te was not only "art and part" in this
measure, but the _causa causans_. Without her aid, this seminal
principle of mischief, this root of Upas, could not have been planted. I
have already said, and it is true, that this act proceeded on the ground
of protection. It interfered directly with existing interests of great
value and amount. It cut up the Calcutta cotton trade by the roots; but
it passed, nevertheless, and it passed on the principle of protecting
manufactures, on the principle against free trade, on the principle
opposed to that _which lets us alone_.

Such, Mr. President, were the opinions of important and leading
gentlemen from South Carolina, on the subject of internal improvement,
in 1816. I went out of Congress the next year, and, returning again in
1823, thought I found South Carolina where I had left her. I really
supposed that all things remained as they were, and that the South
Carolina doctrine of internal improvements would be defended by the same
eloquent voices, and the same strong arms, as formerly. In the lapse of
these six years, it is true, political associations had assumed a new
aspect and new divisions. A strong party had arisen in the South hostile
to the doctrine of internal improvements. Anti-consolidation was the
flag under which this party fought; and its supporters inveighed against
internal improvements, much after the manner in which the honorable
gentleman has now inveighed against them, as part and parcel of the
system of consolidation. Whether this party arose in South Carolina
itself, or in the neighborhood, is more than I know. I think the latter.
However that may have been, there were those found in South Carolina
ready to make war upon it, and who did make intrepid war upon it. Names
being regarded as things in such controversies, they bestowed on the
anti-improvement gentlemen the appellation of Radicals. Yes, Sir, the
appellation of Radicals, as a term of distinction applicable and applied
to those who denied the liberal doctrines of internal improvement,
originated, according to the best of my recollection, somewhere between
North Carolina and Georgia. Well, Sir, these mischievous Radicals were
to be put down, and the strong arm of South Carolina was stretched out
to put them down. About this time I returned to Congress. The battle
with the Radicals had been fought, and our South Carolina champions of
the doctrines of internal improvement had nobly maintained their ground,