it was made to cure, in these vivid pictures of it. pictures of it. No man can understand the vocabulary of the Constitution until he has familiarized himself, in these writings, with the current vocabulary of the people, by whom and for whom it was composed. The defects of the old confederation; its utter insufficiency for our greatness and our glory; the evils which bore the people to the earth, and made their newly acquired independence a dreary and useless thing; the disordered condition of the currency; our exhausting system of trade; the action of conflicting and inadequate commercial regulations of the States; the excessive importations of foreign manufactures; the drain of specie; the stagnation of labor, oppressed and disheartened by a competition with all the pauper labor of all the world; the depression of agriculture, sympathizing with other labor by an eternal law; the need of a system of divided and diversified employments, which should leave no one over-crowded, should leave no man's faculties undeveloped and unexcited, which should give a market and a reward to all industry; the wants, sufferings, fears, wishes; the universal stimulation of mind and fermentation of opinions in which the Constitution had its birth - you find them all there, and you find them nowhere else.

Looking with some labor into a collection of part of these writings in the " American Museum," a work embodying the general spirit of the press from 1788 to 1787, I think I find conclusive evidence of this fact, to wit: that a confident and sagacious and salutary conviction came to be generally adopted; First. That one capital source of the evils which oppressed us was the importation of too many foreign manufactures, and the use of too few domestic manufactures; too much encouragement of the foreign laborer, and too little encouragement of our own; Secondly. That a new and more perfect union and a stronger government were required, among other ends, very much for the cure and prevention of this precise evil; and Thirdly. That, in order to effect this end, the new government must be clothed with this specific power of regulating trade, whereby it could check the import of foreign manufac tures, by duties and prohibitions, and thus bring to life and keep alive domestic manufactures, and with them the entire labor of America. If this is so, it will prove at once, first,

that this language retained the same signification in 1787 which it had borne in 1764; and, next, that it means in the Constitution just what it meant everywhere else, and was inserted there because it bore that meaning. Let me ask your attention, then, to some evidence and illustrations of the fact, to which I might add a thousand.

In the first volume of the collection I have referred to is an article on American manufactures. It is continued through three months of the "Museum," and was written in Maryland at some time after 1783, and before 1787. The proposition which the essayist maintains is, that manufactures ought immediately to be established in the United States. In support of this, he reasons forcibly and zealously, and with much maturity and breadth of view, considering the time when he wrote; presents a vivid exhibition of the uses of manufactures and of manufacturing industry; of the rank they hold in all civilized States; of the division of labor which they render practicable, and the influence of that division in stimulating all the faculties of men and nations, and in supplying to each faculty and each mind its favorite employment and adequate reward; and, above all, he urges the actual evils which were weighing the country down; its foreign debt; its ruinous consumption; its expensive tastes; its incomplete development of industry; its deficiency in the means of self-reliance and selfsupport and self-regulation, as a decisive argument for his purpose. He goes on then to inquire how manufactures may be introduced and sustained; and his scheme is, a government which should have power to regulate trade, and in the exercise of that power should, among other expedients, impose duties on imports of articles coming in competition with the domestic labor. "I am convinced," he says, (page 212,)" that to begin at this juncture the establishment of manufactures will be the only way to lay the foundation for the future glory, greatness, and independence of America." "Well, how, then," he asks, "shall we make the beginning?" "Free trade," he argues, "in our situation, adopting the sentiment of Montesquieu, 'must necessarily lead us to poverty.' "A State whose balance of trade is always to its disadvantage cannot grow rich." We must have regulated trade, then. "But, we are told by some," he proceeds, "that trade will regulate itself."

Hear how he combats this proposition, and what is the precise regulation of trade which he urges upon the statesmen

of America:

"If trade will regulate itself, why do the wisest and most prosperous governments make laws in favor and support of their trade? Why does the British Parliament employ so much time and pains in regulating their trade, so as to render its advantages particularly useful to their own nation? Why so preposterous as to abide by and enforce their boasted navigation act? But so far is trade from regulating itself, that it continually needs the help of the legislation of every country, as a nursing father. If we Americans do not choose to regulate it, it will regulate us, till we have not a farthing left in our land. Trade, like a helpless infant, requires parental care, and to be well looked after; for, says the same excellent author: A country that constantly exports fewer manufactures or commodities than it receives will soon find the balance sinking; it will receive less and less, till, falling into extreme poverty, it will receive nothing at all.' The truth is, trade regulates or corrects itself just as everything else does that is left to itself. The manner the late war, for instance, would have corrected itself, had we supinely sat still and folded our arms together, would have been such a correction as I hope no person who makes use of this flimsy argument would wish to have taken place; and unless we shortly regulate and correct the abuses of our trade by lopping off its useless branches and establishing manufactures, we shall be corrected perhaps even to our very destruction."

"The mechanics," he continues, "hope the legislature will afford them that protection they are entitled to; for, as the present baleful system of trade and scarcity of cash occasion numbers of them to want employment, though they are able and ready to furnish many articles which are at present imported, and as many of their branches are fast declining, and some are likely to become totally extinct, they conceive that duties ought to be laid on certain imported articles in such a manner as to place the American manufacturers on the same footing as the manufacturers of Europe, and enable them to procure bread and support for their families." And then, in further explanation, he adds, " An excessive duty might be only an encouragement to the smuggler; on the other hand, let them be only so high as to enable the manufacturer to procure a decent subsistence for his family."

Mark two things in this argument and these extracts: the advice to encourage domestic manufacture by duties on foreign manufacture, and the use of language which calls such an impost, for such an object, a regulation of trade.

I should never have done, Sir, if I attempted to read all the proofs which I find in these papers, that the importance of establishing American manufactures seems, even then, to have been generally apprehended; and that a powerful and an immediate impulse was expected to be given to them, in some

way, by the new Constitution. The concurrence of opinion upon that point is marvellous. It is still more marvellous, the maturity of the public judgment upon the nature and uses of manufacturing industry, and the very considerable extent to which that industry already had taken root, when you consider with what severity the austere and long dominion of England had pressed upon it; and how short and how unpropitious the time had been for the arts of peace to grow, after that dominion had passed away. But I must confine myself closely to selections which illustrate the meaning and objects of the constitutional phraseology. Let me, however, read a passage or two from a series of letters, by a North Carolinian, under the signature of Sylvius. I find them in the second volume of the "Museum," page 107, and they appeared in August, 1787. His cure, too, for the oppressive indebtment, depreciated currency, scarcity of money, exhausting importations, and, what he calls, luxurious appetites of the day, is the encouragement of American manufactures, and the substitution of a tax on imported manufactures for all other modes of taxation.

"The more I consider" (says he, page 108) "the progress of credit and the increase of wealth in foreign nations, the more fully I am convinced that paper-money must prove hurtful to this country; that we cannot be relieved from our debts except by promoting domestic manufactures; and that during the prevailing scarcity of money the burdens of the poor may be relieved by altering the mode of taxation."

Addressing himself to the second of these propositions, he adverts to the appalling enlargement of the foreign debt since the peace; to the fact that it has been contracted for clothing; clothing for the master; clothing for the slave; furniture; “saws, hammers, hoes, and axes, as if," says he, "the wolf had made war against our iron as well as our sheep; " Irish butter and beef, and British ale, porter, and cheese, “as if our country did not produce barley, hops, or black cattle;" hazle and oak sprouts under the name of "walking sticks; " luxuries of all denominations, swelling it in three years to six millions of dollars; and then exclaims,

"Let us turn our attention to manufactures, and the staple of our country will soon rise to its proper value, for we have already glutted every foreign market. By this expedient, instead of using fictitious paper, we shall soon obtain hard money sufficient; instead of toiling in the

field, and becoming poor, that we may enrich the manufacturers of other countries, we shall prosper by our own labor, and enrich our own citizens." "Every domestic manufacture is cheaper than a foreign one, for this plain reason: by the first, nothing is lost to the country-by the other, the whole value is lost; it is carried away, never to return. It is perfectly indifferent to this State or to the United States, what may be the price of domestic manufactures, because that price remains in the country.".

He proceeds then to recommend a substitution of an excise on foreign manufactures sold in the State, for other modes of taxation; and, although I do not find here an illustration of the meaning of the words which I am investigating, you will be struck with the confidence with which he presses the grand elementary suggestion of a tax on foreign labor for the encouragement of home labor.

"All wise governments" (such is his argument, page 124) "have thought it their duty, on special occasions, to offer bounties for the encouragement of domestic manufactures; but an excise on foreign goods must operate as a bounty." "I have said that an excise is more favorable to the poor than a land or poll tax. I will venture an additional sentiment: there never was a government in which an excise could be of so much use as in the United States of America. In all other countries, taxes are considered as grievances. In the United States, an excise on foreign goods would not be a grievance: like medicine to a sick man, it would give us strength; it would close that wasteful drain by which our honor and our wealth are consumed. What, though money was not wanted - though we did not owe a florin to any foreign nation - though we had no domestic debt- and though the expenses of civil government could be supported for many years without a tax, still it may be questioned whether an excise would not be desirable. It would certainly be the best expedient for promoting domestic manufactures; and the condition in which we now live, our general dependence on a foreign country for arms and clothing, is dishonorable - it is extremely dangerous."

"It is the duty of the statesman either to check or to promote the several streams of commerce by taxes or bounties, so as to render them profitable to the nation. Thus it happened in Massachusetts. A tax of twenty-five per cent. was lately imposed on nails, and the poor of Taunton were immediately returned to life and vigor."

"If any man has doubts concerning the effect of large taxes on foreign manufactures, he should turn his eyes to the Eastern States. The mechanic is generally the first who perceives the effects of a pernicious commerce; for the support of his family depends on his daily labor." "Hence it is that the merchant may be profited by a particular branch of commerce, and may promote it diligently, while his country is sinking into a deadly consumption."

You have heard the early and the mature good sense of North