In this exposition of the evils which would spring from disunion, we have spoken strongly, but, we trust, calmly. There is no need of exaggeration. It seems to us, that the imagination cannot easily exceed the truth. We do dread separation as the greatest of political evils, with the single exception of slavery. Undoubtedly, a particular State may and ought to break the bond, if that bond is to be turned into a yoke of oppression. But much, very much should be endured before we expose ourselves to the calamities of separation. We particularly recommend the views which we have taken to those among us, whose interest in the Union is weakened by a vague idea, that a large community cannot be as well governed as a small. The reverse of this maxim, as we have seen, is true of a federal republic. Under despotisms, indeed, a vast territory may increase the sufferings of the people, because the sovereign at the centre, however well-disposed, cannot spread himself to the extremities, and distant provinces are almost of necessity given up to the spoliations of irresponsible governors. But under the wise distribution of power in this country, we enjoy the watchful and minute protection of a local government, combined with the immense advantage of a wide-spread community. Greater means of prosperity a people cannot enjoy. Let us not be defrauded of them by selfish or malignant passions.

From the remarks now made, it will at once be understood, on what account chiefly we prize and would uphold our National Government. We prize it as our bond of union; as that which constitutes us one people; as preserving the different States from mutual jealousies and wars, and from separate alliances with foreign nations; as mitigating party spirit; in one word, as perpetuating our peace. So great, so inestimable is this good, that all other benefits and influences of the Federal Government seem to us as nothing. We would lay down this as the fundamental principle of its administration. The bearing of measures on our Union should be the chief aspect, under which they should be regarded by Congress. Taking this position, we are naturally led to some great maxims by which, as we conceive, our public affairs should be guided, and we now proceed to develope these, as well as to point out other means for securing our confederation.

In the first place, it seems to be important, that the administration of our government should be marked by the greatest possible simplicity. We hold this to be no unimportant means of perpetuating our Union. Laws and measures should be intelligible, founded on plain principles, and such as common minds may comprehend. This indeed is a maxim to be applied to republican governments universally. The essential idea of a republic is, that the sovereignty is in the people. In choosing representatives they do not devolve the supreme power on others. By the frequency of elections, they are called to pass judgment on their representatives. It is essential to this mode of government, that through a free press, all public measures should be brought before the tribunal of the people. Of course, a refined and subtle policy, or a complicated legislation, which cannot be understood but by laborious research and reasoning, is hostile to the genius of republican institutions. Laws

should be plain and few, intended to meet obvious wants, and such as are clearly required by the great interests of the community. For ourselves, we are satisfied that all governments without exception can adopt no safer rule, than the simplicity which we have now recommended. The crying sin of all governments is, that they intermiddle injuriously with human affairs, and obstruct the processes of nature by excessive regulation. To us, society is such a complicated concern, its interests are affected by so many and such subtle causes, there are so many secret springs at work in its bosom, and such uncertainty hangs over the distant issues of human arrangements, that we are astonished and shocked at the temerity of legislators in interposing their contrivances and control, except where events and experience shed a clear light. Above all, in a country like our own, where public measures are to be judged by millions of people, scattered over a vast territory, and most of whom are engaged in laborious occupations, we know not a plainer principle, than that the domestic and foreign policy of government should be perspicuous and founded on obvious reasons, so that plain cases may in the main, if not always, be offered to popular decision. Measures, which demand profound thought for their justification, about which intelligent and honest men differ, and the usefulness of which cannot be made out to the common mind, are unfit for a republic. If in this way important national advantages should be sometimes lost, we ought to submit to the evil as inseparable from our institutions, and should comfort ourselves with thinking, that Providence never bestows an unmixed good, that the best form of government has its inconveniences, and that a people, possessing freedom, can afford to part with many means of immediate wealth. We have no fear, however, that a people will ever suffer by a rigid application of our rule. Legislators cannot feel too deeply the delicacy of their work, and their great ignorance of the complicated structure and of the multiplied and secret relations of the social state; and they ought not to hasten, nay, more, they ought to distrust a policy, to the justice and wisdom of which the suffrage of public opinion cannot be decidedly and intelligently secured. In our republic, the aim of Congress should be to stamp its legislation with all possible simplicity, and to abstain from measures, which, by their complication, obscurity, and uncertainty, must distract the public mind, and throw it into agitation and angry controversy. Let it be their aim to cast among the people as few brands of discord as possible; and for this end, let the spirit of adventurous theory be dismissed, and the spirit of modesty, caution, and prudent simplicity preside over legisla In these remarks we have not forgotten that there are exigencies, in which government is compelled to determine its course without delay, amidst great hazards, and in a stormy, distracted state of the public mind. But these are exceptions to the ordinary course of human affairs, and to these, the principle which we have advanced, is not to be applied.

tion.

We here proceed to another principle, still more important to the preservation of the Union. The General Government should correspond to its name; that is, should be general, or universal, in its spirit and operations. It should be characterised by nothing so strikingly

as by impartiality, by the absence of sectional feeling, by a solicitude to distribute equally the public burdens, and to extend equal benefits to all members of the confederation. On this principle the Union chiefly depends. In a free community the strongest of all feelings is a jealousy of rights, and states cannot be long held together, if it shall be thought that the power given for the general weal, is, through intrigue and selfish combinations, perverted to build up a portion of the confederacy at the expense of the rest. No stronger argument can be urged against a public measure, than that it has the appearance of a partial or unequal bearing on the country, or seems to indicate a disposition in the majority to sacrifice the common good to factious or sectional views. To guard against the jealousies of the States, should be the most anxious desire of our national legislators, and for this purpose they should aim to restrict themselves to general objects in which all may find a benefit, to refrain from touching narrow or local interests, especially those between which a rivalry subsists, to proportion the pressure of taxation according to the most rigorous justice, to watch equally over the rights of all, and to exact no sacrifices but such as the common good plainly demands.

A weighty argument for limiting government to the simple and general legislation which we have now recommended, though not intimately connected with our main subject, deserves a brief notice. It is found in the great and growing extent of the country. The attention of Congress is already distracted and overwhelmed by the multiplicity of affairs, and every session it is more and more in danger of neglecting its proper objects and doing nothing well. We fear that the most pressing business is the most frequently postponed. We refer to the claims of individuals on the government; and we call these the most pressing concerns, because the man who has been wronged by an unanticipated operation of the laws or of any public measures, has a right to immediate redress, and because delay of justice may be his ruin. Already we hear angry complaint and derision of the inefficiency of Congress, and the evil will increase, until that body shall select from a bewildering crowd of applications, its appropriate objects, and shall confine itself to a legislation demanded by the general voice, and by the obvious wants of the community.

The principles of legislation now laid down, seem to us to have an important bearing on two great questions, which have already agitated the country, and which, we fear, bode no good to the Union. We refer to the restrictive system and to internal improvement. The first, which proposes to protect certain branches of domestic industry, seems to us singularly wanting in that simplicity and impartiality, which, as we have said, should characterise our legislation. It cannot be understood by the mass of the people, and it will certainly divide them. In the first place, the restrictive system involves a Constitutional difficulty. We of this region, indeed, generally concede to Congress the right of limiting trade in general, or of annihilating particular branches of it, for the encouragement of domestic industry; but the argument for a narrower construction of the Constitution is certainly specious, and certainly strong enough to give to those on whom a tariff

may press heavily, the consciousness of being wronged. In the next place, the general question of the expediency of restriction must be allowed by its advocates to be a difficult one. The growing light of the age certainly seems to oppose it, and the statements and reasonings by which it is defended, even if founded in truth, are yet so intricate and so open to objection, that vast numbers even of the enlightened cannot be satisfied of their validity. But supposing restriction to be admitted, the question as to its extent, as to the kinds of industry which shall be protected, as to the branches of trade which shall be sacrificed, this question is the most perplexing which can be offered to popular discussion, and cannot fail to awaken cupidity, jealousy, and hatred. From the nature of the case, the protection must be unequally extended, nor can any wisdom balance the losses to which different States will be exposed. A restrictive tariff is necessarily a source of discord. To some portions of the country it must be an evil, nor will they suffer patiently. Disadvantages imposed by nature, communities will bear, but not those which are brought on them by legislation. We have indeed various objections to the whole system of protection. We believe it to be deceptive throughout. We also oppose it, on the ground that our country in adopting it, abandons its true and honourable position. To this country, above all others, belongs, as its primary duty and interest, the support of liberal principles. It has nothing in its institutions congenial with the maxims of barbarous ages, with the narrow, monopolising, restrictive legislation of antiquated despotisms. Freedom, in all its forms, is our life, strength, prosperity; and every system at war with it, however speciously maintained, is a contradiction to our characters, and, wanting harmony with our spirit, must take something, however silently, from the energy of the institutions which hold us together. As citizens of the world, we grieve that this country should help to prolong prejudices, which even monarchy is outgrowing; should, in imitation of meddling despotisms, undertake to direct the industry and capital of the citizen, and especially should lose sight of that sublime object of philanthropy, the promotion of free unrestricted commerce through the world. As patriots, we grieve that a precedent has been afforded for a kind of legislation, which, if persisted in, will almost certainly loosen, and may rupture, the Union. The principal excellence of the late tariff is, that it is so constructed as to please no one, that even its friends pronounce it an abomination; for by offending and injuring all, it excites less animosity in the principal sufferers. Tariffs never will be impartial. They will always, in a greater or less degree, be the results of selfish combinations of private and public men, through which a majority will be secured to particular interests; and such is the blindness of avarice, that to grasp a shortlived partial good, the infinite blessings of union will be hazarded, and may be thrown away

If we may be allowed a short digression, we would say, that we have no partiality to tariffs of any kind, not even to those which are laid on imports for the purpose of raising revenue. We suppose that they are necessary at present, especially where they have become the habit of the people, and we are not insensible to the facility they afford for

collecting the revenue. But we should rejoice, if by some great improvement in finance, every custom house should be shut from Maine to Louisiana. The interests of human nature require that every fetter should be broken from the intercourse of nations, that the most distant countries should exchange all their products, whether of manual or intellectual labour, as freely as the members of the same community. An unrestricted commerce we regard as the most important means of diffusing through the world, knowledge, arts, comforts, civilization, religion, and liberty; and to this great cause we would have our country devoted. We will add, that we attach no importance to what is deemed the chief benefit of tariffs, that they save the necessity of direct taxation, and draw from a people a large revenue without their knowledge. In the first place, we say, that a free people ought to know what they pay for freedom, and to pay it joyfully, and that they should as truly scorn to be cheated into the support of their government, as into the support of their children. In the next place, a large revenue is no blessing. An overflowing treasury will always be corrupting to the governors and the governed. A revenue, rigorously proportioned to the wants of a people, is as much as can be trusted safely to men in power. The only valid argument against substituting direct for indirect taxation, is the difficulty of ascertaining with precision the property of the citizen. Happy would it be for us, could tariffs be done away, for with them would be abolished fruitful causes of national jealousies, of war, of perjury, of smuggling, of innumerable frauds and crimes, and of harassing restraint on that commerce which should be free as the winds.

We consider many of the remarks made in reference to tariffs as applicable to internal improvements. These also involve a Constitutional question of no small difficulty; and it seems impossible that they should be prosecuted with any degree of impartiality. We will not

that an extensive system of internal improvements, comprehending and connecting the whole country, and promising great, manifest, and universal good, may not be framed. But let Congress propose narrow, local improvements, and we need no prophet to foretell the endless and ever-multiplying intrigues, the selfish combinations, the jealousies, and discontents which will follow by a necessity as sure as the laws of nature. An irresistible temptation will be offered to unprincipled bargains between states and legislators, and the treasury, sending out partial streams, will become a fountain of bitterness and discord.

Let it not be said, that most of the proposed improvements are designed to promote intercourse, and that thus they favour what we conceive to be the great end of government, by binding us together. We answer, that the General Government already promotes intercourse incomparably more than all other causes combined, and we are unwilling to put to hazard this actual beneficent influence by striving to extend it. Government already does more for this object than all the canals, railroads, and other internal improvements, which human ingenuity can devise, and this it does by that negative influence, which, as we have often said, is its chief function. This it does by making us one