The President has, it is true, reserved the question as to the more important (or, as they are miscalled, national) projects, but he will never find one, that shall have any better claim to be regarded in that light, than those which he has already, we trust, with the general consent of the people, reprobated and exploded.

The stress laid upon the words "common defence and general welfare," in the clause of the Constitution referred to, is altogether unwarrantable. These very words were taken from the oid articles of confederation, and are merely supererogatory-expressio eorum quæ tacite insunt. They neither enlarge nor diminish the power, but are part and parcel of it in its original conception. Money is to be raised to pay the debts, &c. and provide for the accomplishment of all the purposes for which it is required, that is to say, in general terms, to promote the common weal, according to the scheme of the Federal Constitution. We will only add, that this whole subject has been well treated of by Mr. Madison in his report upon the Virginia Resolutions of '98. He refers to the very passage in General Hamilton's report which we have just cited, and treats it as an enormous and paradoxical pretension. It is important to add that the same view is taken of this subject in the forty-first number of the Federalist, ascribed to the pen of Mr. Madison, which we earnestly recommend to the attention of our readers.

The conclusion is, that Congress has no power to encourage manufactures by bounties; because it can levy taxes only to carry into effect the objects specified in the Constitution, and the encouragement of manufactures is none of these. But if it cannot lay out money already raised by taxation to promote domestic industry, has it any better right to raise money for that single purpose or for other purposes equally unfederal, (to make a new word for a new thing) in order to accomplish the same object indirectly? We have seen that General Hamilton considers every impost on foreign fabrics as a virtual bounty to domestic industry-then why should a virtual bounty be more constitutional, than a bounty in the popular sense of the term? As long as the tax has to be levied for national purposes, of course this advantage of the domestic manufacturer is at nobody's expense-he merely takes shelter under the policy which provides for other objects of the government. But from the moment that the tax is kept up for his benefit alone, he receives a bounty, to all intents and purposes, out of the public purse, and that, we contend, is unconstitutional.

Let us pause a moment and survey the ground we have gained. Congress cannot encourage manufactures by direct, pecu

niary aid-it cannot tax the people directly for that purposewhy not? It may levy taxes to accomplish any express or implied power, vested in it by the Constitution, and if there is any thing, which it cannot tax the people in order to effect (if money can effect it) it has no right or power to do it at all. These are convertible propositions. If General Hamilton's reasoning about bounties is sophistical-as we think it is, and as it clearly was in Mr. Madison's opinion both when he wrote the Virginia Report in '99 and when he contributed his numbers to the Federalist in '88--we put it to the candour of this venerable man, whether it is not conclusive against the pretension to any thing like a substantive, independent power-to any strong, distinct purpose in the people of the United States, when they formed the Union-to encourage manufactures. But by far the greater part of the duties now levied upon foreign merchandise, are taxes upon the people-are bounties to the manufacturers if they can be supplied at home-and the only question is, whether the national debt being paid off, and the bona fide federal purposes of the government, civil and military, provided for, the rulers of this people have any right to tax them for other purposes--or for no rational purpose at all.

Surely in a country like this-with a common law, so far as it is political, built upon Magna Charta, breathing throughout its whole body the spirit of liberty and justice, making the freedom of commerce one of its most sacred, fundamental principles, as its most anxious and incessant concern,* hating and inspiring hatred of all extraordinary devices to levy money and eat out the substance of the people-it is not necessary to shew, that the transcendent prerogative, excused only by the great state necessity out of which it grows, of appropriating the property of the citizen to public purposes, is of all others, the most anomalous, dangerous and liable to abuse, and ought, for this reason, to be of all others most scrupulously watched and most carefully restrained. What publicists teach about the "eminent domain," shews it to be only despotism in disguise—the will of the majority-the right of the strongest-and the spirit of all our constitutions and the express provisions of some, disavow the idea that society may rightfully dispose of private property for public purposes, without making full compensation, of some kind or other, to its owners.

If, then, the government has a right to lay duties on imposts for the benefit of domestic industry, it is not because its taxing power

Magna Charta, c. 30, omnes mercatores, &c. may trade, &c. "without all manner of evil tolls." No contract inconsistent with the freedom of trade is binding, &c.

or its discretion as to appropriations, are unbounded. We must point out some other power to the exercise of which such imposts may be necessary and proper-and shew that they are imposed in the bona fide exercise of that power. Mr. Madison says that the right to regulate commerce, comes up to the exigency of our constitutional canons. The Legislature of this State denies the position and makes up an issue upon that point in the following terms.

"Because such acts, considered in the light of a regulation of commerce are equally liable to objection-since although the power to regulate commerce, may, like other powers, be exercised so as to protect domestic manufactures, yet it is clearly distinguished from a power to do so, eo nomine, both in the nature of the thing and in the common acceptation of the terms; and because the confounding of them would lead to the most extravagant results, since the encouragement of domestic industry implies an absolute control over all the interests, resources and pursuits of a people and is inconsistent with the idea of any other than a simple consolidated government."

Let us see whether this position may not be maintained.

It is not, we conceive, a minute criticism to remark upon the words in which the right given to Congress to regulate commerce, is couched. It is not to "regulate trade" simply, absolutely; but to "regulate commerce with foreign nations and between the States and with the Indian tribes." The very words imply mutual intercourse, exchange, traffic-and correspond, as we shall presently shew, with all the definitions of elementary writers. Now we maintain that this power, thus guardedly conveyed, is according to the general understanding of mankind and from the very nature of a Federal Union, essentially different from the unlimited right to control the resources and industry of a country, exercised by consolidated governments and virtually claimed for ours by the friends of "the system."

In the first place, if Congress had any general power to protect domestic industry, it might do so, as we have seen, by a direct tax-it might do so by penalty. But Mr. Madison concedes that it cannot employ any such means, and this concession seems to cover the whole ground. Unless it can be shewn that men who formed an association, chiefly (after the great moral purposes of the Union) for the benefit of commerce, and denied to their agents all right of direct interference with domestic industry, and refused, implicitly, to make it one of the objects of their common interest, meant that the power of regulating that capital concern, should be used, not with a view to that concern, but to the promotion of the very objects which.

they had implicitly refused to make matters of common interWe shall speak to this point presently.

est.

If the encouragement of domestic industry, in any other way than as incident to the general policy and benefits of the government, was one of the purposes of the people, it must be admitted that the Convention did its work very inartificially and incompletely. General Hamilton says as much in the Report already referred to. As he was required to point out all the means of promoting that object, which he might deem eligible, he soon found that the powers of the government were not co-extensive with its supposed purposes. Thus he enumerates, besides protecting duties-prohibition of rival articles-pecuniary bounties-premiums-the encouragement of new inventions and discoveries at home, and the introduction into the United States of such as may have been made in other countries; particularly those which relate to machinery-judicious regulations for the inspection of manufactured commodities-the facilitating of pecuniary remittances from place to place. In reference to inventions, &c. he expresses himself as follows:-" For the last, so far as respects authors and inventors,' provision has been made by law. But it is desirable, in regard to improvements and secrets of extraordinary value, to be able to extend the same benefit to introducers as well as authors and inventors, a policy which has been practised with advantage in other countries. Here, however, as in some other cases, there is cause to regret that the competency of the authority of the National Government to the good, which might be done, is not without a question." But if this observation was extorted from its author by even so imperfect an enumeration of the means of "regulating trade," in other words, of protecting domestic industry at the expense of trade, what would he have said had he completed the catalogue? He would have been filled, and every thoroughpaced friend of domestic industry must be filled, with astonishment and disgust at the total inefficiency of the government in this important particular. The "regulation of trade," with a view to the manufacturer and artisan at home, has been, of all others, the most copious fountain of legislation-and we may add, of all the curses of pragmatical and vexatious legislation. There is nothing in which the folly and presumption of the rulers of mankind have "reigned and revelled" so licentiously. Happy, most happy is it for us, that the "competency of the authority of the General Government," to do so much mischief, to violate the most sacred rights of mankind so rashly and tyrannically, is, by the wisdom of its founders, "not without a question." The spirit of monopoly is at war with the genius of the Common

Law-because it is at war with the liberty, which is the life and soul of that law; and it is this spirit of monopoly, that has filled the statute book with enactments, in every point of view barbarous, and engrafted, like poisonous exotics, upon the simple and equitable jurisprudence of a free people. Nothing can be more odious than the innumerable petty "regulations' which have been, in former times, found or thought necessary to protect the exclusive privileges of the few, at the expense of the great mass of mankind. For instance-“ In Sheffield, no master cutler can have more than one apprentice at a time, by a by-law of the corporation. In Norwich, no master weaver can have more than two apprentices, under pain of forfeiting five pounds a month to the king. No master hatter can have more than two apprentices any where in England, or in the English plantations, under pain of forfeiting five pounds a month, half to the king, and half to him who shall sue in any court of record. The silk weavers in London, had scarcely been incorporated a year, when they enacted a by-law, restraining any master from having more than two apprentices at a time."* In some instances, these local regulations have been adopted as laws of the whole realm by act of Parliament. The 4th of Elizabeth, commonly called the Statute of Apprenticeships, is a notable example of this. So, besides encouraging the study of agriculture, &c. and giving pensions to artists, both Peter the Great and Catharine II. tempted skilful workmen to settle in Russia by extravagant bribes. In short, the "regulation of trade," in this acceptation of it, extends to every imaginable interest of society, and all the pursuits and occupations of mankind. Among other devices to promote the great ends of the "American System," a very effective one would be to lower, by severe laws, if necessary, the standard of necessity among our people, so as to subsist them on a great deal less, and get their labour a great deal cheaper.

Now, we ask whether there is a man in any part of this country, who ever dreamed that the right "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and between the States," authorized the Federal Government thus to violate all his natural rights, and to control every private concern of his life. Or is there a man in this country, who, we will not say, regards the want of such tyrannical powers as a defect in the Constitution, but who does not thank God for the inestimable privilege of living under a government, to which such powers are now and forever de

VOL. VI.—No. 11.

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* Smith's Wealth of Nations.

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