Gentlemen tell us it is the business of the States to protect their citizens against insurrection and violence. But our fathers provided a stronger defence for moments of supreme peril. The American people are not likely soon to forget the events of July last, when, in a great group of States belting the continent from ocean to ocean, the lives and property of many millions of citizens were rescued from sudden and imminent peril by the prompt and effective response of our army to the constitutional demand of the States for its aid. Here, Mr. Chairman, I hold in my hand the copies of brief but eloquent letters and telegrams from ten great States of this Union, -all of them sent within the space of one week, calling upon the President of the United States for help; ten great States, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Maryland and West Virginia among them; ten great States, among them California and the empire States of the Northwest, calling for the arms of the republic to shield and save them in their hour of distress. Had we been at that moment in session, do you think we would have voted to reduce the army to twenty thousand men? Should we not rather have put it up to fifty thousand? I therefore say boldly, while I will do as much as he who will do most to secure the rights of labor against iniquitous laws and against the assaults of capital when used unjustly, yet against all comers I am for the reign of law in this republic and for an army large enough to make it sure.

I trust, Mr. Chairman, that the gentleman from New Yorkwhose material stake in the stability and good order of the Union is much greater than mine - will consent to an amendment to fix the number of the army for the coming year at twenty-five thousand men, where it now is, and let the bill be recommitted, so that his committee may reconstruct it in harmony with the amendment. The details of organization might then be left to a commission, which can report to us at the beginning of our next session. I trust that in these remarks I have wounded the sensibility of no gentleman; for I have spoken no word in the spirit of partisanship.

NOTE. This speech, like many of Mr. Garfield's speeches delivered in 1877 and 1878, contained a discussion of the Macaulay letter of 1857. The discussion is omitted in all these speeches, because a fuller one is found in "The Future of the Republic," ante, pp. 53, 54.

THE WOOD TARIFF BILL.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 4, 1878.

MR. FERNANDO WOOD, of New York, Chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means, reported from that committee, March 26, 1878, a bill to impose duties upon foreign imports, to promote trade and commerce, to reduce taxation, and for other purposes. The bill came up for discussion, April 9, and was discussed from time to time until June 5, when the House struck out the enacting clause. In Committee of the Whole, May 8, Mr. J. R. Tucker, of Virginia, made a speech in advocacy of the bill. Mr. Garfield replied, June 4, in the following speech, also delivered in committee. The bill was a so-called "FreeTrade measure.

MR

R. CHAIRMAN, -The time which is left for general debate upon this bill will not permit anything like an elaborate discussion of its merits. The subject is so full of details, and involves so many important questions, that in the hour assigned to me to close the debate I can do no more than present a few general considerations which will guide my own action.

A few days ago, the distinguished gentleman from Virginia who now occupies the chair1 made a speech of rare ability and power, in which he placed in the front of his line of discussion a question that was never raised in American legislation until our present form of government was forty years old, the question of the constitutionality of a tariff for the encouragement and protection of manufactures. The first page of the printed speech of the gentleman, as it appears in the Congressional

1 Mr. Tucker.

Record, is devoted to an elaborate and very able discussion of that question.

He insists that the two powers conferred upon Congress, to levy duties and to regulate commerce, are entirely distinct from each other; that the one cannot by any fair construction be applied to the other; that the methods of the one are not the methods of the other; and that the capital mistake which has been made in the legislation of the country for many years is, that the power to tax has been applied to the regulation of commerce, and through that to the protection of manufactures. He holds that, if we were to adopt a proper construction of the Constitution, we should find that the regulation of commerce does not permit the protection of manufactures, and that the power to tax cannot be applied, directly or indirectly, to that object.

I will not enter into any elaborate discussion of that question, but I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration of the courage of the gentleman from Virginia, who in that part of his speech brought himself into point-blank range of the terrible artillery of James Madison, one of the fathers of the Constitution, and Virginia's great expounder of its provisions. More than a hundred pages of the collected works of Mr. Madison are devoted to an elaborate and exhaustive discussion of the very objections which the gentleman has urged.

In a letter addressed to Joseph C. Cabell, on the 18th of March, 1827, will be found thirteen categorical reasons against the very constitutional theory now advanced by the gentleman from Virginia. It would almost seem that the distinguished author of the book which I hold in my hand had prophetically in his mind the very speech delivered in this House by the later Virginian, for he refutes its arguments, point by point, thoroughly and completely. I will quote a few paragraphs.

"It has been objected to the encouragement of domestic manufactures by a tariff on imported ones, that duties and imposts are in the clause specifying the sources of revenue, and therefore cannot be applied to the encouragement of manufactures when not a source of revenue.

"But, 1. It does not follow from the applicability of duties and imposts under one clause for one usual purpose, that they are excluded from an applicability under another clause to another purpose, also 1 The letter to Cabell is dated the 18th, but the "reasons are dated the 22d of March.

"

requiring them, and to which they have also been usually applied. 2. A history of that clause, as traced in the printed journal of the Federal Convention, will throw light on the subject.

"It appears that the clause, as it originally stood, simply expressed 'a power to lay taxes, duties, imposts, and excises,' without pointing out the objects; and, of course, leaving them applicable in carrying into effect the other specified powers. It appears, farther, that a solicitude to prevent any constructive danger to the validity of public debts contracted under the superseded form of government led to the addition of the words to pay the debts.' This phraseology having the appearance of an appropriation limited to the payment of debts, an express appropriation was added for the expenses of the government,' etc.

"But even this was considered as short of the objects for which taxes, duties, imposts, and excises might be required; and the more comprehensive provision was made by substituting [for the words] 'for expenses of the government' the terms of the old Confederation, viz. 'and provide for the common defence and general welfare,' making duties and imposts, as well as taxes and excises, applicable not only to payment of debts, but to the common defence and general welfare.

"The question then is, What is the import of that phrase, 'common defence and general welfare,' in its actual connection? The import which Virginia has always asserted, and still contends for, is, that they are explained and limited to the enumerated objects subjoined to them, among which objects is the regulation of foreign commerce; as far, therefore, as a tariff of duties is necessary and proper in regulating foreign commerce for any of the usual purposes of such regulations, it may be imposed by Congress, and consequently for the purpose of encouraging manufactures, which is a well-known purpose for which duties and imposts have been usually employed. This view of the clause providing for revenue, instead of interfering with or excluding the power of regulating foreign trade, corroborates the rightful exercise. of power for the encouragement of domestic manufactures." 1

"1. The meaning of the power to regulate commerce is to be sought in the general use of the phrase; in other words, in the objects generally understood to be embraced by the power when it was inserted in the Constitution. 2. The power has been applied, in the form of a tariff, to the encouragement of particular domestic occupations by every existing commercial nation. 3. It has been so used and applied, particularly and systematically by Great Britain, whose commercial vocabulary is the parent of ours. 4. The inefficacy of the power in relation to manufactures, as well as to other objects, when exercised by the States separately, was among the arguments and inducements for revising the old Confederation, and transferring the power from the States to the 1 Writings of James Madison, Vol. III. pp. 656, 657.

government of the United States. Nor can it be supposed that the States actually engaged in certain branches of manufactures, and foreseeing an increase of them, would have surrendered the whole power over commerce to the general government." 1

"The proceedings and debates of the First Congress under the present Constitution will show that the power was generally, perhaps universally, regarded as indisputable.

"Throughout the succeeding Congresses, till a very late date, the power over commerce has been exercised or admitted so as to bear on internal objects of utility or policy, without a reference to revenue. . . "Every President, from General Washington to Mr. J. Q. Adams inclusive, has recognized the power of a tariff in favor of manufactures, without indicating a doubt, or that a doubt existed anywhere.

"Virginia appears to be the only State that now denies, or ever did deny, the power; nor are there, perhaps, more than a very few individuals, if a single one, in the State, who will not admit the power in favor of internal fabrics, or productions necessary for public defence on the water or the land. To bring the protecting duty in those cases within the war power would require a greater latitude of construction than to refer them to the power of regulating trade.

"A construction of the Constitution practised upon or acknowledged for a period of nearly forty years, has received a national sanction not to be reversed but by an evidence at least equivalent to the national will. If every new Congress were to disregard a meaning of the instrument uniformly sustained by their predecessors for such a period, there would be less stability in that fundamental law than is required for the public good in the ordinary expositions of law." 2

I say that more than a hundred pages of Madison's works are devoted to discussing and exploding what was, in 1827, a new notion of constitutional construction. In one of these papers he calls to mind the fact, that sixteen of the men who framed the Constitution sat in the First Congress, and helped to frame a tariff expressly for the protection of domestic industries; and it is fair to presume that these men understood the meaning of the Constitution.

I will close this phase of the discussion by calling the attention of the committee to the language of the Constitution itself: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States." 3 1 Writings of James Madison, Vol. III. pp. 571, 572. Art. 1, Sect. 8.

2 Ibid., pp. 572, 573.