the price of every article we take in exchange for it, would be be decreased at least in an equal proportion. Can any thing, then, so forcibly illustrate the system which is now pressing the Southern States to the dust in wretchedness and poverty, as the obvious fact that the mere restoration of our natural and constitutional right of free trade with all the world, would produce so great a revolution in our condition. This revolution is powerfully recommended by the consideration, that while it would relieve the Southern States from at least fifteen millions of taxation, now annually paid as a tribute to the tariff States, it would not, in any view of the subject, interfere with the rights of the tariff States.

We know it has been said-with that characteristic absurdity which a dominant majority, conscious of their numerical strength, always feel privileged to exhibit-that in maintaining their right to free trade, the Southern States are attempting to violate the rights of the tariff States, by preventing them from making their own manufactures, and compelling them to purchase the manufactures of foreign countries. An assertion, more unfounded, would scarcely have been hazarded by the most reckless religious impostor, to the blind believers in his godhead. In what possible manner or degree can the exercise, by the Southern States, of their right to a free and untrammelled trade, either prevent the tariff States from making their own manufactures, or compel them to purchase the manufactures of foreign nations? Does not a free trade give them the same power to refuse purchasing foreign manufactures, which it gives the Southern States to purchase them?

But we will even go further. We will maintain and will demonstrate, that the establishment of the most perfect freedom of trade, by the laws of the Federal Government, will not prevent the tariff States from giving any degree of protection and encouragement to their manufactures, which they may deem expedient.

No one, it is presumed, will question the constitutional competency of the State Legislatures, to grant pecuniary bounties for the protection of domestic manufactures. In this, the power of the States is not only unquestioned, but unlimited. It only remains, then, for us to shew, that the protection and encouragement of domestic manufactures, by pecuniary bounties, is as efficacious, direct and unobjectionable as that, by impost duties and prohibitions. We shall produce the very highest authority to prove that it is more so.

Alexander Hamilton, in his celebrated report on domestic. manufactures, makes the following suggestions, and uses the following arguments :—

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Pecuniary Bounties.-This has been found one of the most efficacious means of encouraging manufactures, and it is in some views the best. Its advantages are these

"1. It is a species of encouragement more positive and direct than any other, and for that very reason, has a more immediate tendency to stimulate and uphold new enterprizes.

"2. It avoids the inconvenience of a temporary augmentation of price, which is incident to some other modes, or it produces it in a less degree.

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3. Bounties have not, like high protecting duties, a tendency to produce scarcity.

"4. Bounties are sometimes not only the best, but the only proper expedient for uniting the encouragement of a new object of agriculture with a new object of manufacture.

"It cannot escape notice, that a duty upon the importation of an article, can no otherwise aid the domestic production of it, than by giving the latter greater advantages in the home market. It can have no influence upon the advantageous sale of the article produced, in foreign markets; no tendency, therefore, to promote its exportation.

"As often as a duty upon a foreign article makes an addition to its price, it causes an extra expense to the community for the benefit of the domestic manufacturer. A bounty does no more.

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Protecting Duties.-Duties of this nature evidently amount to a virtual bounty upon the domestic fabrics, since by enhancing the charges on foreign articles, they enable the national manufacturers to undersell all their competitors."

These quotations from the writings of one whom the advocates of the prohibitory system claim as its founder, conclusively demonstrate that a direct "pecuniary bounty" is preferable to an indirect and "virtual bounty" given in the form of a "protecting duty" for the encouragement of domestie manufactures. We would add to the reasons given by Mr. Hamilton for this preference, one or two others. A pecuniary bounty is free from all disguise or uncertainty. The community know precisely the extent and duration of the burthen it imposes upon them. It also has this striking and conclusive advantage over a high protecting duty-it cannot be evaded by smuggling.

What, therefore, is there to prevent the tariff states from giving the most ample protection to their own domestic manufactures? Why, for example, does not Massachusetts give protection to her own manufactures, by a system of pecuniary bounties, and with what a graceless front does the Legislature of that State memorialize Congress to give a protection to the

manufacturers of Massachusetts, which that Legislature is exclusively bound to give, if, indeed, there exists an obligation any where to give them protection? How are we to account for the extraordinary fact, that not one of the tariff States-having, as we have shewn, the most complete and indisputable power to protect its manufactures-has ever given them directly or indirectly, the slightest possible bounty or encouragement? The reason is perfectly obvious. Though the tariff States will not protect their own manufacturers at their own expense, they are a great deal more than willing to do it at the expense of other people. They call upon the General Government to be the instrument of this outrageous injustice; and because the people of the Southern States will not submit to be made the dupes of a fraud which offers a direct insult to their understanding, and the victims of a tyranny which would convert them into the degraded slaves of a Northern aristocracy, they are still further insulted by the impudent and nonsensical allegation, that they are attempting to prevent the tariff States from making and consuming their own manufactures, and to compel them to purchase the manufactures of foreign countries! We say to the tariff States, "make what manufactures you please; give any encouragement you think proper to your domestic establishments; but do not attempt to compel us to buy your manufactures at your own prices, and deprive us of a market where we can obtain them much cheaper, and where we can sell four times as much of our raw material, as we have any hope of selling to you. We do not, in any respect, interfere with your rights or your internal affairs; and we cannot permit you, in this unjust, unconstitutional manner, to interfere with ours."

Such being, in our opinion, the sentiment of the Southern States at any rate of South-Carolina--we propose to offer a few suggestions as to the course that will, probably, be pursued by the several State Legislatures. From all the indications of public opinion, given at the various Conventions of the people that have been called for the purpose of devising means to resist the unconstitutional oppression of the late tariff, we are induced to believe that only two modes of resistance, by the sovereign authority of the States, will be the subject of discussion in the Legislatures of the Southern States. The first is an excise to be imposed upon the manufactures and other productions of the tariff States; and the second, the call of State Conventions of the people, in order that the States, in their highest sovereign capacity, may pronounce upon the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the protecting system, in the most solemn, deliberate and authoritative form. Without undertaking to decide VOL. II.-NO. 4.

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whether one or both of these modes will be adopted, we will briefly explain the grounds upon which they are placed by their respective advocates.

Those who are in favour of an excise upon articles produced in the tariff States, contend that such a measure would coerce those States, by the strong motive of interest-the very motive which has instigated them to pursue the tariff policy-to abandon a system of unjust and oppressive legislation, inevitably tending to impoverish the Southern States. They also maintain that the States have clearly an unlimited and unconditional right to impose excise duties upon every article that is brought within their territorial jurisdiction, upon the very same principle that some of the Northern States, impose duties upon the sales of foreign merchandize at public auction.

Of those who are in favour of a call of State Conventions, by the respective Legislatures, some rely upon the great elementary and unalienable right necessarily reserved to the people and to the States in their sovereign capacity, while others derive the right to call such Conventions, and to pronounce a law of Congress unconstitutional, void and inoperative, from the express provisions and obvious nature of the compact of Union, according to the interpretation given to that instrument, by Mr. Jefferson, in the celebrated resolutions of the Kentucky Legislature, written by him; and also by Mr. Madison, in the equally celebrated preamble and resolutions of the Virginia Legislature. The following is the language of one of the Kentucky resolutions, drawn up by Mr. Jefferson:

"The government, created by this compact, was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judges, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." Mr. Madison, in the preamble to the Virginia resolutions, uses the following implicit and decisive language:-"If the deliberate exercise of dangerous powers, palpably withheld by the Constitution, could not justify the parties to it in interposing, even so far as to arrest the progress of the evil, and thereby to preserve the Constitution itself, as well as to provide for the safety of the parties to it, there would be an end of all relief from usurped power, and a direct subversion of the rights specified or recognized under all the State institutions, as well as a plain denial of the fundamental principles upon which our independence itself was declared."

We shall make no further commentary upon these strong and unequivocal opinions of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, than to

say that no two names are more justly consecrated in the estimation of the republican party; and none calculated to give a more authoritative sanction to those defensive measures, to which the Southern States may be driven, as the only means left them to preserve their constitutional liberties. That the crisis alluded to by Mr. Madison has arrived—that we have seen in awful and threatening exhibition, the "deliberate exercise of dangerous powers, palpably withheld by the Constitution," no citizen of the Southern States-no citizen of South-Carolina-can hesitate to pronounce.

Statement of the Duties paid on various descriptions of Foreign Merchandize imported; the amount imported in 1827, and the amount that will be manufactured and produced for sale in the United States, after the Tariff of 1828 shall have fully produced its prohibitory effect; with an estimate of the amount of the tribute that will be annually paid by the people of the United States to the manufacurers and producers.

$30,332,000

Aggregate amount of the tribute paid to the producers of
the above articles, in addition to duties paid on them,
for the support of government,

N. B.-The above Statement does not include manufactures of brass, copper, tin, leather and a great variety of small articles subject to high protceting duties. It does not include manufactures of flax, or those of hemp, except cotton bagging, because the duties on these last, though high, may yet be regarded principally as revenue duties.