e perpetually guarded."

The time has passed for any public man to claim credit for
"consistency." A person who, after forty years of public life, can
truly say that he has never changed an opinion, must be either a
demigod or a fool. We do not blame Mr. Calhoun for ceasing to be a
protectionist and becoming a free-trader; for half the thinking world
has changed sides on that question during the last thirty years. A
growing mind must necessarily change its opinions. But there _is_ a
consistency from which no man, public or private, can ever be
absolved,--the consistency of his statements with fact. In the year
1833, in his speech on the Force Bill, Mr. Calhoun referred to his
tariff speech of 1816 in a manner which excludes him from the ranks of
men of honor. He had the astonishing audacity to say:

"I am constrained in candor to acknowledge, for I wish to
disguise nothing, that the protective principle was
recognized by the Act of 1816. How this was overlooked at
the time, it is not in my power to say. _It escaped my
observation_, which I can account for only on the ground
that the principle was new, and that my attention was
engaged by another important subject."

The charitable reader may interpose here, and say that Mr. Calhoun may
have forgotten his speech of 1816. Alas! no. He had that speech before
him at the time. Vigilant opponents had unearthed it, and kindly
presented a copy to the author. We do not believe that, in all the
debates of the American Congress, there is another instance of flat
falsehood as bad as this. It happens that the speech of 1816 and that
of 1833 are both published in the same volume of the Works of Mr.
Calhoun (Vol. II. pp. 163 and 197). We advise our readers who have the
time and opportunity to read both, if they wish to see how a false
position necessitates a false tongue. Those who take our advice will
also discover why it was that Mr. Calhoun dared to utter such an
impudent falsehood: his speeches are such appallingly dull reading,
that there was very little risk of a busy people's comparing the
interpretation with the text.

It was John C. Calhoun who, later in the same session, introduced the
bill for setting apart the dividends and bonus of the United States
Bank as a permanent fund for internal improvements. His speech on this
bill, besides going all lengths in favor of the internal improvement
system, presents some amusing contrasts with h