1570/6066 "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 parties 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 will 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 this subject, but one feeling, and one interest. We are proscribed, and put to the ban; 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 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 Constitution. I have no faith in parchment, Sir; I have no faith in the Abracadabra of the Constitution; I have no faith in it. I have faith in the power of that Commonwealth, of which I am an unworthy son; in the power of those Carolinas, and of that Georgia, in her ancient and utmost extent to the Mississippi, which went with us through the valley of the shadow of death, in the war of onr independence. I have said, that I shall not stop to discuss the constitutionality of this question, for that reason, and for a better; that there never was a Constitution under the sun, in which, by an unwise exercise of the powers of the Government, the people may not be driven to the extremity of resistance by force For it is not, perhaps, so much by the assumption of unlawful powers, as by the unwise or unwarantable use of those which are most legal, that Governments oppose their true end and object; for there is such a thing as tyranny as well as usurpation. If nnder a power to regulate trade, you prevent exportation: if, with the most approved spring lancets, you draw the last drop of blood from our veins; if, secundem artem, you draw the last shilling from our pockets, what are the checks of the Constitution, to us? A fig for the Constitution? When the scorpion's sting is probing us to the quick, shall we stop to chop logic? Shall we get some learned and cunning clerk to say, whether the power to do this, is to be found in the Constitution, and then, if he, from whatever motive, shall maintain the affirmative, like the animal whose fleece forms so material a portion of this bill," quietly lie down and be shorn!" JOHN RANDOLPH. [Extract from Speech, delivered in the House of Representatives, on the Tariff Bill, April 15th, 1824.g |