Mr. President, I have further to
say, that I made up these opinions, and entered on this course of
political conduct, _Teucro duce_.[2] Yes, Sir, I pursued in all this a
South Carolina track on the doctrines of internal improvement. South
Carolina, as she was then represented in the other house, set forth in
1816 under a fresh and leading breeze, and I was among the followers.
But if my leader sees new lights and turns a sharp corner, unless I see
new lights also, I keep straight on in the same path. I repeat, that
leading gentlemen from South Carolina were first and foremost in behalf
of the doctrines of internal improvements, when those doctrines came
first to be considered and acted upon in Congress. The debate on the
bank question, on the tariff of 1816, and on the direct tax, will show
who was who, and what was what, at that time.

The tariff of 1816, (one of the plain cases of oppression and
usurpation, from which, if the government does not recede, individual
States may justly secede from the government,) is, Sir, in truth, a
South Carolina tariff, supported by South Carolina votes. But for those
votes, it could not have passed in the form in which it did pass;
whereas, if it had depended on Massachusetts votes, it would have been
lost. Does not the honorable gentleman well know all this? There are
certainly those who do, full well, know it all. I do not say this to
reproach South Carolina. I only state the fact; and I think it will
appear to be true, that among the earliest and boldest advocates of the
tariff, as a measure of protection, and on the express ground of
protection, were leading gentlemen of South Carolina in Congress. I did
not then, and cannot now, understand their language in any other sense.
While this tariff of 1816 was under discussion in the House of
Representatives, an honorable gentleman from Georgia, now of this
house,[3] moved to reduce the proposed duty on cotton. He failed, by
four votes, South Carolina giving three votes (enough to have turned the
scale) against his motion. The act, Sir, then passed, and received on
its passage the support of a majority of the Representatives of South
Carolina present and voting. This act is the first in the order of those
now denounced as plain usurpations. We see it daily in the list, by the
side of those of 1824 and 1828, as a case of manifest oppression,
justifying disunion. I put it home to the honorable member from South
Carolina, that his own Sta