Now allow me a few words upon the tariff.  The tariff of 1816 was distinctly a South Carolina measure.  Look at the votes, and you will see it.  It was a tariff for the benefit of South Carolina interests, and carried through Congress by South Carolina votes and South Carolina influence.  Even the minimum, Sir, the so-much-reproached, the abominable minimum, that subject of angry indignation and wrathful rhetoric, is of Southern origin, and has a South Carolina parentage.

Sir, the contest on that occasion was chiefly between the cotton-growers at home, and the importers of cotton fabrics from India.  These India fabrics were made from the cotton of that country.  The people of this country were using cotton fabrics not made of American cotton, and, so far, they were diminishing the demand for such cotton.  The importation of India cottons was then very large, and this bill was designed to put an end to it, and, with the help of the minimum, it did put an end to it.  The cotton manufactures of the North were then in their infancy.  They had some friends in Congress, but, if I recollect, the majority of Massachusetts members and of New England members were against this cotton tariff of 1816.  I remember well, that the main debate was between the importers of India cottons, in the North, and the cotton-growers of the South.  The gentleman cannot deny the truth of this, or any part of it.  Boston opposed this tariff, and Salem opposed it, warmly and vigorously.  But the honorable member supported it, and the law passed.  And now be it always remembered, Sir, that that act passed on the professed ground of protection; that it had in it the minimum principle, and that the honorable member, and other leading gentlemen from his own State, supported it, voted for it, and carried it through Congress.

And now, Sir, we come to the doctrine of internal improvement, that other usurpation, that other oppression, which has come so near to justifying violent disruption of the government, and scattering the fragments of the Union to the four winds.  Have the gentleman’s State-rights opinions always kept him aloof from such unhallowed infringements of the Constitution?  He says he always differed with me on constitutional questions.  How was it in this most important particular?  Has he here stood on the ramparts, brandishing his glittering sword against assailants, and holding out a banner of defiance?  Sir, it is an indisputable truth, that he is himself the man, the ipse that first brought forward in Congress a scheme of general internal improvement, at the expense and under the authority of this government.  He, Sir, is the very man, the ipsissimus ipse, who considerately, and on a settled system, began these unconstitutional measures, if they be unconstitutional.  And now for the proof.