Let us be true in another respect.  This tariff has accomplished much, and is an honor to the men who passed it.  But in regard to protection it has only restored the country to the state in which it was before the compromise act, and from which it fell under the operation of that act.  It has repaired the consequences of that measure, and it has done no more.  I may speak of the compromise act.  My turn has come now.  No measure ever passed Congress during my connection with that body that caused me so much grief and mortification.  It was passed by a few friends joining the whole host of the enemy.  I have heard much of the motives of that act.  The personal motives of those that passed the act were, I doubt not, pure; and all public men are supposed to act from pure motives.  But if by motives are meant the objects proposed by the act itself, and expressed in it, then I say, if those be the motives alluded to, they are worse than the act itself.  The principle was bad, the measure was bad, the consequences were bad.  Every circumstance, as well as every line of the act itself, shows that the design was to impose upon legislation a restraint that the Constitution had not imposed; to insert in the Constitution a new prohibitory clause, providing that, after the year 1842, no revenue should be collected except according to an absurd horizontal system, and none exceeding twenty per cent.  It was then pressed through under the great emergency of the public necessities.  But I may now recur to what I then said, namely, that its principle was false and dangerous, and that, when its time came, it would rack and convulse our system.  I said we should not get rid of it without throes and spasms.  Has not this been as predicted?  We have felt the spasms and throes of this convulsion; but we have at last gone through them, and begin to breathe again.  It is something that that act is at last got rid of; and the present tariff is deserving in this, that it is specific and discriminating, that it holds to common sense, and rejects and discards the principles of the compromise act, I hope for ever.

Another great and principal object of the revolution of 1840 was a restoration of the currency.  Our troubles did not begin with want of money in the treasury, or under the sapping and mining operation of the compromise act.  They are of earlier date.  The trouble and distress of the country began with the currency in 1833, and broke out with new severity in 1837.  Other causes of difficulty have since arisen, but the first great shock was a shock on the currency; and from the effect of this the country is not yet relieved.  I hope the late act may yield competent revenue, and am sure it will do much for protection.  But until you provide a better currency, so that you may have a universal one, of equal and general value throughout the land, I am hard to be persuaded that we shall see the day of our former prosperity.  Currency, accredited currency, and easy and cheap internal exchanges,—­until these things be obtained, depend upon it, the country will find no adequate relief.