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to the gratitude of the country and the respect of posterity. The appearance of the proclamation of the 10th of December inspired me, I confess, with new hopes for the duration of the republic. I regarded it as just, patriotic, able, and imperiously demanded by the condition of the country. I would not be understood to speak of particular clauses and phrases in the proclamation; but I regard its great and leading doctrines as the true and only true doctrines of the constitution. They con stitute the sole ground on which dismemberment can be resisted. Nothing else, in my opinion, can hold us together. While these opinions are maintained, the Union will last; when they shall be generally rejected and abandoned, that Union will be at the mercy of a temporary majority in any one of the states. "I speak, gentlemen, on this subject, without reserve. I have not intended heretofore, and elsewhere, and do not now intend, here, to stint my commendation of the conduct of the president in regard to the proclaination and the subsequent measures. I have differed with the president, as all know, who know anything of so humble an individual as myself, on many questions of great general interest and importance. I differ with him in respect to the constitutional power of internal improvements; I differ with him in respect to the rechartering of the bank; and I dissent, especially, from the grounds and reasons on which he refused his assent to the bill passed by congress for that purpose. I differ with him also, probably, in the degree of protection which ought to be afforded to our agriculture and manufactures, and in the manner in which it may be proper to dispose of the public lands. But all these differences afforded, in my judgment, not the slightest reason for opposing him in a measure of paramount importance, and at a moment of great public exigency. I sought to take counsel of nothing but patriotism, to feel no impulse but that of duty, and to yield not a lame and hesitating, but a vigorous and cordial, support to measures, which, in my conscience, I believed essen

tial to the preservation of the constitution. It is true, doubt less, that if myself and others had surrendered ourselves to a spirit of opposition, we might have embarrassed, and probably defeated the measures of the administration. But in so doing, we should, in my opinion, have been false to our own characters, false to our duty, and false to our country. It gives me the highest satisfaction to know, that, in regard to this subject, the general voice of the country does not disapprove my conduct."

It is true in history, as it is in common life, that a man of note is apt to receive his greatest measure of reproach in the midst of his greatest triumphs, as if Providence intended that the one should so counterbalance the other as to keep him from vanity, while the common individual, who does nothing to merit fame, does as little to provoke opposition, and so passes along through his existence easily and smoothly. This general truth was exemplified, in another respect, in the history of Mr. Webster. Besides being accused, even by his friends, of having leaned too much to the support of General Jackson, he was also denounced, at this time, as a consolidationist, who wished that the general government should swallow up the powers of the states. The shallowness and wickedness of this charge he laid open in the address at Pittsburgh: "I am quite aware, gentlemen, that it is easy for those who oppose measures deemed necessary for the execution of the laws, to raise the cry of consolidation. It is easy to make charges and bring general accusations. It is easy to call names. For one, I repel all such imputations. I am no consolidationist. I disclaim the character altogether, and, instead of repeating this general and vague charge, I will be obliged to any one to show how the proclamation, or the late law of congress, or, indeed, any measure to which I ever gave my support, tends, in the slightestest degree, to consolidation. By consolidation is understood a grasping at power, on behalf of the general

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government, not constitutionally conferred. But the proclama tion asserted no new power. It only asserted the right in the government, to carry into effect, in the form of law, power which it had exercised for forty years. I should oppose any grasping at new powers by congress, as zealously as the most zealous. I wish to preserve the constitution as it is, without addition, and without diminution, by one jot or tittle. For the same reason that I would not grasp at powers not given, I would not surrender, nor abandon, powers which are given. Those who have placed me in a public station, placed me there, not to alter the constitution, but to administer it. The power of change the people have retained to themselves. They can alter, they can modify, they can change the constitution entirely, if they see fit. They can tread it under foot, and make another, or make no other; but while it remains unaltered by the authority of the people, it is our power of attorney, our letter of credit, our credentials; and we are to follow it, and obey its injunctions, and maintain its just powers, to the best of our abilities. I repeat that, for one, I seek to preserve to the constitution those precise powers with which the people have clothed it. While no encroachment is to be made on the reserved rights of the people, or of the states, while nothing is to be usurped, it is equally clear that we are not at liberty to surrender, either in fact or form, any power or principle which the constitution does actually contain. And what is the ground for this cry of consolidation? I maintain that the

measures recommended by the president, and adopted by congress, were measures of self-defense. Is it consolidation to execute laws? Is it consolidation to resist the force that is threatening to upturn our government? Is it consolidation to protect officers, in the discharge of their duty, from courts and juries previously sworn to decide against them? Gentle men, I take occasion to remark, that, after much reflection upon the subject, and after all that has been said about the encroach

ment of the general government upon the rights of the states I know of no one power, exercised by the general govern ment, which was not, when that instrument was adopted, ad mitted by the immediate friends and foes of the constitution to have been conferred upon it by the people. I know of no one power, now claimed or exercised, which every body did not agree, in 1789, was conferred on the general government. On the contrary, there are several powers, and those, too, among the most important for the interests of the people, which were then universally allowed to be conferred on congress by the constitution of the United States, and which are now ingeniously doubted, or clamorously denied."

It cannot be denied that the forcible suppression of nullifi cation had chafed the people of more states south than those of South Carolina. Though no other state had proposed resistance, the tariff of 1828 was decidedly unpopular in most of the slave states. To save the honor of South Carolina, which, discouraged with the business of resistance, and yet far from yielding a voluntary obedience to the laws, wished for some pretext for a return to its fealty, Mr. Clay, a southern man by birth and education, but an American of the broadest sympathies at heart, proposed a reduction of the complicated tariff system of 1828, to a general level of twenty per cent. duties on all imports of every kind whatever. No one could complain of this proposal, that it was not simple enough; but, by rejecting all discrimination, it warred upon many interests of the country, while it over-fostered others, which needed and demanded no help from government. It was a mere blind way of collecting the revenue, without encouraging any na tional interest whatever, and without respect to the bearing of a tariff on the morals of the people. Spirituous liquors, ards, dice, and every evil thing, could come into the country us freely as books and bibles. The silks and satins of the rich were to pay no more duty than the best hemp in the

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world, without which our shipping would suffer damage, or the expensive and delicate implements of mechanism, which had not been produced among us, and without which some branches of industry would be compelled to close their operations. We should be left with no power to favor the productions of a country, which favored us, nor to punish a nation which might take every opportunity to injure our domestic and foreign business. Such a tariff was particularly offensive to New Eng. land, and to the middle states, which depended for the success of their manufactures on some sort of discrimination. A dead-level tariff, they believed, would be their ruin; and sc they looked to Mr. Webster, who did not care much to give South Carolina an opportunity of evading the embarrassment and dishonor of her position, before she had had time to realize and feel the force of it, to stand up in defense of the true manufacturing interests of his country. Mr. Webster did not disappoint this reliance. His efforts in opposition to Mr. Clay were among the most masterly speeches of the session.

While Mr. Webster was on a second visit of business to some of the middle states of the west, the president of the United States was making a sort of triumphal progress through New England, where he was overwhelmed with eulogies and honors from a people who felt grateful for his efforts in sustaining the Union and the constitution. No sooner, however, had he returned to Washington, than he began to open a war upon the bank of the United States, an institution universally respected by the very people whose hospitalities he had just enjoyed; and from the opening of congress to the close of his second term, now just begun, he carried on hostilities against the cur rency of the country, which terminated in the financial crash of the succeeding administration. His first step, the rashest he could have taken, was the removal of all the moneys of the government from the vaults of the general bank, and the de positing of them in certain state banks for safe keeping. That