held up as a discouragement to the legitimate opposition of the sufferers; if, on the other hand, an emancipated people should seek a model on which to frame their own structure, our Constitution, as permanent in its duration as it is sound and splendid in its principles, should remain to be their guide. "In every aspect therefore which this great subject presents, we feel the deepest impression of a sacred obligation to preserve the Union of our country; we feel our glory, our safety and our happiness involved in it; we unite the interests of those who coldly calculate advantages with those who glow with what is little short of filial affection; and we must resist the attempt of its own citizens to destroy it, with the same feelings that we should avert the dagger of the parricide."

It appears then that down to 1825, the question of the right of secession was an academic one, speculative, debatable, with high authority inclining to the conclusion that the right existed in the nature of the Constitution and of the sovereign States which had created the Union. It appears also that in 1825, argument to prove the abstract right of secession was likely to be met by argument against its expediency that the loss would not be compensated for by possible gain if the Union should be dissolved.

But there were causes operating in the country which were to affect the judgment of men on the whole question through all its ramifications. Jefferson, the first Democratic president, came into office as the leader of a States-rights party, but no sooner was that party put in possession of the government than it hastened to adopt and to execute a national policy. The War of 1812 was a national, not a State-sovereignty act, fought against the will of New England and perhaps of New York. And the immediate consequences of that war were national. The Northwest ceased to be an inaccessible frontier and the tide of immigration began from the older Northern States westward. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, had no traditions of State sovereignty, for they owed their existence to an act of the United

States. It was in an immediate attempt to respond to the necessities of the Northwest that the cry for internal improvements went up directly after the war. Facilities for reaching the West were demanded and the General government was the accessible power and agency to provide them. Thus the people of the new West became broad constructionists, quite oblivious to the fine-spun constitutional arguments of President Monroe when he vetoed the bill for the Cumberland Road, May 4, 1822. The question of intercommunication, the East with the West, began to assume national proportions and found a friend and leader in Henry Clay. Such improvements at national expense he had advocated as early as 1807, but the agitation, the excitement, the thinking among the people which a war causes seems to have been necessary before Clay's policy of internal improvements could get a national hearing. That hearing was readily granted after the War of 1812, but to build internal improvements necessitated an adequate revenue for the purpose, and this in turn called for taxation. Thus arose the struggle over the tariff. Clay's policy-often a variable star -called for money which he believed could most easily, abundantly and satisfactorily be raised by a duty on imports: but at once the question arose— -A duty for revenue only? Or also for protection and the encouragement of American manufactures?

In 1791, Hamilton, in compliance with a request of Congress, made his famous report on manufactures, in which may be found the whole argument for a protective tariff. Washington, on July 4, 1789, affixed his signature to the first tariff law of the United States, which was primarily to raise revenue but was slightly protective. During the next twenty-five years, seventeen tariff laws were passed and in all the tendency was toward higher duties. Passing by the arguments for and against the protective system, it is sufficient to record that the tariff act of 1816 made the government at least a protective partner with the manufacturing class and was the beginning of the reliance of that

class from that day to this on Congressional legislation to make their business safe and profitable. The General government thus began its alliance with American manufacturers. The War of 1812 stimulated manufactures and the tariff act of 1816 was supported by Calhoun and other Southern representatives so that the owners of factories should not be ruined, their workmen dispersed or turned to other pursuits and the country suffer great loss: this was Calhoun's argument. Webster, who was not at the outset of his career a protectionist said that the tariff of 1816 was a Southern measure.

New England was not at this time protectionist; the South was protectionist; but the manufacturers speedily demanding higher protection, new tariff measures were proposed and that of 1824 was passed. At this time England was halting in her protective system and about to repeal the corn laws. The panic of 1825 due to over-production, the abuse of credit, the expansion of paper circulation, stirred the protectionists to demand yet higher duties and New England began transforming herself from an agricultural into a manufacturing community, with consequent conjunction with the protectionist forces. Webster too abandoned his free-trade opinions and became spokesman for New England protectionism. It was at this time that the South demurred and entered into what proved to be a course of opposition to the tariff, culminating in 1860, in the declaration, by South Carolina, that the tariff laws were a cause of its secession from the Union.

At Harrisburg, in July, 1827, there assembled a convention of American manufacturers-though the South was not represented—who demanded a new tariff act and higher duties. Out of this demand, which at once became a political question, grew the tariff of 1828, known as "the tariff of abominations." The legislature of South Carolina protested against the passing of the bill, and the law became the immediate cause of the nullification movement at the South.