of our country despair of any favorable change, and then indeed might we
tremble for the continuance and safety of this Union!

And need I remind you, sir, that this dereliction of the duty of
protecting our domestic industry, and abandonment of it to the fate
of foreign legislation, would be directly at war with leading
considerations which prompted the adoption of the present Constitution?
The States respectively surrendered to the general government the whole
power of laying imposts on foreign goods. They stripped themselves of
all power to protect their own manufactures by the most efficacious
means of encouragement--the imposition of duties on rival foreign
fabrics. Did they create that great trust, did they voluntarily subject
themselves to this self-restriction, that the power should remain in the
Federal government inactive, unexecuted, and lifeless? Mr. Madison, at
the commencement of the government, told you otherwise. In discussing
at that early period this very subject, he declared that a failure to
exercise this power would be a "fraud" upon the Northern States, to
which may now be added the Middle and Western States.

[Governor Miller asked to what expression of Mr. Madison's opinion Mr.
Clay referred; and Mr. Clay replied, his opinion, expressed in the
House of Representatives in 1789, as reported in Lloyd's Congressional
Debates.]

Gentlemen are greatly deceived as to the hold which this system has in
the affections of the people of the United States. They represent that
it is the policy of New England, and that she is most benefited by it.
If there be any part of this Union which has been most steady, most
unanimous, and most determined in its support, it is Pennsylvania. Why
is not that powerful State attacked? Why pass her over, and aim the blow