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"By Col. Preston. The crisis -- we are ready for it -- our rulers have nor redressed our grievances -- and we will redress them ourselves." "By J.J. Chappell. If our brethren of the North and West continue deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity, and persist in tyrannizing over the south, we shall be obliged to acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation from them; and the nhold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, 'ENEMIES IN WAR, IN PEACE, FRIENDS.'" "By W.M. Myers. The Honourable Thomas H. Benton -- a thorough-bred Free Trade Brag player -- he has beaten Clay with the 'little end of nothing sharpened.'" "By H. Hutchinson. South Carolina-- May action be her motto, and Nullification the means to restore our beloved Constitution." "By W. F. Desaussure. The cause of insulted justice, of violated right, and a broken covenant. Let us look to ourselves for redress, and God will defend the right." "J. W. Clark, not being present, sent the following sentiment:- Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong. 'If God be for us, who can be against us?" "By T. Bynum. Let South Carolina do her duty -- in her hands is the destiny of free government. Why, then should she faulter? IF power attempt to crush her -- ' What are fifty- what a thousand slaves, match to the sinew of a single arme strike for liberty?" *[footnote] *See National Intelligencer, May 1, 1832. ----------------------- "They cry peace -- peace -- and there is no peace." -------- Disaffection and an insurrectionary spirit are rapidly spreading to the south. Defiance is publickly hurled at the government. Open resistance of law is proclaimed in the gazettes-- in the governor's speeches -- in public toasts - in meetings of congregated hundreds, and received with applause, in almost all parts of the state of South Carolina. Secession from the Union is confidently announced as the grand panacea for all the long catalogue of grievances fancifully depictured by the heated imaginations of the disaffected. In the present alarming crisis of the affairs of our country, it cannot be improper, or untimely, to cast a retrospective eye on our past career, in order to ascertain how so great a change has taken place in the public mind to the south, and by what steps our eyes and our ears have become accustomed to reiterated threats of resistance of law, and secession from the Union. From the commencement of the government, a large portion of the agriculturist and of the mercantile interest, has been opposed to the protection of manufactures, notwithstanding both agriculture and commerce, particularly the latter, have enjoyed as ample protection as could be devised. There was a struggle as early as in the Congress of 1789, on some of the items of the tariff on manufactures; and while tea, coffee, sugar, salt, spices, and other articles which did not interfere with our industry, were taxed extravagantly high, 15, 20, 30 and some 40 per cent., nineteen-twentieths of all the manufactures imported, which blasted and withered the national industry, ere rated at only five per cent.,* [footnote: The whole amount of article subject to ad valorem duties in 1789, embracing the great mass of manufactures, was $7,969,731, of which $7,136,578 paid but five percent!] in order to encourage their importation. So far as regards the manufacture of cottons or woolens -- that tariff might as well have contained an express prohibition against their establishment -- as every attempt to introduce them on a large scale, was a failure, and involved the parites in ruin. It was impossible for our citizens to compete with foreign capital, skill, and machinery, with a duty of five percent. The ware in Europe prevented us from feeling the pernicious effects of the destructive policy of placing our chief dependence on agriculture; otherwise we should, within a few yeas of the establishment of the new government, have approached to the condition of those nation in Europe, which rely principally on that branch of industry, and give the labour of six, eight, or ten agriculturist for that of one manufacturer. The restrictive system and the ware, by shutting out foreign supplies, and greatly abridging our commerce, afforded encouragement to our citizens to embark in manufactures, and to employ in that branch of industry the capital that had been driven from commerce. the undertakers were subject to great diffik |
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