thing of such good report on earth or, I had almost said, in Heaven, which an ingenious imagination, which a subtle invention, may not, I do not say merely, find fault with, and pick flaws in, but which they may not show up in such a deformed, distorted, and monstrous shape, as to startle every one whom they address. And, Sir, if we are to yield ourselves up to the influence of such suggestions, we shall "subtilize ourselves into savages." Our ship of state, instead of holding on that high career of Constitutional liberty, which now lies open before it, will be swung off upon a sea of speculation, -the sport of every wind of doctrine and every wave of opinion, which may blow or beat upon her sides. Mr. Speaker, I have already dwelt too long upon a subject which had been wellnigh exhausted before I gained the floor. Yet I cannot conclude without alluding to some remarks which fell from the gentleman from Gloucester at the very opening of the debate, and which yesterday received some notice from the gentleman from Newburyport. I refer to his comments upon a recent charge of one of the Judges of our Supreme Court. I understood him to say, that the learned Judge used language of this sort,—that, if any man entertained doubts or a disbelief of the Christian Religion, he ought to keep such sentiments to himself. And the gentleman has inferred from this language, that the Judge would recommend hypocrisy to the people, and perhaps, therefore, would not shrink from practising it himself. Sir, if any such inference may fairly and reasonably be drawn, I freely submit myself, in company with the learned Judge, to whatever censure it involves. I indorse the sentiment, if it be not presumption so to speak, and adopt it as my own. I hold it to be the duty, the moral, the social duty, (and to such a man there can be no higher,) of every one who may have fallen into such a state of mind, to conceal it, I had almost said, even from himself. Nay, further, I maintain that any intelligent man, whose mind has thus been turned back from its highest and noblest object of knowledge and devotion, but who still sees clearly, as any intelligent man must see, the infinite blessings which Christianity has bestowed upon mankind, the comforts and joys in life, the consolation and hopes in death, which it has afforded to the individual man, the civilization, refinement, peace, prosperity, and freedom which it has given to the world at large, -yes, freedom, Sir,- for under what other auspices than those of the Gospel, have the rights of men been most successfully asserted and maintained? at what other beams than those of the Sun of Righteousness was our own loved star of liberty first kindled into being and brilliancy?— any intelligent man, I repeat, who, seeing all this, can yet go about preaching up and making proselytes to his own accursed infidelity,— however he may have the image of God upon his brow, can have nothing but the spirit of a demon in his breast. I hope the House will reject the Bill. PROTECTION TO DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF MASSACHUSETTS, FEBRUARY 15, 1837. I HAVE hinted, Mr. Speaker, more than once in the course of this debate, while expressing my views of the various amendments which have been offered to the paper on your table, that I might trouble the House with a few remarks upon the general question, whenever that question should come up. It is now before us. The proposed amendments have all been rejected, and the original resolutions, in the form in which they first came from the committee-room, unmutilated and unaltered, are now awaiting our ultimate action. I confess, Sir, that I had expected, in this stage of the question, to see some redemption of the pledges which were so abundantly given out when the subject was introduced into the House. I had expected that those who were so eager and so bold to throw down the gauntlet of defiance at the outset of this business, and to cast such unmeasured terms of contumely and contempt upon the principles which these resolutions embody, would have favored us, at this point of the controversy, with something beside hard words, gratuitous assertions, or even jocular sallies to quarrel with. But though every opportunity has been afforded, and almost every provocation offered, though the gauntlet originally thrown down has not only thrice been taken up, but fearlessly and repeatedly brandished in the very eyes of those from whom it fell, no champion of free trade has yet appeared in the lists, and, so far as the principles of the Protecting System are concerned, we are still left to make battle upon an imaginary foe. Sir, I have no disposition to protract this onesided contest. I will not conjure up shapes of opposition. I will not enter gratuitously upon the dull discussion of abstract principles, or the dry narration of statistical details. Whatever pains I may have taken in preparation for such a task, I gladly forget; whatever satisfaction I may have anticipated in the performance of it, I willingly forego. I will only pray the patience of the House for a few minutes, while, quitting the path which I had marked out for myself in advance, burning my books, blotting out my figures, and religiously eschewing all entertainment of abstract principles, I take up the question where I find it this morning, or rather where the gentleman from Gloucester left it yesterday. - Sir, I understood that gentleman (Mr. Rantoul) to say, in reply to the honorable member from Nantucket, (Mr. Burnell,) who had ventured to introduce the names of John Hancock and Samuel Adams into this discussion, that could those sacred shades be summoned, at this moment, from their abode, they would be among the first and foremost to protest against the unconstitutional system of taxation which these resolutions support and advocate, that they would resist it in the same. tones and in the same spirit in which they once resisted the tyrannical taxation of Great Britain. It would be easy, Mr. Speaker, to argue out, to almost any length, the countless distinctions between the Tariff of our own Congress and the taxation without representation imposed upon the American Colonies by a British Parliament. But I propose to answer this singular position by no such process. I propose to confine myself, on this point of the question, to the simple recital of one or two authentic anecdotes, which I am sure will not be uninteresting in themselves, and which are worth a brainful of arguments upon this precise issue. They are not new, Sir. I can claim no credit for having hunted them out from the heap of forgotten history. The research of others has done this, and the eloquence of others has embalmed them beyond all danger of future oblivion. But so entirely pertinent are they to the remark of the gentleman from Gloucester, and to the whole question before us, that I trust I shall be pardoned the plagiarism, if such it ought to be called, of relating them on this occasion, as nearly as I can remember, in the form in which I have found them elsewhere. The Protecting System an unconstitutional system, and John Hancock and Samuel Adams rising from their graves to resist it! Let us go back in imagination, Mr. Speaker, about threeand-fifty years. Let us transport ourselves to the scenes and the circumstances of that distant day. The War of the Revolution is ended. The banners of liberty are at last waving in triumph over the fields upon which they have so often drooped in blood. The strife, the clash, the groan, the shout, are all over. But not so the private distress and the public depression. These, if not absolutely greater than during the heat of the war, are certainly more severely felt. No all-absorbing excitement drives them from the thought, no all-animating hope alleviates them to the feeling. That hope is realized, and the fruition has commenced. The Atlantic seaboard is the principal scene of this distress, and the ship-owners, the ship-builders, and the various classes of mechanics to which commerce gives support, are the princi pal sufferers. They are all destitute of employment, and some of them of bread. British ships are entering their ports daily and are deeply laden with British goods, but their own ships and their own goods have neither protection at home nor free trade abroad. There is no power under the existing confederation to adopt a general system of imposts, nor can any individual State successfully establish such a system for itself. Under these circumstances the idea of a Voluntary Association, which had been so effective in the days of the Stamp Act and the Tea Tax, is proposed, and a public meeting is held on the subject by the merchants and ship-builders of Boston. A Committee is appointed to draft an address to the people, and they are expressly instructed to call upon them, in the strongest terms, not to buy or consume any articles which were imported in British ships. And who is the Chairman of the Committee to whom this work is intrusted? It is John Hancock, Sir, — the same who is now summoned from his grave to protest against the abominable policy of a Protecting System. The address is drafted, the appeal is made, and the mechanics of Boston are now assembled to respond to it. They cordially concur in the doctrines of the merchants, they agree |