manufacturing States, even in their own opinion, bear no share of the burden of the Tariff in reality, we may infer with the greatest certainty from their conduct. The fact that they urgently demand an increase, and consider every addition as a blessing and a failure to obtain one as a curse, is the strongest confession that, whatever burden it imposes, in reality falls not on them, but on others. Men ask not for burdens, but benefits. . . .

Let us now trace the operation of the system in some of its prominent details, in order to understand, with greater precision, the extent of the burden it imposes on us, and the benefits which it confers, at our expense, on the manufacturing states. . . . The exports of domestic produce, in round numbers, may be estimated as averaging $53,000,000 annually; of which the States growing cotton, rice, and tobacco produce about $37,000,000. In the last four years, the average amount of the export of cotton, rice, and tobacco, exceeded $35,500,000; to which, if we add flour, corn, lumber, and other articles exported from the states producing the former, their exports cannot be estimated at a less sum than that stated. Taking it at that sum, the exports of the Southern or staple States, and other States, will stand as $37,000,000 to $16,000,000 or considerably more than the proportion of two to one; while their population, estimated in federal numbers, is the reverse; the former sending to the House of Representatives but 76 members, and the latter 137. It follows that about one third of the Union exports more than two thirds of the domestic products. . . . The Government is supported almost exclusively by a tax on this exchange, in the shape of an impost duty, and which amounts annually to about $23,000,000. Previous to the passage of the act of the last session, this tax averaged about 37 per cent. on the value of exports. The present duty [averages] at least 45 per cent., which on $37,000,000, the amount of our share of the exports, will give the sum of $16,650,000 as our share of the contribution to the general Treasury. . . .

...

...

What becomes of so large an amount of the products of our labor placed, by the operation of the system, at the disposal of Congress? One point is certain, a very small share returns to us, out of whose labor it is extracted. It would require much

investigation to state, with precision, the proportion of the public revenue disbursed annually in the Southern, and other States respectively; but the committee feel a thorough conviction . . . that a sum of much less than two million dollars falls to our share of the disbursements; and that it would be a moderate estimate to place our contribution, above what we receive back, through all of the appropriations, at $15,000,000; constituting to that great amount, an annual, continued, and uncompensated draft on the industry of the Southern States, through the Custom-House alone.

CHAPTER X

"THE REIGN OF ANDREW JACKSON"

NULLIFICATION

[277]

Two of the scores of foreigners who have visited our 67. Andrew Jackson, concountry and written of our society and institutions stand stitutional out conspicuous for the accuracy, sympathy, and justice autocrat of their remarks. One of these men is the recent English ambassador to the United States, James Bryce (now Lord Dechmont), author of "The American Commonwealth"; the other, a young Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited us in 1831, with a commission from the French government to study our prison system. De Tocqueville duly visited and reported upon the prisons (Sing Sing, Auburn, and others), but this part of his work was soon forgotten in the interest and enthusiasm aroused by his general treatise on "Democracy in America." At the close of a long section entitled "What are the chances of duration of the American Union, and what dangers threaten it?" De Tocqueville writes of the President:

Some persons in Europe have formed an opinion of the influence of General Jackson upon the affairs of his country which appears highly extravagant to those who have seen the subject nearer at hand. We have been told that General Jackson has won battles; that he is an energetic man, prone by nature and habit to the use of force, covetous of power and a despot by inclination. All this may be true, but the inferences which have been drawn from these truths are very erroneous.

It has been imagined that General Jackson is bent on establishing a dictatorship in America, introducing a military spirit, and giving a degree of influence to the central authority which cannot but be dangerous to provincial [state] liberties. But in America the time for similar undertakings, and the age for men of this kind, is not yet come: if General Jackson had thought of exercising his authority in this manner, he would infallibly have forfeited his political station, and compromised his life, he has not been so imprudent as to attempt anything of the kind.

Far from wishing to extend the Federal power, the President belongs to the party which is desirous of limiting that power to the clear and precise letter of the Constitution, and which never puts a construction upon that act [the Constitution] favorable to the [central] government of the Union; far from standing forth as the champion of centralization, General Jackson is the agent of the State jealousies [!]; and he was placed in this lofty station by the passions which are most opposed to the central government. It is by perpetually flattering those passions that he maintains his station and his popularity. General Jackson is the slave of the majority; he yields to its wishes, its propensities, and its demands say, rather, anticipates and forestalls them. Whenever the governments of the States come into collision with that of the Union, the President is generally the first to question his own rights, he almost always outstrips the legislature; and when the extent of the Federal power is controverted, he takes part, as it were, against himself. . . . Not, indeed, that he is naturally weak or hostile to the Union; for when the majority decided against the claims of nullification, he put himself at their head, asserted the doctrines which the nation held distinctly and energetically, and was the first to recommend force; but General Jackson appears to me, if I may use the American expression, to be a Federalist by taste and a Republican by calculation.

General Jackson stoops to gain the favor of the majority; but when he feels that his popularity is secure, he overthrows all obstacles in the pursuit of the objects which the community approves, or of those which it does not regard with jealousy. Supported by a power which his predecessors never had, he

tramples on his personal enemies, whenever they cross his path, with a facility without example; he takes upon himself the responsibility of measures which no one before him would have ventured to attempt; he even treats the national representatives with a disdain approaching to insult; he puts his veto upon the laws of Congress, and frequently neglects even to reply to that powerful body. He is a favorite who sometimes treats his master roughly. The power of General Jackson perpetually increases, but that of the President declines; in his hands, the Federal government is strong, but it will pass enfeebled into the hands of his successor.

As for the treatment of "disdain approaching to insult," the "national representatives" were not a whit less accomplished in its use than was General Jackson. When they spread upon the records of the Senate a vote of censure of the President for the removal of the deposits from the National Bank in the summer of 1833, he replied in a vigorous protest, April 15, 1834.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

It appears by the published Journal of the Senate that on the 26th of December last a resolution was offered by a member of the Senate [Clay],' which after a protracted debate was

1 Henry Clay in the original form of the resolutions called the President's action" dangerous to the liberties of the people." In presenting the resolutions before a crowded house, he said: "We are in the midst of a revolution hitherto bloodless, but rapidly tending toward a total change of the pure republican character of our government, and to the concentration of all power in the hands of one man. The powers of Congress are paralyzed, except when exerted in conformity with his will, by frequent and extraordinary exercise of the Executive veto. . . . By the 3d of March, 1837, if the progress of innovation continues, there will be scarcely a vestige remaining of the government and its policy as they existed prior to the 3d of March, 1829. In a term of eight years, a little more than equal to that which was required to establish our liberties, the government will have been transformed into an elective monarchy - the worst of all forms of government." — Congressional Debates, ed. Gales and Seaton, 1834, Vol. X, Part I, p. 59.