belongs as exclusively to the staple growing States. It is, as to those States, strictly a local interest, and the other States of the Union have no more concern in it, or motive to preserve it, than any foreign power would have, that should happen to be connected with it by the same relations of trade. When, therefore, it is stated, that the States to which this commerce belongs, constitute a small minority in the deliberations of the Federal Legislature, it will be at once perceived, that their rights and interests have no constitutional guaranty against the encroachments of the majority, if that majority can constitutionally interfere with them. It is in vain to say, we should confide in the moderation and justice of that majority. This is not the security which the Constitution has provided against oppression. No wise system of government ever looked to that, as one of the checks and balances of its conflicting powers. We could not give a better definition of slavery than to say, it is that political condition in which one portion of the society is dependent for the enjoyment of all its rights upon the moderation and justice of another. It is to the interest, and not to the moderation and justice of the majority, that we can alone look with the confidence and the consciousness of freemen, for a security against oppression. That is the actual safeguard provided by our Constitution. In every legitimate exercise of the powers of the Federal Government, it is abundantly adequate. While the operations of the common government are confided to the common interest, the majority cannot destroy the rights of the minority, without destroying their own also. In the very nature of things, a community of interest is the essential basis of a Federal Government, and indicates the boundary of its powers. Confined within this limit, the principle of representative responsibility furnishes an equal and a sufficient security to every member of the confederacy, and every citizen of the republic. The citizen of Georgia, claims as his own, the representative from Maine, and confidently submits his rights to his disposal, because that representative cannot sacrifice the interests of that citizen, without also sacrificing, by the same act, the interests of his own immediate constituents. Here, the powers of the government are precisely co-extensive with its responsibility. But when the power of the General Government is extended to interests that are strictly local or sectional, it becomes purely and absolutely despotic. While on the one hand, we should regard the assumption and exercise, by the State Governments, of a power to control those general interests of the Union, which have been committed to the guardianship of the Federal Government, as the very definition of anarchy;

we do not hesitate to say, upon the very same principle, that the assumption and exercise, by the Federal Government, of the power to control, and destroy interests that are merely local, is the very definition of legislative tyranny. It will be seen, upon a moment's reflection, that in both cases, political power acts beyond the sphere, and wholly independent of the restraining influence of political responsibility.

To bring these general views to the test of a practical application, we ask what is the avowed purpose and necessary effect of the tariff policy? Most evidently, the total and absolute destruction of two thirds of the commerce of the staple growing States. Who are they that constitute the majority in Congress, by whom this desolation is effected? Are they the representatives of those who have a common interest with us? Are they the representatives of those who must participate in the burthens imposed, and the calamities inflicted on us? The very reverse. According to their own settled views and habitual expositions, their interest actually consists in the imposition of these very burthens, and the infliction of these very calamities. It is not for us to contend with them as to what really is their interest. They have settled that question for themselves,-irreversibly we fear-and we will not so far interfere with the concerns of other people as to dispute with them about it. Taking it for granted, then, that their interests are what they represent them to be, and what human principle is there to arrest their desolating progress, until our whole commercial prosperity is in ruins, and we "abolished quite?" It is upon these very ruins that they are building up the fabric of their own manufacturing prosperity; and the only principle which exists in the system to arrest the progress of tyranny, is the insatiable avarice of which that very tyranny is the mere instrument. To rely, under such circumstances, upon the justice and moderation of the majority, for the preservation of our rights and our property, would be the wretched fatuity of ascribing to avarice and selfishness the attributes of disinterested benevolence. It is in vain for us to put aside, or palter with the question. If we concede to a majority, who believe it to be their interest to destroy our most sacred rights, the power to execute their purposes, and acknowledge the obligation of the Southern States, to submit to the outrageous infliction, we voluntarily sign the warrant of our own annihilation, and dig the grave of our own liberty. We will illustrate the principle we have been here considering by bringing to the view of our readers a modification of it, which will be more readily apprehended and more powerfully felt, because intimately and inseparably connected with the most consecrated

and glorious of our historical recollections. What, we ask, was the principle for which our forefathers contended in the revolutionary struggle, and for the establishment of which they hazarded their lives and fortunes? It was the great and fundamental principle of liberty:-that the power of taxation should be only co-extensive with the right of representation. The practical exposition of this principle, as given by the elder Pitt, in discussing the question of American taxation,, was, that those only had the right to impose the burthens of taxation, who were the representatives of the people who paid the taxes. Let us see how the impositions of our protecting tariff will abide the test of this principle. The sum and substance of the whole tariff system is the imposition of an oppressive weight of taxation upon the Southern States, by the representatives of the tariff States, for the benefit of the people, not of the Southern, but of the tariff States. Entirely reversing the principle of American liberty, the tariff imposition is laid, not by the representatives of those who pay the tax, but by the representatives of those who receive the bounty. We defy any man to draw a sensible and practical distinction between the exercise of this power by the tariff States, and the exercise, by the British Parliament, of the power to tax the colonies without their consent. In both cases, one party imposes and receives the tax, and the other opposes and pays it.

We are aware that it has been attempted to impair the force of this analogy, by adverting to the fact that the Southern States are fairly represented in Congress. We have, heretofore, shewn that the right of representation furnishes a security for the rights and liberties of the different portions of a federal republic, only when the powers of the common council are confined to the common interests of the whole confederation. But when the power of the common council is directed against the interest of a minority, so isolated and distinguished by geographical, civil, or religious peculiarities, as that laws apparently and nominally general, may be, in effect, local and exclusive in their imposi tions, it is obvious that a representation of the minority on all questions affecting its distinct and local interests, is substantially no representation at all. When the proposition before Congress is the imposition of a common and equal burthen upon the whole country, or the appropriation of the common funds, to defend the rights of a single State, or even of a single individual, we should consider South-Carolina really represented, however much she might differ with the majority. But when the proposition is to impose an exclusive burthen on South-Carolina or appropriate her peculiar funds for the pecuniary benefit even of all the other States, we should regard her as having no

representation at all, though she were entitled to forty-nine votes in a council of one hundred. On such a question, any thing less than a majority or at least an equality of votes, is precisely equal to no vote at all. It is not a question of deliberation concerning common interests, but a question of naked numerical power, concerning interests that are entirely adverse. Nothing, therefore, can be more "unfair and ridiculous" than to maintain that the unjust and unconstitutional impositions of the tariff system, are, in any respect, less tyrannical than the stamp duties or the tea tax, imposed upon the American Colonies by the British Parliament, merely because the Southern States are represented in Congress. What would have been the value of a colonial representation in the British Parliament? The wisest of our patriotic ancestors rejected the idea as a miserable mockery. What is the value of an Irish representation in the British Parliament, on all questions affecting the local interests of Ireland, and in which the interests or prejudices of England stand opposed to them? Let the oppression and ruin of Ireland answer the question. What would be the value of a West-India representation in Parliament, on the question of negro emancipation? It would be obviously an empty delusion. And what, in fine, was the value of a Southern representation in Congress, when the question to be determined was, whether ten millions of Southern commerce should be subjected to the legislative rapacity of the majority, especially when the spoils were to be divided among the patriotic plunderers? Let the passage of an act unprecedented in our country for injustice and oppression, “with all the forms" of deliberation, answer that question. The only effect of the presence of our representatives-for on such a question the light of revelation could produce no effect in the way of argument was to be nominal parties to the act of our immolation, and thus furnish an apology for the outrage.

No man, therefore, who is not imposed upon by the fallacy of superficial resemblances, can fail to perceive that the tariff majority in Congress, in the act of confiscating Southern commerce for the use and benefit of Northern manufacturers and monopolists, violates, to all intents and purposes, that great and cardinal principle of modern liberty, which was consecrated even in the annals of our British ancestry, by the spirit of Hampden and the blood of Sidney, long before our American forefathers kindled up the sacred fires of a yet more pure and perfect liberty, in the solitudes of a savage wilderness. It is irresponsible, and worse than irresponsible, taxation.

In denying the right of the General Government to interfere with our local concerns, and in limiting its operation to the com

mon concerns of the Union, we are very far from intending to convey the idea that every law of Congress is unconstitutional which does not, in point of fact, operate with perfect equality on every portion of the confederacy. This would be the extravagance of a Utopian vision. We are perfectly aware that it must frequently happen, that laws which are clearly constitutional, and honestly designed to fulfil the purposes for which the Union was formed, will affect, in a very unequal degree, the varying interests of the different parts of the confederacy. It is against those acts of Congress, of which inequality and oppression constitute the obvious, the exclusive, and the final end, that we invoke the protecting genius of the Constitution, and raise the voice of solemn protestation.

To illustrate the subject still further, let us inquire what motive or object connected with our foreign relations, and constituting, therefore, a legitimate end of "regulating commerce with foreign nations" can, by any colourable supposition, have actuated Congress in the passage of the late tariff? If it can be shewn that any foreign power has committed an outrage upon the international rights of even the smallest member of the confederacy, the patriotic spirit of the South will disdain the huckstering coldness of "counting the cost" of vindicating and maintaining them. If the sovereignty of the Union has been violated in the person of a single individual, in the remotest Northern corner of the confederacy, by the act of any foreign nation,-every citizen of the Southern country will freely contribute both his blood and his treasure to avenge the injury, and support the national honour. Is it pretended that there has been any such violation or outrage?

The only acts of any foreign power to which the advocates of the tariff policy have ever referred, as constituting a motive for its adoption, are the British corn laws, and a late act of Parliament reducing the import duties on foreign wool. Now, will it be pretended by any one, that these acts violate, in the slightest degree, one solitary right either national or individual, which the Federal Government is under obligations either to defend by war, or counteract by commercial regulations?

By the law of nations, it is the undoubted right of every country to regulate its impost duties, or prohibit the importation of foreign merchandize in any manner it may deem expedient, without giving to the nations affected by it any just cause of complaint. The people of the grain-growing States complain that Great-Britain has prohibited the importation of their principal agricultural staple. We reply that this prohibition is a part of VOL. II.-NO. 4. 77