ect and
indirect; and it is not pleasant to consider what would have been the
state of the country, the treasury, and the government itself, at this
moment, if the law actually passed, for revenue and for protection, had
depended on Whig votes alone. After all, it passed the House of
Representatives by a single vote; and there is a good deal of _eclat_
about that single vote. But did not every gentleman who voted for it
take the responsibility and deserve the honor of that single vote?
Several gentlemen in the opposition thus befriended the bill; thus did
our neighbor from the Middlesex District of this State,[5] voting for
the tariff out and out, as steadily as did my honored friend, the member
from this city.[6] We hear nothing of his "coming to the rescue," and
yet he had that _one vote_, and held the tariff in his hand as
absolutely as if he had had a presidential veto! And how was it in the
Senate? It passed by one vote again there, and could not have passed at
all without the assistance of the two Senators from Pennsylvania, of Mr.
Williams of Maine, and of Mr. Wright of New York. Let us then admit the
truth (and a lawyer may do that when it helps his case), that it was
necessary that a large portion of the other party should come to the
assistance of the Whigs to enable them to carry the tariff, and that, if
this assistance had not been rendered, the tariff must have failed.

And this is a very important truth for New England. Her children,
looking to their manufactures and industry for their livelihood, must
rejoice to find the tariff, so necessary to these, no party question.
Can they desire, can they wish, that such a great object as the
protection of industry should become a party object, rising with party,
and with the failure of the party that supported it going to the grave?
This is a public, a national question. The tariff ought to be inwrought
in the sentiments of all parties; and although I hope that the
pre-eminence of Whig principles may be eternal, I wish to take bond and
security, that we may make the protection of domestic industry more
durable even than Whig supremacy.

Let us be true in another respect. This tariff has accomplished much,
and is an honor to the men who passed it. But in regard to protection it
has only restored the country to the state in which it was before the
compromise act, and from which it fell under the operation of that act.
It has repaired the consequences of that measur