countries? that no Dred Scott decision was yet cooked up, when the right of petition was curtailed, when attempts were made to arrest the discussion of the slavery question all over the Union, and when the trial by jury, and the writ of habeas corpus were overridden by the Fugitive Slave Law? And even lately, when the slave power, with one gigantic grasp, attempted to seize the whole of our national domain, what else was and is your new constitutional doctrine but an ill-disguised attempt to clothe a long-cherished design with the color of law?
Read your history with an impartial eye, and you will find that the construction of the Constitution always shaped itself according to the prevailing moral impulses, or the predominance of material over political interests. The logic of our minds is but too apt to follow in the track of our sympathies and aspirations. It was when the South had control of the Government that acts were passed for the raising of duties on imports, for the creation of a national bank, and in aid of the American shipping interest. It was under the lead of the South that the systems of internal improvements, and of the protection of home industry, were inaugurated; it was the South, no less than the North, that insisted upon and exercised the power of Congress to exclude slavery from the Territories. So long as these measures seemed to agree with the predominant interest there seemed to be no question about their constitutionality. Even Mr. Calhoun himself said, in one of his most celebrated speeches, delivered in the session of 1815-’16: “That it was the duty of the Government, as a means of defense, to encourage the domestic industry of the country.” But as soon as it was found out that this policy redounded more to the benefit of free labor than that of the unenterprising South, then the same men who had inaugurated it worked its overthrow, on the plea that it was at war with the
