tation lords. Events like this led to the
admission of members from the up-country; and Patrick Calhoun was the
first to represent that section in the Legislature. It was entirely
characteristic of him to vote against the adoption of the Federal
Constitution, on the ground that it authorized other people to tax
Carolinians; which he said was taxation without' representation. That
was just like a narrow, cranky, opinionative, unmanageable Calhoun.

Devoid of imagination and of humor, a hard-headed, eager politician,
he brought up his boy upon politics. This was sorry nourishment for a
child's mind, but he had little else to give him. Gambling, hunting,
whiskey, and politics were all there was to relieve the monotony of
life in a Southern back settlement; and the best men naturally threw
themselves upon politics. Calhoun told Miss Martineau that he could
remember standing between his father's knees, when he was only five
years old, and listening to political conversation. He told Duff Green
that he had a distinct recollection of hearing his father say, when he
was only nine, that that government is best which allows to each
individual the largest liberty compatible with order and tranquillity,
and that improvements in political science consist in throwing off
needless restraints. It was a strange child that could remember such a
remark. As Patrick Calhoun died in 1795, when his son was thirteen
years old, the boy must have been very young when he heard it, even if
he were mistaken as to the time. Whether Patrick Calhoun ever touched
upon the subject of slavery in his conversations with his children, is
not reported. We only know that, late in the career of Mr. Calhoun, he
used to be taunted by his opponents in South Carolina with having once
held that slavery was good and justifiable only so far as it was
preparatory to freedom. He was accused of having committed the crime
of saying, in a public speech, that slavery was like the "scaffolding"
of an edifice, which, after having served its temporary purpose, would
be taken down, of course. We presume he said this; because
_everything_ in his later speeches is flatly contradicted in those of
his earlier public life. Patrick Calhoun was a man to give a reason
for everything. He was an habitual theorizer and generalize!', without
possessing the knowledge requisite for safe generalization. It is very
probable that this apology for slavery was part of his son's slender
inheritan