The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1

Gentlemen, the President of the United States was, as it seemed to me, at this eventful crisis, true to his duty. He comprehended and understood the case, and met it as it was proper to meet it. While I am as willing as others to admit that the President has, on other occasions, rendered important services to the country, and especially on that occasion which has given him so much military renown, I yet think the ability and decision with which he rejected the disorganizing doctrines of nullification create a claim, than which he has none higher, to the gratitude of the country and the respect of posterity. The appearance of the proclamation of the 10th of December inspired me, I confess, with new hopes for the duration of the republic. I regarded it as just, patriotic, able, and imperiously demanded by the condition of the country. I would not be understood to speak of particular clauses and phrases in the proclamation; but I regard its great and leading doctrines as the true and only true doctrines of the Constitution. They constitute the sole ground on which dismemberment can be resisted. Nothing else, in my opinion, can hold us together. While these opinions are maintained, the Union will last; when they shall be generally rejected and abandoned, that Union will be at the mercy of a temporary majority in any one of the States.

I speak, Gentlemen, on this subject, without reserve. I have not intended heretofore, and elsewhere, and do not now intend here, to stint my commendation of the conduct of the President in regard to the proclamation and the subsequent measures. I have differed with the President, as all know, who know any thing of so humble an individual as myself, on many questions of great general interest and importance. I differ with him in respect to the constitutional power of internal improvements; I differ with him in respect to the rechartering of the Bank, and I dissent, especially, from the grounds and reasons on which he refused his assent to the bill passed by Congress for that purpose. I differ with him, also, probably, in the degree of protection which ought to be afforded to our agriculture and manufactures, and in the manner in which it may be proper to dispose of the public lands. But all these differences afforded, in my judgment, not the slightest reason for opposing him in a measure of paramount importance, and at a moment of great public exigency. I sought to take counsel of nothing but patriotism, 294 to feel no impulse but that of duty, and to yield not a lame and hesitating, but a vigorous and cordial, support to measures which, in my conscience, I believed essential to the preservation of the Constitution. It is true, doubtless, that if myself and others had surrendered ourselves to a spirit of opposition, we might have embarrassed, and probably defeated, the measures of the administration. But in so doing, we should, in my opinion, have been false to our own characters, false to our duty, and false to our country. It gives me the highest satisfaction to know, that, in regard to this subject, the general voice of the country does not disapprove my conduct.

I ought to add, Gentlemen, that, in whatever I may have done or attempted in this respect, I only share a common merit. A vast majority of both houses of Congress cordially concurred in the measures. Your own great State was seen in her just position on that occasion, and your own immediate representatives were found among the most zealous and efficient friends of the Union.

Gentlemen, I hope that the result of that experiment may prove salutary in its consequences to our government, and to the interests of the community. I hope that the signal and decisive manifestation of public opinion, which has, for the time at least, put down the despotism of nullification, may produce permanent good effects. I know full well that popular topics may be urged against the proclamation. I know it may be said, in regard to the laws of the last session, that, if such laws are to be maintained, Congress may pass what laws they please, and enforce them. But may it not be said, on the other side, that, if a State may nullify one law, she may nullify any other law also, and, therefore, that the principle strikes at the whole power of Congress? And when it is said, that, if the power of State interposition be denied, Congress may pass and enforce what laws it pleases, is it meant to be contended or insisted, that the Constitution has placed Congress under the guardianship and control of the State legislatures? Those who argue against the power of Congress, from the possibility of its abuse, entirely forget that, if the power of State interposition be allowed, that power may be abused also. What is more material, they forget the will of the people, as they have plainly expressed it in the Constitution. They forget that the people have 295 chosen to give Congress a power of legislation, independent of State control. They forget that the Confederation has ceased, and that a Constitution, a government, has taken its place. They forget that this government is a popular government, that members of Congress are but agents and servants of the people, chosen for short periods, periodically removable by the people, as much subservient, as much dependent, as willingly obedient, as any other of their agents and servants. This dependence on the people is the security that they will not act wrong. This is the security which the people themselves have chosen to rely on, in addition to the guards contained in the Constitution itself.

I am quite aware, Gentlemen, that it is easy for those who oppose measures deemed necessary for the execution of the laws, to raise the cry of consolidation. It is easy to make charges, and to bring general accusations. It is easy to call names. For one, I repel all such imputations. I am no consolidationist. I disclaim the character altogether, and, instead of repeating this general and vague charge, I will be obliged to any one to show how the proclamation, or the late law of Congress, or, indeed, any measure to which I ever gave my support, tends, in the slightest degree, to consolidation. By consolidation is understood a grasping at power, on behalf of the general government, not constitutionally conferred. But the proclamation asserted no new power. It only asserted the right in the government to carry into effect, in the form of law, power which it had exercised for forty years. I should oppose any grasping at new powers by Congress, as zealously as the most zealous. I wish to preserve the Constitution as it is, without addition, and without diminution, by one jot or tittle. For the same reason that I would not grasp at powers not given, I would not surrender nor abandon powers which are given. Those who have placed me in a public station placed me there, not to alter the Constitution, but to administer it. The power of change the people have retained to themselves. They can alter, they can modify, they can change the Constitution entirely, if they see fit. They can tread it under foot, and make another, or make no other; but while it remains unaltered by the authority of the people, it is our power of attorney, our letter of credit, our credentials; and we are to follow it, and obey its injunctions, and maintain its just powers, to the best of our abilities. 296 I repeat, that, for one, I seek to preserve to the Constitution those precise powers with which the people have clothed it. While no encroachment is to be made on the reserved rights of the people or of the States, while nothing is to be usurped, it is equally clear that we are not at liberty to surrender, either in fact or form, any power or principle which the Constitution does actually contain.

And what is the ground for this cry of consolidation? I maintain that the measures recommended by the President, and adopted by Congress, were measures of self-defence. Is it consolidation to execute laws? Is it consolidation to resist the force that is threatening to upturn our government? Is it consolidation to protect officers, in the discharge of their duty, from courts and juries previously sworn to decide against them?

Gentlemen, I take occasion to remark, that, after much reflection upon the subject, and after all that has been said about the encroachment of the general government upon the rights of the States, I know of no one power, exercised by the general government, which was not, when that instrument was adopted, admitted by the immediate friends and foes of the Constitution to have been conferred upon it by the people. I know of no one power, now claimed or exercised, which every body did not agree, in 1789, was conferred on the general government. On the contrary, there are several powers, and those, too, among the most important for the interests of the people, which were then universally allowed to be conferred on Congress by the Constitution of the United States, and which are now ingeniously doubted, or clamorously denied.

Gentlemen, upon this point I shall detain you with no further remarks. It does, however, give me the most sincere pleasure to say, that, in a long visit through the State west of you, and the great State north of you, as well as in a tour of some days’ duration in the respectable State to which you belong, I find but one sentiment in regard to the conduct of the government upon this subject. I know that those who have seen fit to intrust to me, in part, their interests in Congress, approve of the measures recommended by the President. We see that he has taken occasion, during the recess of Congress, to visit that part of the country; and we know how he has been received. Nowhere have hands been extended with more sincerity of 297 friendship; and for one, Gentlemen, I take occasion to say, that, having heard of his return to the seat of government with health rather debilitated, it is among my most earnest prayers that Providence may spare his life, and that he may go through his administration and come out of it with as much success and glory as any of his predecessors.

Your worthy chief magistrate has been kind enough, Gentlemen, to express sentiments favorable to myself, as a friend of domestic industry. Domestic industry! How much of national power and opulence, how much of individual comfort and respectability, that phrase implies! And with what force does it strike us, as we stand here, at the confluence of the two rivers whose united currents constitute the Ohio, and in the midst of one of the most flourishing and distinguished manufacturing cities in the Union! Many thousand miles of inland navigation, running through a new and rapidly-improving country, stretch away below us. Internal communications, completed or in progress, connect the city with the Atlantic and the Lakes. A hundred steam-engines are in daily operation, and nature has supplied the fuel which feeds their incessant flames on the spot itself, in exhaustless abundance. Standing here, Gentlemen, in the midst of such a population, and with such a scene around us, how great is the import of these words, “domestic industry”!

Next to the preservation of the government itself, there can hardly be a more vital question, to such a community as this, than that which regards their own employments, and the preservation of that policy which the government has adopted and cherished for the encouragement and protection of those employments. This is not, in a society like this, a matter which affects the interest of a particular class, but one which affects the interest of all classes. It runs through the whole chain of human occupation and employment, and touches the means of living and the comfort of all.

Gentlemen, those of you who may have turned your attention to the subject know, that, in the quarter of the country with which I am more immediately connected, the people were not early or eager to urge the government to carry the protective policy to the height which it has reached. Candor obliges me to remind you, that, when the act of 1824 was passed, 298 neither he who now addresses you, nor those with whom he usually acted on such subjects, were ready or willing to take the step which that act proposed. They doubted its expediency. It passed, however, by the great and overwhelming influence of the central States, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. New England acquiesced in it. She conformed to it, as the settled policy of the country, and gave to her capital and her labor a corresponding direction. She has now become vitally interested in the preservation of the system. Her prosperity is identified, not perhaps with any particular degree of protection, but with the preservation of the principle; and she is not likely to consent to yield the principle, under any circumstances whatever. And who would dare to yield it? Who, standing here, and looking round on this community and its interests, would be bold enough to touch the spring which moves so much industry and produces so much happiness? Who would shut up the mouths of these vast coal-pits? Who would stay the cargoes of manufactured goods, now floating down a river, one of the noblest in the world, and stretching through territories almost boundless in extent and unequalled in fertility? Who would quench the fires of so many steam-engines, or check the operations of so much well-employed labor? Gentlemen, I cannot conceive how any subversion of that policy which has hitherto been pursued can take place, without great public embarrassment and great private distress.

I have said, that I am in favor of protecting American manual labor; and after the best reflection I can give the subject, and from the lights which I can derive from the experience of ourselves and others, I have come to the conclusion that such protection is just and proper; and that to leave American labor to sustain a competition with that of the over-peopled countries of Europe would lead to a state of things to which the people could never submit. This is the great reason why I am for maintaining what has been established. I see at home, I see here, I see wherever I go, that the stimulus which has excited the existing activity, and is producing the existing prosperity, of the country, is nothing else than the stimulus held out to labor by compensating prices. I think this effect is visible everywhere, from Penobscot to New Orleans, and manifest in the condition and circumstances of the great body of the people; for nine tenths of 299 the whole people belong to the laborious, industrious, and productive classes; and on these classes the stimulus acts. We perceive that the price of labor is high, and we know that the means of living are low; and these two truths speak volumes in favor of the general prosperity of the country. I am aware, as has been said already, that this high price of labor results partly from the favorable condition of the country. Labor was high, comparatively speaking, before the act of 1824 passed; but that fact affords no reason, in my judgment, for endangering its security and sacrificing its hopes, by overthrowing what has since been established for its protection.

Let us look, Gentlemen, to the condition of other countries, and inquire a little into the causes, which, in some of them, produce poverty and distress, the lamentations of which reach our own shores. I see around me many whom I know to be emigrants from other countries. Why are they here? Why is the native of Ireland among us? Why has he abandoned scenes as dear to him as these hills and these rivers are to you? Is there any other cause than this, that the burden of taxation on the one hand, and the low reward of labor on the other, left him without the means of a comfortable subsistence, or the power of providing for those who were dependent upon him? Was it not on this account that he left his own land, and sought an asylum in a country of free laws, of comparative exemption from taxation, of boundless extent, and in which the means of living are cheap, and the prices of labor just and adequate? And do not these remarks apply, with more or less accuracy, to every other part of Europe? Is it not true, that sobriety, and industry, and good character, can do more for a man here than in any other part of the world? And is not this truth, which is so obvious that none can deny it, founded in this plain reason, that labor in this country earns a better reward than anywhere else, and so gives more comfort, more individual independence, and more elevation of character? Whatever else may benefit particular portions of society, whatever else may assist capital, whatever else may favor sharp-sighted commercial enterprise, professional skill, or extraordinary individual sagacity or good fortune, be assured, Gentlemen, that nothing can advance the mass of society in prosperity and happiness, nothing can uphold the substantial interest and steadily improve the general condition and 300 character of the whole, but this one thing, compensating rewards to labor. The fortunate situation of our country tends strongly, of itself, to produce this result; the government has adopted the policy of coöperating with this natural tendency of things; it has encouraged and fostered labor and industry, by a system of discriminating duties; and the result of these combined causes may be seen in the present circumstances of the country.

Gentlemen, there are important considerations of another kind connected with this subject. Our government is popular; popular in its foundation, and popular in its exercise. The actual character of the government can never be better than the general moral and intellectual character of the community. It would be the wildest of human imaginations, to expect a poor, vicious, and ignorant people to maintain a good popular government. Education and knowledge, which, as is obvious, can be generally attained by the people only where there are adequate rewards to labor and industry, and some share in the public interest, some stake in the community, would seem indispensably necessary in those who have the power of appointing all public agents, passing all laws, and even of making and unmaking constitutions at their pleasure. Hence the truth of the trite maxim, that knowledge and virtue are the only foundation of republics. But it is to be added, and to be always remembered, that there never was, and never can be, an intelligent and virtuous people who at the same time are a poor and idle people, badly employed and badly paid. Who would be safe in any community, where political power is in the hands of the many and property in the hands of the few? Indeed, such an unnatural state of things could nowhere long exist.

It certainly appears to me, Gentlemen, to be quite evident at this time, and in the present condition of the world, that it is necessary to protect the industry of this country against the pauper labor of England and other parts of Europe. An American citizen, who has children to maintain and children to educate, has an unequal chance against the pauper of England, whose children are not to be educated, and are probably already on the parish, and who himself is half fed and clothed by his own labor, and half from the poor-rates, and very badly fed and clothed after all. As I have already said, the condition of our country of itself, without the aid of government, does much 301 to favor American manual labor; and it is a question of policy and justice, at all times, what and how much government shall do in aid of natural advantages. In regard to some branches of industry, the natural advantages are less considerable than in regard to others; and those, therefore, more imperiously demand the regard of government. Such are the occupations, generally speaking, of the numerous classes of citizens in cities and large towns; the workers in leather, brass, tin, iron, &c.; and such, too, under most circumstances, are the employments connected with ship-building.

Our own experience has been a powerful, and ought to be a convincing and long-remembered, preacher on this point. From the close of the war of the Revolution, there came on a period of depression and distress, on the Atlantic coast, such as the people had hardly felt during the sharpest crisis of the war itself. Ship-owners, ship-builders, mechanics, artisans, all were destitute of employment, and some of them destitute of bread. British ships came freely, and British goods came plentifully; while to American ships and American products there was neither protection on the one side, nor the equivalent of reciprocal free trade on the other. The cheaper labor of England supplied the inhabitants of the Atlantic shores with every thing. Ready-made clothes, among the rest, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, were for sale in every city. All these things came free from any general system of imposts. Some of the States attempted to establish their own partial systems, but they failed. Voluntary association was resorted to, but that failed also. A memorable instance of this mode of attempting protection occurred in Boston. The ship-owners, seeing that British vessels came and went freely, while their own ships were rotting at the wharves, raised a committee to address the people, recommending to them, in the strongest manner, not to buy or use any articles imported in British ships. The chairman of this committee was no less distinguished a character than the immortal John Hancock. The committee performed its duty powerfully and eloquently. It set forth strong and persuasive reasons why the people should not buy or use British goods imported in British ships. The ship-owners and merchants having thus proceeded, the mechanics of Boston took up the subject also. They answered the merchants’ committee. They agreed 302 with them cordially, that British goods, imported in British vessels, ought not to be bought or consumed; but then they took the liberty of going a step farther, and of insisting that such goods ought not to be bought or consumed at all. (Great applause.) “For,” said they, “Mr. Hancock, what difference does it make to us, whether hats, shoes, boots, shirts, handkerchiefs, tin-ware, brass-ware, cutlery, and every other article, come in British ships or come in your ships; since, in whatever ships they come, they take away our means of living?”

Gentlemen, it is an historical truth, manifested in a thousand ways by the public proceedings and public meetings of the times, that the necessity of a general and uniform impost system, which, while it should provide revenue to pay the public debt, and foster the commerce of the country, should also encourage and sustain domestic manufactures, was the leading cause in producing the present national Constitution. No class of persons was more zealous for the new Constitution, than the handicraftsmen, artisans, and manufacturers. There were then, it is true, no large manufacturing establishments. There were no manufactories in the interior, for there were no inhabitants. Here was Fort Pitt,—it had a place on the map,—but here were no people, or only a very few. But in the cities and towns on the Atlantic, the full importance, indeed the absolute necessity, of a new form of government and a general system of imposts was deeply felt.

It so happened, Gentlemen, that at that time much was thought to depend on Massachusetts; several States had already agreed to the Constitution; if her convention adopted it, it was likely to go into operation. This gave to the proceedings of that convention an intense interest, and the country looked with trembling anxiety for the result. That result was for a long time doubtful. The convention was known to be almost equally divided; and down to the very day and hour of the final vote, no one could predict, with any certainty, which side would preponderate. It was under these circumstances, and at this crisis, that the tradesmen of the town of Boston, in January, 1788, assembled at the Green Dragon tavern, the place where the Whigs of the Revolution, in its early stages, had been accustomed to assemble. They resolved, that, in their opinion, if the Constitution should be adopted, “trade and navigation would 303 revive and increase, and employ and subsistence be afforded to many of their townsmen, then suffering for the want of the necessaries of life”; and that, on the other hand, should it be rejected, “the small remains of commerce yet left would be annihilated; the various trades and handicrafts dependent thereon decay; the poor be increased, and many worthy and skilful mechanics compelled to seek employ and subsistence in strange lands.” These resolutions were carried to the Boston delegates in the convention, and placed in the hands of Samuel Adams. That great and distinguished friend of American liberty, it was feared, might have doubts about the new Constitution. Naturally cautious and sagacious, it was apprehended he might fear the practicability, or the safety, of a general government. He received the resolutions from the hands of Paul Revere, a brass-founder by occupation, a man of sense and character, and of high public spirit, whom the mechanics of Boston ought never to forget. “How many mechanics,” said Mr. Adams, “were at the Green Dragon when these resolutions were passed?” “More, Sir,” was the reply, “than the Green Dragon could hold.” “And where were the rest, Mr. Revere?” “In the streets, Sir.” “And how many were in the streets?” “More, Sir, than there are stars in the sky.” This is an instance only, among many, to prove, what is indisputably true, that the tradesmen and mechanics of the country did look to the new Constitution for encouragement and protection in their respective occupations. Under these circumstances, it is not to be expected that they will abandon the principle, in its application to their own employments, any more than in its application to the commercial and shipping interests. They believe the power is in the Constitution; and doubtless they mean, so far as depends on them, to keep it there. Desirous of no extravagant measure of protection, desirous of oppressing or burdening nobody, seeking nothing as a substitute for honest industry and hard work, as a part of the American family, having the same interests as other parts, they will continue their attachment to the Union and the Constitution, and to all the great and leading interests of the country.