Whig popular majority, 7,920. Such examples of the inevitable effect of choosing Members of Congress cotemporaneously, by opposite systems in different States, might be multiplied indefinitely. New-Jersey, for instance, with but six members chosen by general ticket, and a very slender popular majority, has usually exerted more weight in the decision of party questions in the House, than Pennsylvania, with four times her representation and ten times her popular majority. It was said with much force, in the course of the debate on the enactment under consideration, that the essential equality of Representation, which is the basis of Republican Institutions, imperatively demanded the establishment of some uniform system of choosing Representatives. The law of the land thus established, five States saw fit to set at defiance. New Hampshire, Georgia, Mississippi, and Missouri-all under the sway of the party assuming to itself exclusive Democracy-severally nullified this eminently democratic and just measure.They did it in express contempt and defiance of the act of Congress, prescribing a uniform division of the several States into single districts for the choice of Members of the House. In Georgia, indeed, the Legislature framed and passed a districting bill, but the Governor vetoed it, avowing in his Message, that he did this less from hostility to the district system, than to avoid the appearance of complying with the requisition of Congress. In each of these States, the same ascendency which refused to district, had undisputed power to district entirely to its own liking. In each State except Georgia, the Democracy could have Members of Congress. Whig. Loco-Foco. 0 6 4* 4 Loco majority in Congress, 1 7 3 districted so as to secure every member to themselves at the ensuing election.-Their refusal to district was, therefore, a sheer exhibition of ill-temper; a disloyal wilfulness, courting collision with the paramount authority of the Union. These States proceeded to choose members to the XXVIIIth Congress, in each case, by general ticket; and those members having appeared at the opening of the Session to claim seats, an issue was distinctly made up between the Law and its contemners, which the House must decide. No question of graver import could arise among a free people. No considerate, loyal citizen, especially one who had just sworn fidelity to the Constitution, could vote on the side of Nullification except after the maturest deliberation, and on the clearest conviction that the outraged provision of law was invalid. But the party-majority in the House cut the intricate knot without ceremony. They first, treating with utter contempt the objections and the protest of the Whig minority, admitted without question the twenty-one members, who appeared with certificates showing on their face that each of them had been chosen in ostentatious defiance of the law, suffered them to vote for Speaker and Clerk, and appointed them upon various Committees; and then directed the Committee on Elections to inquire into and report on the matter.That Committee, as was foreordained, reported that the second section of the Apportionment act was unconstitutional; the House promptly adopted the Report, and thus the whole matter was settled, virtually on the basis that no law is of binding force, which conflicts with the * We have given here the usual division of the Vermont delegation under the fifth apportionment, though the minority at one election carried two districts, and at another none. interests or the will of triumphant Democracy. The assumption of unconstitutionality in this instance, is probably weaker than in any other known to our history. The Federal Constitution expressly says: "SECTION IV. Election of Members. The times, places, and manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators." Here is all that the Constitution says on the subject; could more be desired? The States may regulate the incidents of choosing Members of Congress, in the absence of any enactment by Congress itself; but in Congress is vested a paramount power, to which all State legislation must give way. Thus, each State may legally choose by general ticket, by single districts, or by double and treble districts, as to it shall seem good, in the absence of any law of Congress prescribing the manner of choosing; but whenever Congress acts, all State laws which conflict with its regulation are superseded by it. The House had no more right to admit four members from New Hampshire chosen in notorious defiance of the second section of the Apportionment Act, to partake in its organization, than forty members from the same State, it that interesting sovereignty had seen fit to nullify the first section of the same act, and send two score of her Jacobinic Solons, to direct the councils of the nation. The ground on which the enactment of a uniform district system was pronounced unconstitutional, is, if possible, more preposterous than the judgment itself. It is, in substance, a denial of the mathematical axiom, that the less is always included in the greater; Congress, argued the special pleaders for nullification, had a clear right under the clause of the Constitution above quoted, to divide each State, however exceptionably, into single districts, and the States would be bound to obey the act, and elect members in accordance with such apportionment. But Congress has no right to prescribe the manner in which the States shall legislate on the subject; its action must be perfect in itself, or it is invalid. The simple answer to this quibble affirms that the action of Con gress in the premises is perfect, to the extent of the desire or intention of acting at all. Congress first prescribed the ratio of Representation; then the number of members to which each State is entitled under that ratio; lastly, a uniform manner of electing them. There it stopped.So far all was perfect without a particle of State legislation. The States were to commence, as all but four did commence, where Congress left off, and, in view of the paramount law of the land, perform that duty in regard to the apportionment which had been wisely remitted to local regulation. That Congress might legally have gone much farther than it did, is quite true; but this truth is singularly employed, when adduced to prove that it had no power to go so far. A commander who should assert that he could carry a certain fortress with twenty thousand men, but that forty thousand would be utterly inadequate, would aptly parallel the absurdity employed to justify nullification, and sustain the five contumacious States in trampling upon a law of the Union. Vain was all argument, all remonstrance. Democracy' had power and the disposition to use it to the uttermost. The second section of the Apportionment Act, standing to this day unrepealed, was deliberately overborne, and twentyone Members of Congress hold seats and are potential in making laws, by virtue of the overthrow. The immediate practical evil of this outrage may be borne if not forgotten. The requisition defied is, in itself, so obviously just, that it must eventually triumph over every impulse of party madness. Already two of the nullifying States, Georgia and Missouri, have receded from their untenable ground and districted according to law. But the spectacle afforded to the Nation and the world of law-makers foremost, if not alone, in defying the restraints of law, and a Congress palpably constituted on the basis of contempt for the authority of Congress, will long be potential in poisoning the fountains of loyalty-a sentiment no where so needful as in an unmilitary republic-and teaching the lustful, the violent, the unprincipled, the easily tempted, that law is no emanation or reflection of Divine justice, but a device of the cunning to facilitate the gratification of their own passions, while imposing restraints on others, and is only to be obeyed when obedience is convenient, and resistance directly peril. The plan of operations for this Congress, indicated by the leading organs of the Democratic party, was a very simple one. Its execution implied barely the undoing of all that had been done-in our judgment, wisely and nobly done by the preceding Congress. To this end, an early demonstration was made upon the Tariff of 1842-a measure very possibly defective in some of its infinity of details, but as a whole eminently judicious and beneficent. Against this Tariff, both in inception and in operation, the whole artillery of the party had been directed, and well-nigh exhausted. It was represented as a measure taxing onerously our eighteen millions of people for the benefit of a few thousands of purse-proud manufacturers. It was the Black Tariff, the Aristocrat Tariff, the death-blow to the industry, commerce, and prosperity of the country. The Farmers were told, as a notorious and even admitted truth, that it would signally enhance the price of every article they purchased, and depress that of whatever they had to sell. The Planting interest was assured that it would destroy the market for cotton, while increasing the cost of cloths, bagging, &c. The Cities were haunted by the spectre of a crippled commerce and famished internal trade. In our own city of New York it was formally proclaimed that the tariff would increase the cost of manufactures by some twenty-five to fifty per cent, while depressing the wages of labor and drying up the springs of trade. When the sailors in port turned out to oppose a reduction of their wages, they were met and harangued by the standing orators of Tammany Hall, who assured them that the Black Tariff was the cause of their trouble, and that neither ship-building nor navigation could flourish until this was repealed. Its failure to afford an adequate revenue was predicted with undoubting confidence. Even so late as the midsummer of 1843, Mr. James K. Polk, then canvassing the state of Tennesee as a candidate for Gov ernor, did not hesitate to declare, in writing, that the Tariff of 1842 must be repealed, because (among other reasons equally sound) it would not afford adequate revenue!-that we must return to a twenty per cent. horizontal Tariff to save the country from bankruptcy. The very next year afforded a striking evidence of his slender claims to eminence, either as a statesman or a prophet. The receipts of that year, (1844) exceeded by many millions of dollars the current expenditures of the government, and more than doubled those of the year preceding the enactment of this Tariff, when the duties were the lowest and most uniform that they had been in any year of the last twenty. The Black Tariff" was the most important object of Loco-Foco hostility in the first session of the Twenty-Eighth Congress. The Speaker, strongly antiTariff, placed at the head of the Committee of Ways and Means, Gen. James J. McKay, of N. C.-a man of barely respectable talents, but a consistent and decided champion of free trade-with a working majority of like principles. By this majority a bill was in due time elaborated and reported, contemplating a radical reduction of the Tariff. Its general range of duties was thirty per cent. on the foreign valuation of articles imported for one year ensuing; after that, twenty-five per cent. From this standard some remarkable deviations on either side were allowed. The coarsest wool was to pay fifteen per cent. duty, but the fabrics (woolen blankets) made of such wool were admitted at ten per cent.-a discrimination against the American producer. Cotton fabrics were universally reduced to twenty per cent. and every minimum abolished. On the other hand, iron and sugar, the staples of Pennsylvania and Louisiana, were to be let off with a slight reduction, leaving the duties on each in their several varieties still specific and fully equal to seventy per cent. ad valorem. This glaring inequality was the device of politicians subtler than Gen. McKay. The manufacturing interests of the North were given over to destruction, as inexorably hostile to the Democracy; but Pennsylvania and Louisiana were States of doubtful political bias, which the party must have in the approaching Presidential canvass. By this indefensible partiality, their apprehensions of evil from a Loco-Foco ascendency in the government, were soothed, and both States were carried for Polk in the ensuing struggle. Without them he would have been defeated; for New-York could not have been lost to Mr. Clay had Pennsylvania declared for him. The bill thus framed was submitted to the House, debated, considered by items, matured, and rejected! Yes, the party which had made the land ring with execrations of the "Black Tariff," could not frame a substitute for it acceptable to a House wherein it had over sixty majority! All efforts to resuscitate it failed; the House would not disturb the Tariff; it dared not present a direct, practical Tariff issue to the people. To find fault with the Whig Tariff, vaguely, or by attacks upon certain items obnoxious to local hostility, was neither difficult nor dangerous; but to proffer a rival measure, and ask the country to consider the two and judge between them, was another matter. So the Senate was deprived of the satisfaction of nailing to its table any anti-Tariff concoction of the House, and the Whig Tariff remains untouched, and ever since unthreatened, to this day. These facts bespeak our adversaries' respect for the merits, as well as the popularity, of that benign measure. Could they have framed a bill in their own judgments likely to prove as satisfactory to the country as the present Tariff, they would not have hesitated to send it to be defeated in the Senate, and thus form one of the bases of a contrast between the measures of the rival parties. No corresponding shyness was evinced by the House with respect to any other of the great practical issues which divide the two parties, because no similar apprehensions were felt with regard to any other. A blow struck at the Tariffaffects directly the great industrial interests of the country, palsying the arm of the mechanic, arresting the shuttle of the weaver, and rendering unsalable many of the products of the farmer. But assaults, equally deadly, upon the national well-being, through the medium of the currency, or the fiscal economy of the government, are by no means so perilous to their contrivers. The evils thence resulting are as real, perhaps as formidable, as in the other case, but they do not point so directly to their causes, and the unreflecting many are easily taught to attribute them to the Banks, he speculators, the moneyed capitalists, or any other target of popular jealousy and hatred. And thus we saw the same party which hesitated in, recoiled from, its long meditated and loudly vaunted attack on the Protective Policy, unite as one man in passing bills to re-establish the Sub-Treasury, and to repeal the contingent and now too remote Distribution of the Proceeds of the Public Lands. No man doubted that the Senate would (as it did) promptly arrest both these bills; they were not passed to be perfected, but to indicate the purpose of the House, to overthrow whatever the Whigs had constructed, so far as it might do so without periling its ascendency. A resolution denying to Congress the power to create a National Bank, and denouncing such a Bank as dangerous, pernicious, &c., was introduced to, and carried through the House, with no reference to any legislative action, present or prospective, but in the sorry hope of filling the party's sails with one blast from the darkest caves of prejudice and distrust. It was not sent to the Senate for concur rence. At the opening of the first session of the expiring Congress, the House reenacted the rules of its predecessoramongst them the famous XXIst (now XXVth), which forbids the reception of petitions relating to Slavery. The same House, at the opening of its second session, rescinded that very rule by a large majority. There was no shadow of reason for its maintenance at one time more than another; in fact, no valid reason for it at any time. But in the former instance, the ultra-slavery feeling was to be gratified, and won to the support, (as was presumed,) of Mr. Van Buren; in the latter it had been thoroughly gratified by the abandonment of Van Buren and the election of Polk. A very different spirit now required conciliating, and the famous "Gag Rule' was the sacrifice. The persevering efforts, favored by a large majority of the dominant party, to alienate the Public Lands of the Union at a nominal price, deserve notice in view of the strenuous opposition of that party to the Land Distribution. Throughout the late canvass the journals and harangues of the Democracy abounded in demonstrations of the importance and necessity of the Land Proceeds to the Federal Treasury. But, both before and after this contest, a large majority of that same Democracy,' as represented in Congress, has never hesitated to vote for Graduation Bills, which, if passed, could not fail to diminish by at least one half the receipts for Public Lands, and postpone the payment of even that moiety for years. The law now says, "you can obtain no Public Land except for cash, and then not below one dollar and a quarter per acre." But Graduation changes all this. The man who pays for his land when first offered for sale, is still required to pay the old price; but let him withold payment for a few years, and he will have to pay but one dollar per acre; and in a few years more, still less, and so on till the price has fallen to fifty or twenty-five cents. The consequence is easily foreseen. Few will pay two hundred dollars for a quarter section or one hundred and sixty acres of wild land, when, by quietly waiting for a few years, he may have the same tract for one hundred and sixty dollars, then one hundred and twenty dollars, and so The lowest price, all experience teaches, is that which will be paid for nearly all the Public Land that is purchased; and a bill to reduce the price after thirty years exposure to entry and sale, to fifty cents an acre, is in effect, a bill, to sell all lands hereafter at fifty cents an acre, and wait thirty years for the pay. We rejoice that this project has again been condemned, though rallying a large majority of the dominant party to its support. on. For a Reform in the Rates of Postage and in the general policy and temper of the Post Office Department, the people have looked to this Congress with anxious hope. Petitions, representations, illustrations innumerable, have been forwarded from every quarter to Washing. ton. At first (we speak from personal experience), the disposition of the House, and especially of its Post Office Committee, was decidedly averse to any material reduction of Postage or Reform of any kind. A bill reducing the Rates of Postage essentially, and proposing other needed Reforms, passed the Senate at the first session, but was lost in the House. A like measure, improved, though not yet perfect, passed the Senate seasonably in this session. It proposed a Uniform Rate of five cents for each letter or packet weighing less than half an ounce, conveyed in the Mails, no matter for what distance. This Bill, though it had passed the Senate by the strong vote of 38 to 12, encountered a determined opposition in the House, where the feature of a Uniform Rate of Letter Postage was stricken out, and a rate of ten cents, for letters conveyed over three hundred miles, substituted. In this shape, the bill passed by a vote of 128 Yeas to 74 Nays, and has become a law, to take effect on and after the 1st of July next. Newspapers are to be conveyed thirty miles or under free of charge; for greater distances the present rates are charged; while on all other printed matter a considerable reduction is made. All compulsion to send newspapers or magazines through the Mails is removed by this bill. Although we had advocated and should have preferred, a Uniform Rate of Letter Postage, yet, in view of the facts that the Franking Privilege is but partially abolished by this act-Members of Congress as well as Presidents, ExPresidents, &c., being allowed to frank without limitation, while the vital prepayment of Postage is not exacted-we do not doubt that all the Postage accruing under this bill will be needed to sustain the Department-probably more. But great reductions will eventually be made in the cost of the service, which will ultimately be effected under the clause which forbids any stipulation of the mode of conveyance in future contracts for transporting the Mails.-That the provisions of this bill may be greatly amended, we cannot doubt, but we gladly hail it as the first decisive step in a great and needed Reform; and by far the most beneficent act of the Twenty-Eighth Congress. Only thirteen Whigs voted against it in the House-not one of them from a Free State. There were but eleven votes against it from all the Free States, that of Charles J. Ingersoll being the only one from the North. To the Senate be honor rendered for daring to be just in the matter of the long delayed Indemnity for French Spoliations prior to 1800. The equity of the claim is palpable: The French unjustly captured and despoiled our merchantmen to a great amount: our Government earnestly demanded reparation; our ministers obtained it in the purchase of Louisiana, of which the satisfaction of our subsisting claims on France was expressly a part of the consideration. The government thus pocketed the indemnity which it had sought for its despoiled citizens, and it has kept every penny of it to this day. Meantime, the claimants have, from time to time, implored Congress for jus |