I regret, Mr. President, that one topic has, I think, unnecessarily been introduced into this, debate.  I allude to the charge brought against the manufacturing system, as favoring the growth of aristocracy.  If it were true, would gentlemen prefer supporting foreign accumulations of wealth by that description of industry, rather than in their own country?  But is it correct?  The joint-stock companies of the North, as I understand them, are nothing more than associations, sometimes of hundreds, by means of which the small earnings of many are brought into a common stock, and the associates, obtaining corporate privileges, are enabled to prosecute, under one superintending head, their business to better advantage.  Nothing can be more essentially democratic or better devised to counterpoise the influence of individual wealth.  In Kentucky, almost every manufactory known to me is in the hands of enterprising and self-made men, who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor.  Comparisons are odious, and but in defence would not be made by me.  But is there more tendency to aristocracy in a manufactory, supporting hundreds of freemen, or in a cotton plantation, with its not less numerous slaves, sustaining perhaps only two white families—­that of the master and the overseer?

I pass, with pleasure, from this disagreeable topic, to two general propositions which cover the entire ground of debate.  The first is, that, under the operation of the American system, the objects which it protects and fosters are brought to the consumer at cheaper prices than they commanded prior to its introduction, or, than they would command if it did not exist.  If that be true, ought not the country to be contented and satisfied with the system, unless the second proposition, which I mean presently also to consider, is unfounded?  And that is, that the tendency of the system is to sustain, and that it has upheld, the prices of all our agricultural and other produce, including cotton.

And is the fact not indisputable that all essential objects of consumption affected by the tariff are cheaper and better since the act of 1824 than they were for several years prior to that law?  I appeal for its truth to common observation, and to all practical men.  I appeal to the farmer of the country whether he does not purchase on better terms his iron, salt, brown sugar, cotton goods, and woollens, for his laboring people?  And I ask the cotton-planter if he has not been better and more cheaply supplied with his cotton-bagging?  In regard to this latter article, the gentleman from South Carolina was mistaken in supposing that I complained that, under the existing duty, the Kentucky manufacturer could not compete with the Scotch.  The Kentuckian furnishes a more substantial and a cheaper article, and at a more uniform and regular price.  But it was the frauds, the violations of law, of which I did complain; not smuggling, in the common sense of that practice, which has something bold, daring, and enterprising in it, but mean, barefaced cheating, by fraudulent invoices and false denominations.