty to preserve every important record relating to this most interesting struggle. Nor is the contest over. Every year produces reasonable apprehension of some new attack; and the documents that embody our able defences of States Rights against federal usurpation, have not lost, but greatly gained, in interest and in value. They contain a mass of enlightened disquisition, to which those who succeed us will be glad to resort. Until the present volume, they have been printed and dispersed in a loose and pamphlet form, not calculated for preservation; and the citizens of this State who mingled in that exciting contest, will not be sorry to find them collected in a durable publication. The Editor has thought fit to preface these documents with notice of the prominent facts and arguments that bear upon the subjects discussed; believing that a brief summary, with some explanatory remarks upon a part of our State history so important to others and so honorable to ourselves, would meet with the reader's indulgence. Circumstances worth remembering, that are commonly known at the present day, will pass away and be forgotten a dozen years hence. A few pages dedicated to their preservation may be deemed allowable for the sake of those who come after us. The Editor has inserted some resolutions and proceedings of other States, which having been recorded in the Pamphlet Laws and Resolutions of South Carolina, by direction of our own legislature, he did not feel himself at liberty to reject. The government under which we live, is of a double character. The Colonies of Great Britain in North America formed themselves, on the 4th July, 1776, into thirteen distinct communities or nations, each of them, like every other nation, independent of the others, with distinct forms of government, and separated into distinct and circumscribed VOL. I.-26. REMARKS. territories and localities. Finding that although they were separated as national sovereignties and communities, they had many objects of common interest involving their common defence and common welfare, they formed a CONFEDERATION, on the 8th July, 1778, to protect all those interests that they had in common; preserving, however, to each, its separate Sovereignty and Independence. They did not meet as one people they did not amalgamate into one consolidated community, or renounce their separate forms of government, or their distinct national character, or national rights, in any other respect than such as were comprized in their new erected agency or confederation, established to protect common rights and common interests. This sufficed through the revolutionary struggle: at the Treaty of peace, the colonies were recognized by Great Britain as well as by the rest of Europe, as distinct independent communities, with the usual rights of sovereign nations. Under that character they treated with Great Britain in 1783. The confederation of 1778 did not continue to work well, for want of more effectual and extensive powers. A CONVENTION of the several states therefore was called, and assembled in 1787, to amend and improve that confederation. It was a convention not of the people, but of the States; in their state capacity: the members were elected, not by the people but by the States: they were called as states, they met as states, they verified their powers as states, they voted as states; and they formed a Constitution for the UNITED STATES; which was ratified, not by the people, but by the several states. Attempts were made to introduce the Convention to the public, not as representing an union or confederation of independent communities, but as the representatives of one undivided people or nation. With this view, the term "national" was adopted in all the early proceedings of the Convention, until the 25th of June, 1787; when the design being seen through, the adopted term national was struck out on express motion, and the words United States substituted in its place. The leading idea that pervades the Constitution of 1787, is, that the Government or Agency then erected, should have the exclusive controul over our foreign relations, as to peace and war, treaties of commerce, &c. and every question involving indiscriminately and by direct operation the whole of the United States. While every thing comprised in our domestic relations, our internal and territorial government, should remain under the exclusive controul of the individual states, not to be encroached upon or touched by the federal government. To ensure this, however, the Convention did not content itself with a general discrimination and separation of powers, but enumerated and conceded specifically and expressly such as they chose to grant, and refused many that were proposed. Surely a power proposed, debated, and negatived by the Convention, cannot now be assumed either directly or indirectly, without fraudulent contrivance or manifest usurpation. On the 18th day of August, the following powers were proposed in the Convention to be vested in the Congress of the United States. To grant Charters of Incorporation generally. To grant Charters of Incorporation in cases where the public good may require them, and the authority of a single state may be incompetent. (In discussing the constitutionality of the first United States bank bill, Mr. Madison asserted, that the proposition to vest in Congress such a power, had been made in the Convention and rejected.) To establish an University. To encourage by proper premiums and provisions, the advancement of useful knowledge and discoveries. To establish public institutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, commerce, trades and manufactures. To regulate stages on postroads. All these proposals were rejected: none of them are to be found in the Constitution as it stands. On the 20th of August, 1787, it was proposed in Convention, that to assist the President in conducting the public affairs, there shall be a council of State, of the following officers among others, viz: The Secretary of domestic affairs, who shall be appointed by the President, and hold his office during pleasure. It shall be his duty to attend to matters of general police, the state of agriculture and manufactures, the opening of roads and navigations, and the facilitating communications through the United States: and he shall from time to time recommend such measures and establishments as may tend to promote these objects: negatived. (See Journal of the federal Convention, p. 265.) No one can pretend to say after this, that manufactures and Internal improvements were not duly brought before the Convention as subjects of consideration. But further: on the 14th of September, three days before the Convention broke up, Internal Improvements were again pressed and urged on the meeting. For the report of the committee of revision being brought up and read, it was proposed, that Congress should have power to grant letters of incorporation for Canals, &c. and that this should be added to the 8th Section of the first article. Passed in the negative. On the same day it was again proposed to establish an University ; negatived. What becomes, after this, of the omnipotent discretion of a Congress Majority? Of the supreme importance of the general welfare? Of a protecting Tariff in favor of inanufactures? Of a grand system of Internal Improvements? The subjects were distinctly brought before the Convention; which absolutely refused to concede these powers to Congress, or any of them: the proposals were acted on and negatived. Can these powers be now assumed by Congress, in open defiance of the Convention and Constitution, which refused to sanction them? Yet in the teeth of these proceedings, did Mr. J. Q. Adams, in a message as President, recommend a national University; a national Observatory; a system of Internal Improvement, that would take 100 millions from the hard earnings of the people's industry; operating as a bribe, offered to such states as might be selfish enough to accede to this usurpation; and a standing brigade of 66 Engineers, to be employed in surveying national roads, national canals, national fortifications, and drawing paper surveys without use or end. The exposition made of this most extravagant and unconstitutional proposal, by our Senator Judge Smith, contributed greatly to bring it into disrepute. The first organized attack on the Constitution began with the TARIFF OF PROJECTION. MANUFACTURES are not fitted for a country of sparce population; the supply of labour at a moderate rate, must be plentiful, and easily obtained. Gen. Alexander Hamilton, appointed Secretary of the Treasury in 1790, presented in 1791 four reports; on public credit; on a national bank; on a mint; and on manufactures. This last was evidently premature. But the feature of his report, was not a distinct tariff of protection, but a revenue tariff acting in that way. His general proposal was EDITOR'S REMARKS. EDITOR'S an increase of duties from 5 per cent to 7 per cent. Woollens were REMARKS, afterwards subjected, for revenue purposes merely, to a duty of 73, 12, and in 1804 of 15 per cent, in aid of the Mediterranean fund against the Barbary powers. There was nothing to alarm in all this. About the years 1811 and 1812, such was the paralysing influence of the federal party during the then war with Great Britain-of a body of merchants and British agents indebted to Great Britain-of retail store-keepers indebted to British importers-of a people indebted to retail merchantsand a body of lawyers attached by interest as well as inclination to the then all powerful monied interest-that the present editor, stating the difficulties that arose from the acknowledged principles of political economy calling for free trade, proposed a domestic system of such manufactures as were of the first necessity, to counteract this enormous British influence; and he revived the "Emporium" as a repository of manufacturing information. That publication fell through in about three years, from the difficulties of collection induced by the state of war. Whether the influence of federal politics and British agency, were causes sufficient to justify the measure proposed, he had subsequent reasons to doubt. The first regular tariff of protection was in 1816; introduced on the reasonable pretence (in part) of protecting those manufactures during peace, that had been of use to the country during the war. This measure was supported by Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Lowndes, Mr. Barbour, Mr. Crawford, &c. The duties were fixed at 25 per cent, to fall to 20 per cent in 1820. This fall was never permitted to take place. The sweets of monopoly had been tasted. In the debate of 1820, Mr. Lowndes, alarmed at the symptoms of monopoly, took a decided stand against the Tariff then proposed. About the year 1818, a plan began to be organized to establish a comprehensive system of domestic manufactures, to the total exclusion of all British importation. This plan was at that time communicated to the present Editor in Philadelphia for his concurrence; which was refused. The war was over. But an association for the purpose was regularly established in that city. In July, 1819, he wrote an Essay against the justice and policy of a Tariff of protection, in the Analectic Magazine, to which Mr. Matthew Carey wrote a reply in the August number of the same work.* On the 12th of September, 1820, a very able memorial against the proposed Tariff, drawn up by Stephen Elliott, Esq. was adopted by the citizens of Charleston. These proceedings were succeeded by the strong resolutions of the merchants of Boston, (attributed to Mr. Daniel Webster) against a protecting Tariff, October 3, 1820; and by the memoria presented to Congress to the same purpose, from a meeting of commercial delegates assembled at Philadelphia, November 4, 1820, (attributed to Mr. Horace Binney.) On the other hand, meetings. in support of a protecting Tariff, were held at Philadelphia, Nov. 8, and 15, 1819, and in New York, Nov. 29, 1819. In the Session of 1819-1820, an increase of the Tariff was proposed in Congress against which the citizens of Chesterfield in this State, drew up a memorial which was presented to our legislature and reported on December 8, 1820, but is omitted among the resolutions and reports of that year. That report, adopted by the house, shows clearly that many parts of the State were as yet in the infancy of knowledge, as to Dr. Cooper had no views of any situation in South Carolina at that time. Dr. Darrell Smith, the Chemical Professor, and Dr. Maxcy, the President, then living, and in full health. States rights and constitutional information. In 1820, when by the compromise of 1816, the duties ought to have been reduced to 20 per cent, the northern delegates raised a committee of manufactures, not to diminish but increase the Tariff. Of this committee, the present Judge Baldwin, then delegate from Pittsburgh, was Chairman; and his Tariff of protection was strenuously supported by Mr. Rich, of Vermont. It is curious to remark the gross ignorance of the plainest principles of political economy prevalent among the advocates of the American system, of that day, The Tariff, it was said, was meant to render us independent of foreign nations—to keep gold and silver at home-to prevent a ruinous balance of trade against us-to foster our national industry-to take advantage of machinery-to protect establishments now in existence-to provide a home market for the farmer's produce-to employ our idle population. It would be a disgrace for any man of the present day to attempt a refutation of absurdities so palpable; so utterly void are they of any reasonable influence, except where self interest is blind to their fallacy. But the influence of the manufacturing monopolists carried with them the northern majority in Congress, and the "American System" was supported with the avowed intention of excluding every article of foreign produce or manufacture that by the aid of protecting duties could be raised at home. In 1824 another committee of manufactures was raised, of which Mr. Todd was Chairman. The bill brought in by Mr. Todd was distinctly, openly, expressly declared by him on the floor of Congress on the 10th of February 1824, to be in no respect a revenue bill, but intended for the purpose of checking and preventing all foreign importation that would interfere with home production. In this year the Tariff on woollens was raised nominally to 33, really to 38 per cent. The tide of protection rolled on unchecked till, in 1828, the bill introduced by Mr. Mallory, Chairman of the committee of manufactures, and passed by a northern majority utterly regardless of the complaints and sufferings of the South, gave rise to a determined opposition, in which South Carolina took the risk and the lead. Wearied of unavailing remonstrance, in 1832 she called a Convention of her people, and declared the Tariff law unconstitutional, null, and void. The result was, the existing compromise act introduced by Mr. Clay. During Mr. Canning's administration in England, Mr. Huskisson brought forward Dr. Adam Smith's doctrine of free trade; the principle met with little or no opposition; but the Government had to disentangle gradually and cautiously the practical errors and mistakes of the protecting and prohibiting system for two centuries preceding, before it could go into full operation. The admirable memorial of the Merchants of Great Britain, April 20, 1820, in favour of Free Trade, was presented to Lord Liverpool, who expressed his entire" concurrence with the principles advanced in it; and he did proceed as fast as circumstan ces would admit, to put Mr. Huskisson's views in force. Since that time, much has been done in Great Britain in favor of free trade, and much remains to be done. The hostility of the Landlord-aristocracy of that country still defends with obstinate perseverance the corn-law system. That system itself, with the hereditary legislation that defends it, is now tottering on its base; and in a few years will serve only as a characteristic specimen of the power of prejudice, the wisdom of our ancestors, and the patriotism" of a house of Lords. The example of enlightened Europe had no effect on the northern majority in Congress. That majority determined at all hazards to EDITOR'S REMARKS. |