ed; and it expresses
my judgment, and I shall adhere to it. But this has nothing to do with
the other constitutional question; that is to say, the mere
constitutional question whether Congress has the power to regulate
slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

On such a question, Sir, when I am asked what the Constitution is, or
whether any power granted by it has been compromised away, or, indeed,
could be compromised away, I must express my honest opinion, and always
shall express it, if I say any thing, notwithstanding it may not meet
concurrence either in the South, or the North, or the East, or the West.
I cannot express by my vote what I do not believe. The gentleman has
chosen to bring that subject into this debate, with which it has no
concern; but he may make the most of it, if he thinks he can produce
unfavorable impressions against me at the South from my negative to his
fifth resolution. As to the rest of them, they were commonplaces,
generally, or abstractions; in regard to which, one may well feel
himself not called on to vote at all.

And now, Sir, in regard to the tariff. That is a long chapter, but I am
quite ready to go over it with the honorable member.

He charges me with inconsistency. That may depend on deciding what
inconsistency is, in respect to such subjects, and how it is to be
proved. I will state the facts, for I have them in my mind somewhat more
fully than the honorable member has himself presented them. Let us begin
at the beginning. In 1816 I voted against the tariff law which then
passed. In 1824 I again voted against the tariff law which was then
proposed, and which passed. A majority of New England votes, in 1824,
were against the tariff system. The bill received but one vote from
Massachusetts; but it passed. The policy was established. New England
acquiesced in it; conformed her business and pursuits to it; embarked
her capital, and employed her labor, in manufactures; and I certainly
admit that, from that time, I have felt bound to support interests thus
called into being, and into importance, by the settled policy of the
government. I have stated this often here, and often elsewhere. The
ground is defensible, and I maintain it.

As to the resolutions adopted in Boston in 1820, and which resolutions
he has caused to be read, and which he says he presumes I prepared, I
have no recollection of having drawn the resolutions, and do not believe
I did. But I was at th