upon the power of congress to interfere with it, is it possible that they who deemed it important would have contented themselves with a vague restraint, which was calculated to operate in almost any other manner than that which they desired? If fear and jealousy, such as the honorable gentleman has described, had dictated this provision, a better term than that of "migration," simple and unqualified, and joined too with the word "importation," would have been found to tranquillize those fears and satisfy that jealousy. Fear and jealousy are watchful, and are rarely seen to accept a security short of their object, and less rarely to shape that security of their own accord, in such a way as to make it no security at all. They always seek an explicit guaranty; and that this is not such a guaranty this debate has proved, if it has proved nothing else. Sir, I shall not be understood by what I have said to admit that the word migration refers to slaves. I have contended only that if it does refer to slaves, it is in this clause synonymous with importation; and that it cannot mean the mere passage of slaves, with or without their masters, from one state in the Union to another. But I now deny that it refers to slaves at all. I am not for any man's opinions or his histories upon this subject. I am not accustomed jurare in verba magistri. I shall take the clause as I find it, and do my best to interpret it. [After going through with that part of his argument relating to this clause of the constitution, Mr. Pinkney concluded his speech by expressing a hope that (what he deemed) the perilous principles urged by those in favor of the restriction upon the new state would be disavowed or explained, or that at all events the application of them to the subject under discussion would not be pressed, but that it might be disposed of in a manner satisfactory to all by a prospective prohibition of slavery in the territory to the north and west of Missouri.] 352 SPEECH OF JOHN RANDOLPH ON THE TARIFF BILL, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE I AM, Mr. Speaker, practising no deception upon myself, much less upon the house, when I say, that if I had consulted my own feelings and inclinations, I should not have troubled the house, exhausted as it is, and as I am, with any further remarks upon this subject. I come to the discharge of this task, not merely with reluctance, but with disgust; jaded, worn down, abraded, I may say, as I am by long attendance upon this body, and continued stretch of the attention upon this subject. I come to it, however, at the suggestion, and in pursuance of the wishes of those, whose wishes are to me, in all matters touching my public duty, paramount law; I speak with those reservations, of course, which every moral agent must be supposed to make to himself. It was not more to my surprise, than to my disappointment, that on my return to the house, after a necessary absence of a few days, on indispensable business, I found it engaged in discussing the general principle of the bill, when its details were under consideration. If I had expected such a turn in the debate, I would, at any private sacrifice, however great, have remained a spectator and auditor of that discussion. With the exception of the speech, already published, of my worthy colleague on my right (Mr. P. P. Barbour), I have been nearly deprived of the benefit of the discussion which has taken place. Many weeks have been occupied with this bill (I hope the house will pardon me for saying so) before I took the slightest part in the deliberations of the details; and I now sincerely regret that I had not firmness enough to adhere to the resolution which I had laid down to myself, in the early stage of the debate, not to take any part in the discussion of the details of the measure. But, as I trust, what I now have to say upon this subject, although more and better things have been said by others, may not be the same that they have said, or may not be said in the same manner. I here borrow the language of a man who has been heretofore conspicuous in the councils of the country; of one who was unrivalled for readiness and dexterity in debate; who was long without an equal on the floor of this body; who contributed as much to the revolution of 1801, as any man in this nation, and derived as little benefit from it; as, to use the words of that celebrated man, what I have to say is not that which has been said by others, and will not be said in their manner, the house will, I trust, have patience with me during the time that my strength will allow me to occupy their attention. And I beg them to understand, that the notes which I hold in my hand are not the notes on which I mean to speak, but of what others have spoken, and from which I will make the smallest selection in my power. Here permit me to say, that I am obliged, and with great reluctance, to differ from my worthy colleague, who has taken so conspicuous a part in this debate, about one fact, which I will call to his recollection, for I am sure it was in his memory, though sleeping. He has undertaken to state the causes by which the difference in the relative condition of various parts of the Union has been produced; but my worthy colleague has omitted to state the primum mobile of the commerce and manufactures to which a portion of the country, that I need not name, owes its present prosperity and wealth. That primum mobile was southern capital. I speak not now of transactions quorum pars minima fui, but of things of which, nevertheless, I have a contemporaneous recollection. I say, without the fear of contradiction, then, that in consequence of the enormous depreciation of the evidences of the public debt of this country-the debt proper of the United States (to which must be added an item of not less than twenty millions of dollars, for the state debts assumed by the United States) being bought up and almost engrossed by the people of what were then called the Northern States a measure which nobody dreamt any thing about, of which nobody had the slightest suspicion-I mean the assumption of the state debts by the federal governmentthese debts being bought up for a mere song, a capital of eighty millions of dollars, or, in other words, a credit to that amount, bearing an interest of six per cent. per annum (with the exception of nineteen millions, the interest of that debt, which bore an interest of three per cent.)-a capital of eighty millions of dollars was poured, in a single day, into the coffers of the north; and to that cause we may mainly ascribe the difference, so disastrous to the south, between that country and the other portion of this Union, to which I have alluded. When we, roused by the sufferings of our brethren of Boston, entered into the contest with the mother country, and when we came out of it-when this constitution was adopted, we were comparatively rich; they were positively poor. 30* Y Y What is now our relative situation? They are flourishing and rich; we are tributary to them, not only through the medium of the public debt of which I have spoken, but also through the medium of the pension list, nearly the whole amount of which is disbursed in the Eastern States-and to this creation of a day is to be ascribed the difference of our relative situation (I hope my worthy colleague will not consider any thing that I say as conflicting with his general principles, to which I heartily subscribe). Yes, sir, and the price paid for the creation of all that portion of this capital, which consisted of the assumed debts of the states, was the immense boon of fixing the seat of government where it now is. And I advert to this bargain, because I wish to show to every member of this house, and, if it were possible, to every individual of this nation, the most tremendous and calamitous results of political bargaining. Sir, when are we to have enough of this tariff question? In 1816 it was supposed to be settled. Only three years thereafter, another proposition for increasing it was sent from this house to the senate, baited with a tax of four cents per pound on brown sugar. It was fortunately rejected in that body. In what manner this bill is baited, it does not become me to say; but I have too distinct a recollection of the vote in committee of the whole, on the duty upon molasses, and afterwards of the vote in the house on the same question; of the votes of more than one of the states on that question, not to mark it well. I do not say that the change of the vote on that question was affected by any man's voting against his own motion; but I do not hesitate to say that it was effected by one man's electioneering against his own motion. I am very glad, Mr. Speaker, that old Massachusetts Bay, and the province of Maine and Sagadahock, by whom we stood in the days of the revolution, now stand by the south, and will not aid in fixing on us this system of taxation, compared with which the taxation of Mr. Grenville and lord North was as nothing. I speak with knowledge of what I say, when I declare, that this bill is an attempt to reduce the country, south of Mason and Dixon's line and east of the Alleghany mountains, to a state of worse than colonial bondage; a state to which the domination of Great Britain was, in my judgment, far preferable; and I trust I shall always have the fearless integrity to utter any political sentiment which the head sanctions and the heart ratifies; for the British parliament never would have dared to lay such duties on our imports, or their exports to us, either "at home" or here, as is now proposed to be laid upon the imports from abroad. At that time we had the command of the market of the vast dominions then subject, and we should have had those which have since been subjected, to the British empire; we enjoyed a free trade eminently superior to any thing that we can enjoy, if this bill shall go into operation. It is a sacrifice of the interests of a part of this nation to the ideal benefit of the rest. It marks us out as the victims of a worse than Egyptian bondage. It is a barter of so much of our rights, of so much of the fruits of our labor, for political power to be transferred to other hands. It ought to be met, and I trust it will be met, in the southern country, as was the stamp act, and by all those measures, which I will not detain the house by recapitulating, which succeeded the stamp act, and produced the final breach with the mother country, which it took about ten years to bring about, as I trust, in my conscience, it will not take as long to bring about similar results from this measure, should it become a law. All policy is very suspicious, says an eminent statesman, that sacrifices the interest of any part of a community to the ideal good of the whole; and those governments only are tolerable, where, by the necessary construction of the political machine, the interests of all the parts are obliged to be protected by it. Here is a district of country extending from the Patapsco to the gulf of Mexico, from the Alleghany to the Atlantic; a district, which, taking in all that part of Maryland lying south of the Patapsco and east of Elk river, raises five sixths of all the exports of this country, that are of home growth. I have in my hand the official statements which prove it, but which I will not weary the house by reading-in all this country-yes, sir, and I bless God for it; for with all the fantastical and preposterous theories about the rights of man (the theories, not the rights themselves, I speak of), there is nothing but power that can restrain power. I bless God, that, in this insulted, oppressed, and outraged region, we are, as to our counsels in regard to this measure, but as one man; that there exists on the subject but one feeling and one interest. We are proscribed and put to the bar; and if we do not feel, and, feeling, do not act, we are bastards to those fathers who achieved the revolution: then shall we deserve to make our bricks without straw. There is no case on record, in which a proposition like this, suddenly changing the whole frame of a country's polity, tearing asunder every ligature of the body politic, was ever carried by a lean majority of two or three votes, unless it be the usurpation of the septennial act, which passed the British parliament, by, I think, a majority of one vote, the same that laid the tax on cotton bagging. I do not stop here, sir, to argue about the constitutionality of this bill; I consider the constitution a dead letter: I consider it to consist, at this time, of the power of the general government and the power of the states: that is the constitution. You may entrench yourself in parchment to the teeth, says lord Chatham, the sword will find its way to the vitals of the constitu |