The Sectional Struggle; An Account of the Troubles Between the North and the South, from the Earliest Times to the Close of the Civil War (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IL THE TARIFF? 1789-1820. The enlightened theories of political I economy which were the fruit of the tree of political liberty, first plucked in England and then speedily transshipped across the Channel and assimilated with the radical philosophy of France, were always difficult to adapt to the every-day wants of nations. As conceived by AdaBaSmithand expanded by his successors, cu"y of adap- the doctrine offree trade seems to the rational tatton' mind one which the sagacity of statesmen and the common sense of the people alike would eagerly embrace and steadily put into practice. That it has not been so, all admit. At least some of the reasons why will appear in the course of the following pages. The subject of revenue had been the most vexatious in the history of the United Colonies and of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. Above . The subject of everything else, the difficulty of raising it had revenue under brought about the movement for a more per- feet government. The Constitution had left and under the .,,,, I1, !, Constitution. the matter, not as proposed by the extreme State-rights party, in the hands of the States as before, with the dangerous power of State coercion as the only means for its collection in the last resort, but with the Congress to legislate and the executive to carry out the legislation, the Supreme Court having been intended to decide upon all points of construction of the laws framed.1 1 Certainly as to all which did not involve questions of sovereignty in their last analysis. It was competent then for the Congress to pass such acts as should consist with the Constitution; and that body was The power of expected to enact none but such laws as were the congress 8uited to the existing need...