shall be sold at a reduced price to actual settlers, and the future
disposition of them be surrendered to the states in which they lie,--Mr.
Adams condemns as the giving away of the national domain, the property
of the whole people, to individual adventurers; and as taking away the
property of one portion of the citizens, and giving it to another, the
plundered portion of the community being insultingly told that those on
whom their lands are lavished are _the best part of the population_.
Neither this, nor the surrender of them to the states in which they lie,
can be done without prejudicing the claims of the United States, and
of every particular state within which there are no public lands, and
trampling under foot solemn engagements entered into before the adoption
of the constitution. He reprobates thus giving away lands which were
purchased by the blood and treasure of our revolutionary fathers and
ourselves, which, if duly managed, might prove an inexhaustible fund
for centuries to come. He maintains that the policy indicated by this
message regards the manufacturing interests of the country "as a victim
to be sacrificed." This view leads him into an illustrative and powerful
argument on the duty of protection to domestic industry, in which are
set forth its nature, limitations, and impressive obligations.

In this report the absurd doctrines of nullification and secession are
canvassed, and it is shown that they never can be carried out in
practice but by a dissolution of the Union. The encouragement given by
the policy of the administration to the unjust claims and groundless
pretensions of South Carolina is exposed. The assumed irreconcilableness
of the interests of the great masses of population which geographically
divide the Union, of which one part is entirely free, and the other
consists of masters and slaves, which is the foundation of those
doctrines, is denied, and the question declared to be only capable of
being determined by experiment under the compact formed by the
constitution of the United States. The nature of that compact is
analyzed, as well as the effect of that representation of property which
it grants to the slaveholding states, and which has secured to them "the
entire control of the national policy, and, almost without exception,
the possession of the highest executive office of the Union." The causes
and modes of operation by which this has been attained Mr. Adams
illustrates to this ef