power to REGULATE COMMERCE"? Would three generations, washed out, what is connot that too be a REGULATION OF COM-sidered the stain of their original occupa MERCE?" It would, indeed, and a pretty tion, to emerge, by slow degrees, into the regulation it is; and so is this bill. And, higher ranks of society; but this rarely sir, I marvel that the representation from happens. Can you find men of vast forthe great commercial state of New York tune, in this country, content to move in should be in favor of this bill. If opera- the lower circles-content as the ox under tive-and if inoperative why talk of it?- the daily drudgery of the yoke? It is true if operative, it must, like the embargo of that, in England, some of these wealthy 1807-1809, transfer no small portion of people take it into their heads to buy seats the wealth of the London of America, as in parliament. But, when they get there, New York has been called, to Quebec unless they possess great talents, they are and Montreal. She will receive the most mere nonentities; their existence is only to of her imports from abroad, down the river. be found in the red book which contains a I do not know any bill that could be better list of the members of parliament. Now, calculated for Vermont than this bill; sir, I wish to know if, in the western counbecause, through Vermont, from Quebec, try, where any man may get beastly drunk Montreal, and other positions on the St. for three pence sterling-in England, you Lawrence, we are, if it passes, unquestion- cannot get a small wine-glass of spirits under ably to receive our supplies of foreign twenty-five cents; one such drink of grog goods. It will, no doubt, suit the Niagara as I have seen swallowed in this country, frontier. would there cost a dollar-in the western But, sir, I must not suffer myself to be country, where every man can get as much led too far astray from the topic of the pe- meat and bread as he can consume, and yet culiar advantages of England as a manu- spend the best part of his days, and nights facturing country. Her vast beds of coal too, perhaps, on the tavern benches, or are inexhaustible; there are daily discov- loitering at the cross roads asking the news, eries of quantities of it, greater than ages can you expect the people of such a counpast have yet consumed; to which beds of try, with countless millions of wild land coal her manufacturing establishments and wild animals besides, can be cooped have been transferred, as any man may see up in manufacturing establishments, and who will compare the present population made to work sixteen hours a day, under of her towns with what it was formerly. the superintendence of a driver, yes, a It is to these beds of coal that Birmingham, driver, compared with whom a southern Manchester, Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Leeds, and other manufacturing towns, owe their growth. If you could destroy her coal in one day, you would cut at once the sinews of her power. Then, there are her metals, and particularly tin, of which she has the exclusive monopoly. Tin, I know, is to be found in Japan, and perhaps elsewhere; but, in practice, England has now the monopoly of that article. I might go further, and I might say, that England possesses an advantage, quoad hoc, in her institutions; for there men are compelled to pay their debts. But here, men are not only not compelled to pay their debts, but they are protected in the refusal to pay I have heard the names of Say, Ganilh, them, in the scandalous evasion of their Adam Smith, and Ricardo, pronounced legal obligations; and, after being convict- not only in terms, but in a tone of sneering ed of embezzling the public money, and contempt, visionary theorists, destitute of the money of others, of which they were practical wisdom, and the whole clan of appointed guardians and trustees, they Scotch and Quarterly Reviewers lugged in have the impudence to obtrude their un- to boot. This, sir, is a sweeping clause of blushing fronts into society, and elbow proscription. With the names of Say, honest men out of their way. There, though all men are on a footing of equality on the high way, and in the courts of law, at will and at market, yet the castes in Hindoostan are not more distinctly separaed, one from the other, than the different classes of society are in England. It is true that it is practicable for a wealthy merchant or manufacturer, or his descendants, after having, through two or

overseer is a gentleman and man of refinement; for, if they do not work, these work people in the manufactories, they cannot eat; and, among all the punishments that can be devised (put death even among the number), I defy you to get as much work out of a man by any of them, as when he knows that he must work before he can eat.

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In the course of this discussion, I have heard, I will not say with surprise, because nil admirari is my motto-no doctrine that can be broached on this floor, can ever, hereafter, excite surprise in my mind

Smith, and Ganilh, I profess to be acquainted, for I, too, am versed in titlepages; but I did not expect to hear, in this house, a name, with which I am a little further acquainted, treated with so little ceremony; and by whom? I leave Adam Smith to the simplicity, the majesty, and strength of his own native genius, which has canonized his name-a name which will be pronounced with veneration, when

not one in this house will be remembered. " nor I neither. There is something in all But one word as to Ricardo, the last men- these subjects that passes_my_comprehentioned of these writers-a new authority, sion-something so wide that I could never though the grave has already closed upon embrace them myself, or find any one who him, and set its seal upon his reputation. did." And yet we see how we, with our I shall speak of him in the language of a little dividers, undertake to lay off the man of as great a genius as this, or per- scale, and with our pack-thread to take haps any, age has ever produced; a man the soundings, and speak with a confidence remarkable for the depth of his reflections peculiar to quacks (in which the regularand the acumen of his penetration. "I bred professor never indulges) on this abhad been led," says this man, "to look struse and perplexing subject. Confidence into loads of books-my understanding is one thing, knowledge another; of the had for too many years been intimate with want of which, overweening confidence is severe thinkers, with logic, and the great notoriously the indication. What of that ? masters of knowledge, not to be aware of Let Ganilh, Say, Ricardo, Smith, all Greek the utter feebleness of the herd of modern and Roman fame be against us; we appeal economists. I sometimes read chapters to Dionysius in support of our doctrines; from more recent works, or part of parlia- and to him, not on the throne of Syracuse, mentary debates. I saw that these [omi- but at Corinth-not in absolute possession nous words!] were generally the very dregs of the most wonderful and enigmatical and rinsings of the human intellect." [I city, as difficult to comprehend as the abam very glad, sir, he did not read our de- strusest problem of political economy which bates. What would he have said of ours?] furnished not only the means but the men "At length a friend sent me Mr. Ricardo's for supporting the greatest wars-a kingbook, and, recurring to my own prophetic dom within itself, under whose ascendant anticipation of the advent of some legisla- the genius of Athens, in her most high tor on this science, I said, Thou art the and palmy state, quailed, and stood reman. Wonder and curiosity had long buked. No; we follow the pedagogue to been dead in me; yet I wondered once the schools-dictating in the classic shades more. Had this profound work been really of Longwood-(lucus a non lucendo)—to written in England during the 19th cen- his disciples. tury? Could it be that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities and a century of thought had failed to advance by one hair's breadth? All other writers had been crushed and overlaid by the enormous weight of facts and documents: Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori, from the understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentative discussions, into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis."

I pronounce no opinion of my own on Ricardo; I recur rather to the opinion of a man inferior, in point of original and native genius, and that highly cultivated, too, to none of the moderns, and few of the ancients. Upon this subject, what shall we say to the following fact? Butler, who is known to gentlemen of the profession of the law, as the annotator, with Hargrave, on lord Coke, speaking with Fox as to political economy-that most extraordinary man, unrivalled for his powers of debate, excelled by no man that ever lived, or probably ever will live, as a public debater, and of the deepest political erudition, fairly confessed that he had never read Adam Smith. Butler said to Mr. Fox, "that he had never read Adam Smith's work on the Wealth of Nations." "To tell you the truth," replied Mr. Fox,

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But it is said, a measure of this sort is necessary to create employment for the people. Why, sir, where are the handles of the plough? Are they unfit for young gentlemen to touch? Or will they rather choose to enter your military academies, where the sons of the rich are educated at the expense of the poor, and where so many political janissaries are every year turned out, always ready for war, and to support the powers that be equal to the strelitzes of Moscow or St. Petersburg. I do not speak now of individuals, of course, but of the tendency of the system-the hounds follow the huntsman because he feeds them, and bears the whip. I speak of the system. I concur most heartily, sir, in the censure which has been passed upon the greediness of office, which stands a stigma on the present generation. Men from whom we might expect, and from whom I did expect, better things, crowd the ante-chamber of the palace, for every vacant office; nay, even before men are dead, their shoes are wanted for some barefooted office-seeker. How mistaken was the old Roman, the old con- . sul, who, whilst he held the plough by one hand, and death held the other, exclaimed, "Diis immortalibus sero!"

Our fathers, how did they acquire their property? By straightforward industry, rectitude, and frugality. How did they become dispossessed of their property? By indulging in speculative hopes and designs; seeking the shadow whilst they lost the substance; and now, instead of being, as

they were, men of respectability, men of substance, men capable and willing to live independently and honestly, and hospitably too-for who so parsimonious as the prodigal who has nothing to give?-what have we become? A nation of sharks, preying on one another through the instrumentality of this paper system, which, if Lycurgus had known of it, he would unquestionably have adopted, in preference to his iron money, if his object had been to make the Spartans the most accomplished knaves as well as to keep them poor.

I had more to say, Mr. Speaker, could 1 have said it, on this subject. But I cannot sit down without asking those, who were once my brethren of the church, the elders of the young family of this good old republic of the thirteen states, if they can consent to rivet upon us this system, from which no benefit can possibly result to themselves. I put it to them as descendants of the renowned colony of Virginia; as children sprung from her loins; if for the sake of all the benefits, with which this bill is pretended to be freighted to them, granting such to be the fact for argument's sake, they could consent to do such an act of violence to the unanimous opinion, feelings, preju. dices, if you will, of the whole Southern States, as to pass it? I go farther. I ask of them what is there in the condition of the nation at this time, that calls for the immediate adoption of this measure? Are the Gauls at the gate of the capitol? If they are, the cacklings of the Capitoline geese will hardly save it. What is there to induce us to plunge into the vortex of those evils so severely felt in Europe from this very manufacturing and paper policy? For it is evident that, if we go into this system of policy, we must adopt the European institutions also. We have very good materials to work with; we have only to make our elective king president for life, in the first place, and then to make the succession hereditary in the family of the first that shall happen to have a promising son. For a king we can be at no lossex quovis ligno—any block will do for him. The senate may, perhaps, be transmuted into a house of peers, although we should meet with more difficulty than in the other case; for Bonaparte himself was not more hardly put to it, to recruit the ranks of his mushroom nobility, than we should be to furnish a house of peers. As for us, we are the faithful commons, ready made to hand; but with all our loyalty, I congratulate the house-I congratulate the nation

The manufacturer of the east may carry his woolens or his cottons, or his coffins, to what market he pleases-I do not buy of him. Self-defence is the first law of nature. You drive us into it. You create heats and animosities among this great family, who ought to live like brothers; and, after you have got this temper of mind roused among the southern people, do you expect to come among us to trade, and expect us to buy your wares? Sir, not only shall we not buy them, but we shall take such measures (I will not enter into the detail of them now) as shall render it impossible for you to sell them. Whatever may be said here of the "misguided counsels," as they have been termed, "of the theorists of Virginia," they have, so far as regards this question, the confidence of united Virginia. We are asked-Does the south lose any thing by this bill-why do you cry out? I put it, sir, to any man from any part of the country, from the gulf of Mexico, from the Balize, to the eastern shore of Maryland-which, I thank Heaven, is not yet under the government of Baltimore, and will not be, unless certain theories should come into play in that state, which we have lately heard of, and a majority of men, told by the head, should govern-whether the whole country between the points I have named, is not unanimous in opposition to this bill. Would it not be unexampled, that we should thus complain, protest, resist, and that all the while nothing should be the matter? Are our understandings (however low mine that, although this body is daily degraded may be rated, much sounder than mine are by the sight of members of Congress manuengaged in this resistance), to be rated so factured into placemen, we have not yet low, as that we are to be made to believe reached such a point of degradation as to that we are children affrighted by a bug- suffer executive minions to be manufacbear? We are asked, however, why do tured into members of congress. We have you cry out? it is all for your good. Sir, shut that door; I wish we could shut the this reminds me of the mistresses of George other also. I wish we could have a perII., who, when they were insulted by the petual call of the house in this view, and populaee on arriving in London (as all suffer no one to get out from its closed such creatures deserve to be, by every doors. The time is peculiarly inauspicious mob), put their heads out of the window, for the change in our policy which is proand said to them in their broken English, posed by this bill. We are on the eve of "Goot people, we be come for your goots;' an election that promises to be the most to which one of the mob rejoined "Yes, distracted that this nation has ever yet and for our chattels too, I fancy." Just so undergone. It may turn out to be a Polish it is with the oppressive exactions proposed election. At such a time, ought any

measure to be brought forward which is | nished the example, have been witnessed supposed to be capable of being demon- in the southern portion of our hemisphere. strated to be extremely injurious to one great portion of this country, and beneficial in proportion to another? Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. There are firebrands enough in the land, without this apple of discord being cast into this assembly. Suppose this measure is not what it is represented to be; that the fears of the south are altogether illusory and visionary; that it will produce all the good predicted of it-an honorable gentleman from Kentucky said yesterday and I was sorry to hear it, for I have great respect for that gentleman, and for other gentlemen from that state that the question was not whether a bare majority should pass the bill, but whether the majority or the minority should rule. The gentleman is wrong, and, if he will consider the matter rightly, he will see it. Is there no difference between the patient and the actor? We are passive: we do not call them to act or to suffer, but we call upon them not so to act as that we must necessarily suffer; and I venture to say, that in any government, properly constituted, this very consideration would operate conclusively, that if the burden is to be laid on 102, it ought not to be laid by 105. We are the eel that is being flayed, while the cook-maid pats us on the head, and cries, with the clown in King Lear, "Down, wantons, down." There is but one portion of the country which can profit by this bill, and from that portion of the country comes this bare majority in favor of it. I bless God that Massachusetts and old Virginia are once again rallying under the same banner, against oppressive and unconstitutional taxation; for, if all the blood be drawn from out the body, I care not whether it be by the British parliament or the American congress; by an emperor or a king abroad, or by a president at home.

Under these views, and with feelings of mortification and shame at the very weak opposition I have been able to make to this bill, I entreat gentlemen to consent that it may lie over, at least, until the next session of congress. We have other business to attend to, and our families and affairs need our attention at home; and indeed I, sir, would not give one farthing for any man who prefers being here to being at home; who is a good public man and a bad private one. With these views and feelings, I move you, sir, that the bill be indefinitely postponed.

Sunk to the last point of colonial degradation, they have risen at once into the organization of three republics. Their struggle has been arduous; and eighteen years of checkered fortune have not yet brought it to a close. But we must not infer, from their prolonged agitation, that their independence is uncertain; that they have prematurely put on the toga virilis of freedom. They have not begun too soon; they have more to do. Our war of independence was shorter;-happily we were contending with a government, that could not, like that of Spain, pursue an interminable and hopeless contest, in defiance of the people's will. Our transition to a mature and well adjusted constitution was more prompt than that of our sister republics; for the foundations had long been settled, the preparation long made. And when we consider that it is our example, which has aroused the spirit of independence from California to Cape Horn; that the experiment of liberty, if it had failed with us, most surely would not have been attempted by them; that even now our counsels and acts will operate as powerful precedents in this great family of republics, we learn the importance of the post which Providence has assigned us in the world. A wise and harmonious administration of the public affairs,-a faithful, liberal, and patriotic exercise of the private duties of the citizen,-while they secure our happiness at home, will diffuse a healthful influence through the channels of national communication, and serve the cause of liberty beyond the Equator and the Andes. When we show a united, conciliatory, and imposing front to their rising states we show them, better than sounding eulogies can do, the true aspect of an independent republic; we give them a living example that the fireside policy of a people is like that of the individual man. As the one, commencing in the prudence, order, and industry of the private circle, extends itself to all the duties of social life, of the family, the neighborhood, the country; so the true domestic policy of the republic, beginning in the wise organization of its own institutions, pervades its territories with a vigilant, prudent, temperate administration; and extends the hand of cordial interest to all the friendly nations, especially to those which are of the household of liberty.

It is in this way that we are to fulfil our destiny in the world. The greatest engine of moral power, which human nature knows, is an organized, prosperous state. All that man, in his individual capacity, can do all that he can effect by his fraternities-by his ingenious discoveries and wonders of art, or by his influence

defraying the expense incident to the appointment of an dent shall deem it expedient to make such appointment."

agent, or commissioner, to Greece, whenever the Presi

over others-is as nothing, compared with the collective, perpetuated influence on human affairs and human happiness of a MR. CHAIRMAN,-It may be asked, will well constituted, powerful commonwealth. this resolution do the Greeks any good? It blesses generations with its sweet influ- Yes, it will do them much good. It will ence; even the barren earth seems to pour give them courage and spirit, which is out its fruits under a system where pro- better than money. It will assure them perty is secure, while her fairest gardens of the public sympathy, and will inspire are blighted by despotism;-men, think- them with fresh constancy. It will teach ing, reasoning men, abound beneath its them that they are not forgotten by the benignant sway;-nature enters into a civilized world, and to hope one day to ocbeautiful accord, a better, purer asiento cupy, in that world, an honorable station. with man, and guides an industrious citizen A farther question remains. Is this to every rood of her smiling wastes;-and measure pacific? It has no other charac we see, at length, that what has been called ter. It simply proposes to make a pecunia state of nature, has been most falsely, ary provision for a mission, when the precalumniously so denominated; that the na-sident shall deem such mission expedient. ture of man is neither that of a savage, a It is a mere reciprocation to the sentiments hermit, nor a slave; but that of a member of his message; it imposes upon him no of a well-ordered family, that of a good neighbor, a free citizen, a well informed, good man, acting with others like him. This is the lesson which is taught in the charter of our independence; this is the lesson which our example is to teach the world.

new duty; it gives him no new power; it does not hasten or urge him forward; it simply provides, in an open and avowed manner, the means of doing, what would else be done out of the contingent fund. It leaves him at the most perfect liberty, and it reposes the whole matter in his sole The epic poet of Rome the faithful discretion. He might do it without this subject of an absolute prince-in unfold-resolution, as he did in the case of South ing the duties and destinies of his coun- America, but it merely answers the query, trymen, bids them look down with disdain whether on so great and interesting a queson the polished and intellectual arts of tion as the condition of the Greeks, this Greece, and deem their arts to be

To rule the nations with imperial sway;

house holds no opinion which is worth expressing? But, suppose a commissioner is

To spare the tribes that yield; fight down the proud; sent, the measure is pacific still. Where

And force the mood of peace upon the world.

is the breach of neutrality? Where a just cause of offence? And besides, Mr. Chair

A nobler counsel breathes from the char-man, is all the danger in this matter on ter of our independence; a happier pro- one side? may we not inquire, whose vince belongs to our republic. Peace we fleets cover the Archipelago? may we not would extend, but by persuasion and ex- ask, what would be the result to our trade ample, the moral force, by which alone it should Smyrna be blockaded? A comcan prevail among the nations. Wars we missioner could at least procure for us may encounter, but it is in the sacred what we do not now possess-that is, aucharacter of the injured and the wronged; thentic information of the true state of to raise the trampled rights of humanity things. The document on your table exfrom the dust; to rescue the mild form of hibits a meagre appearance on this point liberty from her abode among the prisons what does it contain? Letters of Mr. and the scaffolds of the elder world, and to seat her in the chair of state among her adoring children; to give her beauty for ashes; a healthful action for her cruel agony; to put at last a period to her warfare on earth; to tear her star-spangled banner from the perilous ridges of battle, and plant it on the rock of ages. There be it fixed for ever, the power of a free people slumbering in its folds, their peace reposing in its shade!

Luriottis and paragraphs from a French paper. My personal opinion is, that an agent ought immediately to be sent; but the resolution I have offered by no means goes so far.

Do gentlemen fear the result of this resolution in embroiling us with the Porte? Why, sir, how much is it ahead of the whole nation, or rather let me ask how much is the nation ahead of it? Is not this whole people already in a state of open and avowed excitement on this subject? Does not the land ring from side to side with one common sentiment of sympathy for Greece, and indignation toward her oppressors? nay, more, sir-are we not giving money to this cause? More still, sir-is not the secretary of state in open correspondence with the president of the Greek committee in London? The nation