adopted this Constitution expected its administration would
be conducted with a favorable hand. The manufacturing States wished the
encouragement of manufactures, the maritime States the encouragement of
ship-building, and the agricultural States the encouragement of
agriculture."

Sir, I will detain the Senate by reading no more extracts from these
debates. I have already shown a majority of the members of SOUTH
CAROLINA, in this very first session, acknowledging this power of
protection, voting for its exercise, and proposing its extension to
their own products. Similar propositions came from Virginia; and,
indeed, Sir, in the whole debate, at whatever page you open the volume,
you find the power admitted, and you find it applied to the protection
of particular articles, or not applied, according to the discretion of
Congress. No man denied the power, no man doubted it; the only questions
were, in regard to the several articles proposed to be taxed, whether
they were fit subjects for protection, and what the amount of that
protection ought to be. Will gentlemen, Sir, now answer the argument
drawn from these proceedings of the first Congress? Will they undertake
to deny that that Congress did act on the avowed principle of
protection? Or, if they admit it, will they tell us how those who framed
the Constitution fell, thus early, into this great mistake about its
meaning? Will they tell us how it should happen that they had so soon
forgotten their own sentiments and their own purposes? I confess I have
seen no answer to this argument, nor any respectable attempt to answer
it. And, Sir, how did this debate terminate? What law was passed? There
it stands, Sir, among the statutes, the second law in the book. It has a
_preamble_, and that preamble expressly recites, that the duties which
it imposes are laid "for the support of government, for the discharge of
the debts of the United States, and _the encouragement and protection of
manufactures_." Until, Sir, this early legislation, thus coeval with the
Constitution itself, thus full and explicit, can be explained away, no
man can doubt of the meaning of that instrument in this respect.

Mr. President, this power of _discrimination_, thus admitted, avowed,
and practised upon in the first revenue act, has never been denied or
doubted until within a few years past. It was not at all doubted in
1816, when it became necessary to adjust the revenue to a state of
peace. On the co