He declared that:
"It (the encouragement of manufactures) produced a system strictly
American, as much so as agriculture, in which it had the decided
advantage of commerce and navigation. The country will from this derive
much advantage. Again it is calculated to bind together more closely
our wide-spread Republic. It will greatly increase our mutual
dependence and intercourse, and will, as a necessary consequence, excite
an increased attention to internal improvements--a subject every way so
intimately connected with the ultimate attainment of national strength
and the perfection of our political institutions."
He regarded the fact that it would make the parts adhere more closely;
that it would form a new and most powerful cement far outweighing any
political objections that might be urged against the system. In his
opinion "the liberty and the union of the country were inseparably
united; that as the destruction of the latter would most certainly
involve the former, so its maintenance will with equal certainty
preserve it;" and he closed with an impressive warning to the Nation of
a "new and terrible danger" which threatened it, to wit: "disunion."
Nobly as he stood up then--during the last term of his service in the
House of Representatives--for the great principles of, the American
System of Protection to manufactures, for the perpetuity of the Union,
and for the increase of "National strength," it seems like the very
irony of fate that a few years later should find him battling against
Protection as "unconstitutional," upholding Nullification as a "reserved
right" of his State, and championing at the risk of his neck that very
"danger" to the "liberties" and life of his Country against which his
prophetic words had already given solemn warning.
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