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"a part of our great system of protection, devised for the security of the labor and capital of all the people? then does this Bill, anti-protective in its very principles, remove that defence.— Destroy those interests, which have called together in cities, towns, villages, hamlets, near your waterfalls, bays and harbors, and covered the agricultural districts around them, with a dense population, and these people, like the oppressed Hebrews, while gathering straw, will be, in pursuit of labor and bread, scattered abroad throughout all the land. Where will be your militia, once in the neighborhood of your fortifications, and ready to man them on the approach of the enemy? Gone, Sir, dispersed; and, perhaps, on your other frontier, conflicting with the savages of the western prairies. If your forts are defended, it must be by a standing army. At all events, the troops of your present military establishment must be recalled from those stations, in the South, where they have been located, to protect the master and his family from the insurrectionary spirit of his slaves.

"To this protection, though hardly to be found in the Constitution, the free people of the North have never objected. They have felt a deep and anxious interest in your safety. I know your Southern chivalry scoffs at all this; and holds our sympathy in utter derision. Be assured that I am not ignorant of the contempt you feel, and the scorn you express, when any New-England man happens to speak of you, on this floor, in terms of fraternity. For myself, I claim brotherhood with no man; unless, by blood or affinity, I stand in that relation with him. Be assured that I shall never affront any of your lofty feelings, by any expression of any relationship with any of you, other than that of citizenship and humanity. We are Americans; and we are men. There is no alienage between us. The freemen of the North, and I as one of them, claim it as a right, to desire the safety of all men. We will travel far, and labor hard, to achieve that safety for all the American people. If the safety of Southern planters cannot be secured without aid from the troops of the United States, that aid will not, by us, be refused, for their protection.

"It must, nevertheless, not be forgotten by them, that if we are at last to protect them and their families, by armed force,

they must not feel themselves at liberty, to withdraw the protection of the laws from us and our labors. Under these conditions, the arm of our strength will always be near to you, and lifted up for your defence. Do not expect more from the working men of the North, than can be performed by man. Dare you repeal the laws enacted for your protection? Will you break up the instruments of your labor and livelihood? Shall our free working men, with their wives and children, be turned, by you, into the world, naked, and without shelter or food? Do you expect their sympathy will be alive to the cry of your distress, when their children cry to them for that bread which you have plucked from their mouths? When your wives and daughters fly from that servile brutality which has cloven down their husbands and brothers in their defence; can the shrieks of their agony reach the ears of those whom you have left out to the winter storms, in houseless nakedness and famine ? The men whom you have maddened with the bitterness of that misery which you have heaped upon them, who, but for that, would die for your safety, will laugh when ruin visits your abodes; and shout, and clap their hands, when the whirlwind of retribution sweeps through your land.

"Sir, can it be expected that the free people of the North will be annually taxed, to purchase a protection for you, when you will not permit a law, which costs you nothing, to remain unrepealed in your statute-book; because that law gives protection to the labor and the instruments of industry, by which they feed and clothe themselves and families? How do you hope to be secured in the possession of that labor, which gives you wealth, and enjoyment, and political power? How but by the provisions of that Constitution which makes us a nation, and protects your interests, by the whole power of our national arms? In no other Christian nation are such rights, as you enjoy in this country, made a part of the national polity, and secured by the provisions of the Constitution. The spirit of emancipation is abroad in the earth. What is now doing in England, the most free and powerful nation on earth? Ay, Sir, in England, to which, as it is said, some States in the South

already look for aid against our own country? What question, as a test of political orthodoxy, is now put to a candidate, before he can be elected to the House of Commons? Are you for universal emancipation? What a test! Who would have dreamed of it twenty years ago? And yet more than four hundred and fifty Englishmen have been elected to Parliament under that solemn pledge. How long will West-India colonial slavery continue to exist, under the legislation of such a Parliament? Let South Carolina, or any, or all the slave-holding States of the South, separate from the other States in this Union, and take, or not take, shelter under the arm of any European nation; and how long do you believe that, or the other nations of that continent, would permit slavery to exist, among their republican allies? Sir, it cannot be disguised, nor should it be left untold, in this great question, that the very existence of that labor in the South, for a more profitable condition of which those States are now struggling to destroy all the free labor of this country, does in fact depend on the protecting power and arms of that free labor. Take from them the shelter of the power and arms of the American people, whose common welfare they are striving to destroy; leave them with their slaves to themselves, for security and protection, and how would their labor differ, in ten years, from that of the West-Indies or Mexico?

"Remember, Sir, man lives not by the voluntary bestowments

of man.

One Being only, in the universe, gives all, and always, and receives nothing. Men live by mutual aids. Something for something, is the great law of reciprocity and exchange, throughout the world. Those who expect to receive, must be ready to bestow. Do the South expect a protection of their labor from the North, then let them be ready to bestow what they cannot want, and not receive, without utter ruin."

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"What have you done, Sir, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means? What have you done for New-England? New-England-the landing-place of the Pilgrims; the cradle of American Independence; New-England-the blood of whose sons has fertilized so many Southern, and consecrated so many Northern fields. What, I demand of you, have you done, in all your wise provisions, for New-England? You have left undemolished-what could you else?-her rivers and rocks, her mountains, and winter storms; and oh, how courteous! you have not taken away from her, the curse of exterior influence, and interior treachery. You may triumph, you cannot subdue; New-England labor, like New-England valor, can never be

subdued.

"You of the South, have essayed every scheme and shift of policy. Your embargo lashed our ships to the wharves, until their shrouds fell from the masts. Your non-intercourse and war, locked up in warehouses, the staples of our commerce, which had been purchased and long paid for to you; and even New-Orleans was defended by the cotton of New-England. By your Tariff of 1816, you called on New-England, to sacrifice her rich East-India commerce, to what then you denominated a much greater interest-the national independence and the common welfare.

"Oh no-place New-England in a region of rock, without earth or water, our labor shall drill the solid stone, and like the staff of the Prophet, let out the gushing stream. Our perseverance shall beat the flint into small dust, and cover the whole surface with soil. The dews, and the rain, and the sunshine of Heaven, the only creatures of God left by you, in amity with us, shall give to our new earth, moisture and fertility; and time, and labor, and God's blessing shall cover the whole region with verdure."

CHAPTER XIII.

Speech of Mr. Burges on the Tariff.--Nullification in South Carolina.-The Revenue Bill.- The President's Proclamation. -Mr. Clay, and his Compromise Bill.-Mr. Burges's Address to his constituents.-He is re-elected to Congress.-His opinions concerning Slavery.

As the all-absorbing question concerning the Tariff Laws was again introduced, Mr. Burges once more spoke on the Resolutions before the House. In his Speech, which embraces the leading principles of the American System, the amount of taxes paid by the protection and anti-protection States respectively, are discussed; and some of the effects of the abolition of protection explained, both in regard to revenue and national industry.

With this subject, (the protection of American Industry,) Mr. Burges is perhaps as conversant as any statesman in our country. He has thoroughly studied its principles, and its details-he feels that not Rhode-Island alone is interested, but that the prosperity and happiness of all the States depend upon it-that it is one of our most valuable national resources, and should be cherished with peculiar solicitude. Hence, whenever that System has been opposed, in Congress or elsewhere, he has ever stood forth, as its valiant and zealous champion; depicting in eloquent terms, the blessings which it diffuses over our extended country. It is by labor in such a cause, that the name of a citizen is associated with wisdom and patriotism.

The dangers which threatened our Union at that period, are fresh in the recollection of all. The State of South Carolina, by assemblages of her people, by violent harangues on the part of influential politicians, by the message of her Governor, and the enactment of laws conflicting with the Constitution of the United States, had assumed a fearful and perilous attitude.

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