I believe I understand, gentlemen, what you wish me to do on this occasion; and therefore I shall endeavor to lay before you, briefly but impartially, the humble part which I, as your representative, have taken in those events which have filled the hearts of good men with alarm. I would, however, premise a few words, in order to show how we have come, step by step, to the fearful position we now occupy. Very early in our history, as a republic established to maintain the rights of man, an extent of territory was acquired equal to all we possessed before; and this addition accrued to the special advantage of those who maintain, as the first great article in their creed, the wrongs of man. The same European wars which enabled Mr. Jefferson’s administration to purchase Louisiana with fifteen millions of dollars,--a sum mostly paid by the north,--brought the commercial interests of the north also within the destructive sweep of those contests, and the non-intercourse act and the embargo were the consequence. These came upon New England at a time when commerce was her only resource. They brought as great a calamity upon the New England states as it would now be to the south if their whole cotton crop, or to the west if their whole grain crop, were to fail for a series of years. They palsied our industry; and, without industry, men, any where out of Paradise, will be poor. Upon the back of this calamity came the war of 1812, which we bore as well as we could, and performed our full share in carrying the country through it, though it cut off our very means of living. That war revealed a lamentable condition of things. It revealed the fact that, notwithstanding our political independence, we were, in a commercial sense, most deplorably dependent. It pointed to a new policy. It put the country upon achieving its second independence,--its independence, at least for the necessaries of life, of foreign mechanics, manufacturers, and artisans, as it had already achieved its political independence of foreign kings, aristocracies, and ecclesiastics. It gave birth to the American system, in which Calhoun, Lowndes, Cheves, and Clay,--all from the slave states,--took the lead. I mention the first three names, particularly, because they were from the state of South Carolina. So heartily did they enter into the new policy that they took their seats in Congress clad in homespun. They said they would exemplify their principles by their garments, and wear them outside as well as inside of their bodies. I am sorry their principles lasted but little longer than their clothes,--one suit worn out, and all, both without and within, clean gone. Even Mr. Madison boasted that his coat was woven in an American loom. The south led off in this policy, and New England, whose capital had been wrecked on the ocean, was reluctantly compelled to follow their lead. This was the origin of the protective tariff, the child of