ted
him as "neither a statesman nor a patriot; without talents; as a mere
professor of rhetoric, capable of making a corrupt bargain for the sake
of power, and of condescending to intrigue for the attainment of place
and office." To hear the leaders of such a party now extolling him for
integrity, diligence, and intelligence, upon whose continuance in office
the hopes of the country and the continuance of the Union might depend,
was a change in opinions and language which might well be attributed to
the awakening of conscience to a sense of justice, and a desire for
reparation of wrong, were it not that leaders of factions have never any
other criterion of truth, or rule in the use of language, than
adaptation to selfish and party purposes.

Equally uninfluenced by adulation and undeterred by abuse, on the 23d of
May, 1832, as chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, by order of a
majority, Mr. Adams reported a bill, which, in presenting it, he
declared was not coincident with the views of that majority, and that
for parts he alone was responsible. After lauding the anticipated
extinction of the public debt, he proceeded to show, by a laborious
research into its history, that such extinction had always been
contemplated, and that the policy of the government, from the earliest
period of its existence, had concurred in the wisdom of this application
of the revenue. He proceeded to expose and deprecate that Southern
policy, which seized on this occasion "to reduce the revenues of the
Union to the lowest point absolutely necessary to defray the ordinary
charges and indispensable expenditures of the government;" a system
which, by inevitable consequence and by avowed design, "left our shores
to take care of themselves, our navy to perish by dry rot upon the
stocks, our manufactures to wither under the blast of foreign
competition;" and he urged, in opposition to these destructive
doctrines, the duty of levying revenue enough for "common defence," and
also to "protect manufactures," and supported his argument by a great
array of facts; severely animadverting upon those politicians who
glorified themselves on the prosperous state of the country, and yet
labored to break down that "system of protection for domestic
manufactures by which this prosperity had been chiefly produced." The
duty of "defensive preparation and internal improvements" he maintained
to be unquestionable, obligations resulting from the language and spiri