e, was attempted to be converted
into the power of taxation. Were I to trace the analogy further, we
should find that the perversion of the taxing power, in the one case,
has given precisely the same control to the Northern section over the
industry of the Southern section of the Union, which the power to
regulate commerce gave to Great Britain over the industry of the
colonies in the other; and that the very articles in which the colonies
were permitted to have a free trade, and those in which the
mother-country had a monopoly, are almost identically the same as those
in which the Southern States are permitted to have a free trade by the
act of 1832, and in which the Northern States have, by the same act,
secured a monopoly. The only difference is in the means. In the former,
the colonies were permitted to have a free trade with all countries
south of Cape Finisterre, a cape in the northern part of Spain; while
north of that, the trade of the colonies was prohibited, except through
the mother-country, by means of her commercial regulations. If we
compare the products of the country north and south of Cape Finisterre,
we shall find them almost identical with the list of the protected and
unprotected articles contained in the list of last year. Nor does the
analogy terminate here. The very arguments resorted to at the
commencement of the American Revolution, and the measures adopted, and
the motives assigned to bring on that contest (to enforce the law), are
almost identically the same.

But to return from this digression to the consideration of the bill.
Whatever difference of opinion may exist upon other points, there is one
on which I should suppose there can be none; that this bill rests upon
principles which, if carried out, will ride over State sovereignties,
and that it will be idle for any advocates hereafter to talk of State
rights. The Senator from Virginia (Mr. Rives) says that he is the
advocate of State rights; but he must permit me to tell him that,
although he may differ in premises from the other gentlemen with whom he
acts on this occasion, yet, in supporting this bill, he obliterates
every vestige of distinction between him and them, saving only that,
professing the principles of '98, his example will be more pernicious
than that of the most open and bitter opponent of the rights of the
States. I will also add, what I am compelled to say, that I must
consider him (Mr. Rives) as less consistent than our