e, and it has done _no
more_. I may speak of the compromise act. My turn has come now. No
measure ever passed Congress during my connection with that body that
caused me so much grief and mortification. It was passed by a few
friends joining the whole host of the enemy. I have heard much of the
motives of that act. The personal motives of those that passed the act
were, I doubt not, pure; and all public men are supposed to act from
pure motives. But if by motives are meant the objects proposed by the
act itself, and expressed in it, then I say, if those be the motives
alluded to, they are worse than the act itself. The principle was bad,
the measure was bad, the consequences were bad. Every circumstance, as
well as every line of the act itself, shows that the design was to
impose upon legislation a restraint that the Constitution had not
imposed; to insert in the Constitution a new prohibitory clause,
providing that, after the year 1842, no revenue should be collected
except according to an absurd horizontal system, and none exceeding
twenty per cent. It was then pressed through under the great emergency
of the public necessities. But I may now recur to what I then said,
namely, that its principle was false and dangerous, and that, when its
time came, it would rack and convulse our system. I said we should not
get rid of it without throes and spasms. Has not this been as predicted?
We have felt the spasms and throes of this convulsion; but we have at
last gone through them, and begin to breathe again. It is something that
that act is at last got rid of; and the present tariff is deserving in
this, that it is specific and discriminating, that it holds to common
sense, and rejects and discards the principles of the compromise act, I
hope for ever.

Another great and principal object of the revolution of 1840 was a
restoration of the currency. Our troubles did not begin with want of
money in the treasury, or under the sapping and mining operation of the
compromise act. They are of earlier date. The trouble and distress of
the country began with the _currency_ in 1833, and broke out with new
severity in 1837. Other causes of difficulty have since arisen, but the
first great shock was a shock on the currency; and from the effect of
this the country is not yet relieved. I hope the late act may yield
competent revenue, and am sure it will do much for protection. But until
you provide a better currency, so that you may have a u