lions of dollars!We venture the assertion, that there is not in the world an aristocratic body, sustained at so great an expense to the community, or a system of vassalage more oppressive, and ultimately more degrading to the people.

The inquiry naturally arises here, how it happens that the great body of the people in the Northern and Middle States give their support to this system, if it be really so oppressive? We will endeavour to give a brief solution of the seeming difficulty here presented. And, in the first place, it is to be remarked, that the experience of all nations proves, conclusively, that wherever the government assumes and exercises the power of controlling and regulating the distribution of private property by a system of bounties and prohibitions, its movements are invariably controlled by combinations of capitalists. The poor and the many are forever sacrificed to the few and the wealthy. If this proposition were even more inexplicable than it is, it would not be the less true on that account. The apothegm that 'wealth is power,' is true in a much more extensive sense than we are in the habit of imagining. We should not hesitate to say, that in a state of society where there is a large accumulation of capital, a combination of all the capitalists in the steady and persevering pursuit of a common object, though they should not constitute one hundredth part of the community, would control the movements of the whole society, even in questions depending upon the general suffrage of the people. To be more specific, we believe that three large capitalists, each having a manufactory, with a hundred persons attached to it, possessing the right of suffrage, would have an irresistible ascendency in the elections of a county containing one thousand voters. Every person acquainted with popular elections can appreciate the power and efficacy of concentrated force; particularly when it is a disposable force. Three men, united by a common cause, and acting under the steady and never-ceasing motive of selfinterest, having the disposal of three hundred votes, would almost as a matter of course, be courted by every candidate for public favour. The same illustration which we applied to the influence of political clubs, is equally applicable here. These manufacturers would have something like the power of three skilful officers at the head of three hundred regulars, in a contest with seven hundred untrained militiamen.

There is another cause, not quite so obvious, to which the extraordinary influence of large manufacturing capitalists may be partly ascribed. Public sympathy is much more attracted to the fortunes of individuals, than to the fate of multitudes. The fall of a general will excite universal commisşeration, while the

slaughter of his army will produce, comparatively, a feeble impression. Hence, when the manufacturers tell the exaggerated story of their distresses, and call upon the country to give them succour, there is a strong predisposition to countenance the call. And when a law is proposed giving an indirect bounty, there is so much uncertainty as to where the burden will fall, and each individual imagines he will bear so small a proportion of it, that there is scarcely any feeling to countervail the movements of public sympathy. When to this we add a feeling of mistaken patriotism, which regards the domestic manufacturer as waging a sort of national warfare against his foreign rivals, we shall have a pretty full view of the causes which operate to render the great body of the people, in the tariff States, subservient to the views of the manufacturers.

But there remains to be stated another cause, growing out of geographical interests and geographical prejudices, which commands our gravest consideration. It unfortunately happens in the deliberations of a common council, representing confederated States, that there will happen to be real discrepancies of interest between the different geographical subdivisions of the confederacy. When the collisions, to which these give rise, become habitual and long continued, a fixed feeling of alienation, not to say hostility, grows out of them. When one of the conflicting parties happens to be distinguished by any national peculiarity or institution, that can be made the subject of reproach by the other, designing men will not be wanting to seize upon the prejudices connected with such peculiarity or institution, and fan the flame of national animosity, to answer some end of selfish and sinister ambition. And such, we lament to say, has been precisely our own experience. It is a fatal delusion, too long and fondly cherished, that all parts of the Union have the same interest. The differences resulting from the laws of nature and the dispensations of Providence, are not to be obliterated by vain human theories. After the fatal experience the Southern States have had on this subject, we cannot, we are not permitted to believe, that all parts of the Union have the same interest, in any other sense than that in which it may be said that all the nations of the earth have the same interest.

In the discussion of the tariff question, the conflicting interests of the Southern and the tariff States, have been habitually arrayed against each other. The advocates of the tariff interest in the Northern, Middle and Western States, knowing that the States in which that interest exists. constitute a majority, have laboured with too much success to make it a geographical, or to use a phrase better understood, a sectional controversy. In

vidious references have been artfully made to the existence of negro slavery among us; and, adverting "to the large proportion of the foreign commerce of the country which belongs to the Southern States-as if we did not hold it by the most sacred and indefeasible of all titles, the blessing of God upon our own industry—the advocates of the tariff policy have sedulously inculcated every sort of prejudice against the commerce of the "slave States" and the "cotton States," as if it were really a national nuisance, and the appropriate subject of legislative plunder.The writers of pamphlets, the conductors of newspapers, and even members of Congress on the tariff side of the question, have used these cant phrases of reproach and proscription against the Southern States, until they have brought the people in the tariff States-we mean the great majority of them-to regard the tariff question, as being a legislative warfare between different sections of the country. The melancholy fact is not to be disguised, that such is now the actual state of the question. And every one who knows any thing of the laws which govern the human heart, when men are brought to act in associated masses against each other, will at once perceive how absolutely the interest of individuals will be merged and lost in the common feelings and prejudices of the whole body. As in the case of war between two independent nations, the citizen of neither will stop to calculate his own sacrifices, or inquire into the justice of the controversy; so in this conflict of section against section, those even who are oppressed and sacrificed by the tariff system,-like the deluded victims of ambition—are found rallying round the standard of their oppressors, inscribed as it is with the cabalistic watchwords and mottos of "free States," and "slave States," "northern farmers," and "southern planters," "domestic industry," and "English commerce." By artifices like these, the manufacturing interest, or to speak more correctly, the united capital of the tariff States has obtained, in our opinion, a permanent ascendency over public opinion. The hope of a reaction in those States which we have for several years indulged, is, we are now satisfied, utterly delusive. We are aware that there is an intelligent and patriotic minority in the tariff States, who rise above the miserable and anti-social prejudices enlisted against the Southern States, and who really sympathise with us in our struggle against oppression. But we are also aware that there was precisely such a minority in England, during our Revolutionary struggle, who felt an equal sympathy with our forefathers, but whose patriotic exertions had not the slightest influence in arresting the fatal career of ministerial tyranny. We are also aware that some of the provisions of the last tariff law,

are not acceptable to the tariff party, as they are notoriously in favour of " a close monopoly" as to every thing they sell, and a free trade in every thing they buy. We think it, therefore, not improbable that the tariff of the present year may be modified by the majority of Congress, but we have not the slightest hope that the system will ever be abandoned, or our violated rights restored to us, by that majority, until the Southern States, in their highest sovereign capacity, shall take their stand upon the great principles of constitutional liberty, and proclaim their constitutional privileges and unalienable rights in a language which will be heard with deference even by our oppressors.

We now propose, therefore, to present some views of this painful and distressing subject, calculated to shew its connexion with the fundamental canons of liberty, as they have been consecrated by the blood of our patriotic ancestors in their struggle to throw off the chains of colonial vassalage, and subsequently recorded in that great charter of written wisdom, the Constitution of the United States.

We have no attachment to artificial and technical refinements in construing the Constitution, either for the purpose of enlarging or restricting the powers of the General Government. The object should be, in every instance, not so much to give it either a strict construction on the one hand, or a liberal construction on the other, as to give it the true construction according to its obvious spirit and intention. To illustrate our idea; though the tariff of the present year might appear to be constitutional, if brought to the test of a "strict construction," being upon the face of it, an act to "lay and collect duties and imposts" in literal conformity with the express grant of the Constitution; yet, when we look to the acknowledged design and obvious effect of the measure, it seems utterly impossible to resist the conclusion that it is a gross, oppressive, and alarming violation of the spirit of that instrument. The blindness of political infatuation, itself, must perceive that the power to "lay and collect duties and imposts" was expressly vested in Congress, for the sole and exclusive purpose of raising revenue. It is true that Congress is clothed with another power-that of "regulating commerce with foreign nations"-in the legitimate exercise of which, impost duties may be laid which are not intended for the purposes of revenue. But this power of regulating commerce was evidently conferred upon Congress, for the purpose of securing our international rights against those encroachments of foreign powers, which might impose upon our government the duty of resisting them. To apply the power of regulating commerce, to the regulation of all the branches of domestic industry, and the distribution of

private property, is as palpable a fraud upon the Constitution and as clear a perversion of its spirit and intention, as it is to lay imposts for the purpose of rendering one part of the community tributary to another. The tariff of 1828, stripped of those flimsy disguises which can scarcely impose upon the blindest credulity—is a law intended and calculated, not to suspend, but to destroy permanently a lawful and profitable commerce belonging to one portion of the Union, for the purpose of enriching a few favoured monopolists in another. According to the eternal principles of justice, this cannot be one of the legitimate ends of government. We are aware that certain national objects are held out by the advocates of this policy, as motives for adopting it. But the slightest examination will show that they are mere empty and delusive pretexts.

It is said, for example, that it will render us more independent of foreign nations,—an argument well calculated to impose upon the unreflecting, and which has not been without its effect. Waving, for the present, the obvious reflection, that even if it did tend to render us more independent, it is not a lawful mode of effecting the object, we beg leave to inquire in what way it will render us more independent of any foreign nation? Is there any man in this enlightened age who really believes that the commercial intercourse between nations creates a state of dependence, incompatible either with the safety, the honour, or the peace of any of the parties? Commerce is, in its very nature, reciprocal. Will it be said that we are dependent on GreatBritain, because we purchase her manufactures? We reply that Great-Britain is even more dependent upon us, because she receives in exchange for her manufactures, a raw material indispensable to the prosperity of the Empire. The dependence created by our foreign commerce, then, is, to say the most, a mutual dependence. Other nations will suffer, at least, as much by a war with us, interrupting commerce, as we will by a war with them It may be truly said that this mutual dependence, created among nations by foreign commerce, is one of its highest recommendations. It is a mutual bond, with heavy penalties, to keep the peace. It is a golden chain which binds them together in harmony.

All our armies and navies united, have not half as much efficacy in preserving our rights from British aggression as this very dependence. As long as it continues, Great-Britain will have the strongest possible motive to avoid a war with this country, a war which must necessarily derange the whole system of her industry. It is commercial rivalship, not commercial intercourse, that produces war between nations. Let Great