duce; that the shippers must dismantle their ships, the trade of the
North stagnate at the wharves, and the manufacturers starve at their
looms, while the whole people shall pay tribute to foreign industry to
be clad in a foreign garb; that the Congress of the Union are impotent
to restore the balance in favor of native industry destroyed by the
statutes of another realm? More just and more generous sentiments will,
I trust, prevail. If the tariff adopted at the last session of Congress
shall be found by experience to bear oppressively upon the interests of
any one section of the Union, it ought to be, and I can not doubt will
be, so modified as to alleviate its burden. To the voice of just
complaint from any portion of their constituents the representatives of
the States and of the people will never turn away their ears. But so
long as the duty of the foreign shall operate only as a bounty upon the
domestic article; while the planter and the merchant and the shepherd
and the husbandman shall be found thriving in their occupations under
the duties imposed for the protection of domestic manufactures, they
will not repine at the prosperity shared with themselves by their
fellow-citizens of other professions, nor denounce as violations of the
Constitution the deliberate acts of Congress to shield from the wrongs
of foreign laws the native industry of the Union. While the tariff of
the last session of Congress was a subject of legislative deliberation
it was foretold by some of its opposers that one of its necessary
consequences would be to impair the revenue. It is yet too soon to
pronounce with confidence that this prediction was erroneous. The
obstruction of one avenue of trade not unfrequently opens an issue to
another. The consequence of the tariff will be to increase the
exportation and to diminish the importation of some specific articles;
but by the general law of trade the increase of exportation of one
article will be followed by an increased importation of others, the
duties upon which will supply the deficiencies which the diminished
importation would otherwise occasion. The effect of taxation upon
revenue can seldom be foreseen with certainty. It must abide the test of
experience. As yet no symptom? of diminution are perceptible in the
receipts of the Treasury. As yet little addition of cost has even been
experienced upon the articles burdened with heavier duties by the last
tariff. The domestic manufacturer supp