... 4 - 4 . . 1 i . i, ' ' K - 1117 -JLLJ4 ' JUL ..V. "iSl t.:.;VA;iV;J JANUARY; jS, OUR COUNTRY, AND OUR COUNTRY S GOOD. . -. . - ' . - AND . PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY JOHN I. PASTEUR, At three Dollar per annum -payable in advaace. ADveBrisEMRTS Inserted on the usual terms. ., Letters addressed) the publisher, mustbeyorf paid: -. Froin the National Intelligencer. .1 LETTERS TOF MR. MADISON. The history of the two Letters which we are about to publish is briefly as follpws : .. ; These Letters were not originally w ritten for the Press, but are now authorized to be publish ed, on the earnest representations of some of the friends of Mr. Madison, to whom the publica tion .appeared, to be of great interest, and of deep importance to the Nation. . In the present state of our country these pa pers cannot but be highly acceptable to the pub i: Ti, nmninns of the distinguished author, one of the franiers of the Constitution, if not the father of it, cannot but carry with them great weight. They are of the greater authority, from his having been appealed toby those who sus tain doctrines opposite to those which he avows and defends. He stands, in this respect, as the arbiter between contending parties; and it is hoped that his lucid expositions will go far to convince many who have heretofore seriously questioned the power of Congress which he maintains. In the calm philosophy of his retirement from the turmoil of the world, the judgment which he has deliberately formed,, and now argunientative ly sustains, cannot be suspected f being influen ced by any political bias or casual excitement. His is the wisdom of age the fruit of expe rience, plucked from the tree of knowledge. LETTER I. ' Montpelieu, Sept. 18, 1828.' Dear Sir : Your late letter reminds me of our conversation on the constitutionality of the power in Congress to impose a tariff for tho encourage ment of manufactures ; and of my promise to sketch the grounds of the confident opinion I had expressed, that it was among the powers vested in that body. I had not forgotten my promise, and had even begun the task of fulfill ing it; but frequent interruptions, from other causes, being followed by a bilious indisposition, I have not been able sooner to comply with your request. The subjoined view of the subject niidit have been advantageously expanded ; but I leave that improvement to your own reflections and researches. The Constitution vests in Congress, expressly, the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, im posts, and excises;" and "the power to regu late trade." That the former power, if not particularly ex pressed, would have been included in the latter as one of the objects of a general power to regu iHte trade, is not necessarily impugned by its being so expressed. Examples of this sort can not sometimes be easily avoided, and are to be seen elsewhere in the Constitution. Thus the power "to define and punish offences against the law of nations," includes the power, afterwards particularly expressed, "to make rules concern ing captures, &c. from offending neutrals." So also a power ' to coin money" would doubtless include that of " regulating its value," had not the lattef power been expressly inserted. The term taxes, if standing alone, would certainly have included duties, imposts, and excises. In another clause it is said, "no tax or duties shall be laid on exports, &c." Here the two terms are used as synonymous. And in a another clause, where it is said " no State shall lay any imposts, or duties, &c." the terms imposts and duties are synonymous. Pleonasms, tautologies, and the promiscuous use of terms and phrases, differing in their shades of meaning, (always to be ex pounded with reference to the context and under the control of the general character and manifest scope of the instrument in whicli they are found) are to be ascribed, sometimes to the purpose of greater caution ; sometimes to the imperfections Ml lullguatt;, aiiu airuiuuiuca lu 4110 impi ibviivu of man himself. In this view of the subject, it was quite natural, however certainly the general power to reg'date trade might include a power to impose duties on it, not to omit it in a clause enumerating the several modes of revenue, au thorised by the Constitution. In few cases could the "ex majori cautela" occur with more claim to respect. Nor can it be inferred, that a power to regu late trade does not involve a power to tax it, from the distinction made in the original contro versy with Great Britain, between a power to regulate trade with the Colonies, and a power to tax them. A power to regulate trado between different parts of the Empire, was confessedly v-eccssary ; and was admitted to lie, as far as that was the case, in the British rarliament ; the taxing part being at the same time denied to the Parliament, and asserted to do necessarily inne rent in the Colonial Legislatures, as sufficient "and the only safe depositories of 'the taxing power. So difficult was it, nevertheless, to maintain the distinction in practice, that the in gredient of revenue was occasionally overlooked or disregarded in the British regulations, as in the duty on sugar and molasses imported into the Colonies. And it was fortunate that the attempt at an internal and direct tax, in the case of the Stamp Act, produced a radical examination of the subject before a regulation of trade with a view to revenue had grown into an estao lished authority. One thing at least is certain, that the main and admitted object of the Parlia mentary regulations of trado with the Colonies, was the encouragement of manvfactures in Great Britain. But the present question is unconnected with the former relations between Great Britain and her colonies, which were of a peculiar, a com plicated, and, in several respects, of an undefined character. It is a simple question under the Constitution of the United States, whether " the power to regulate trade with foreign nations" as a distinct and substantive item in the enumerated powers embraces the object pf, encouraging by duties,' restrictions and prohibitions, tho manu factures and products of the country t And the affirmative must" be'1 inferred from the following considerations: , , . . ; ; ,, - , -v l.-The meaning of the' phrase "to regulate trade," roust be sought in the general use of itj in' other words,' in tho objects to which "the power was generally understood ta be applicable, when the phrase was inserted in the Constitu tion. ; - . : '2. The power has been understood and used by all commercial and manufacturing nations, as embracing the object of encouraging manufac tures. It is believed that not a single exception can be named. "y .v.' ''':. , ' iL This has been particularly the case with Great Britain,' whose commercial vocabulary is the parent of ours. A primary object of her commercial regulations is well known to have been the protection and encouragement of her manufactures. - . n " . ; " 4. Such was understood to be a proper use of the power by the States most prepared for manu facturing industry,'. wbiUt retaining the power over their foreign trade. " ' "' ' 5. Such a use of the power, by Congress, ac cords with tho intention and expectation of the States, in transferring the power over trade from themselves to the Government of the United Mates. This was emphatically the case in the Eastern, the more manufacturing Members of the Confederacy. Hear the language held in the Convention of Massachusetts. By Mr. Dawes, an advocate for the Constitu tion, it was observed, "Our manufactures are " another great subject which has received no "encouragement by, national duties on foreign " manufactures, and they never can by any au " thority in the old Confederation." Again, "If we wish to encourage our own manufactures, " to preserve our own commerce, to raise the " value of our own lands, we must give Congress the powers in question. By Mr. VVidgery, an opponent : " All we hear is, that the merchant and farmer will flourish, " and that the mechanic and tradesman are to " make their fortunes directty, if the Constitu " tion goes down." The Convention of Massachusetts was the only one in New England whose debates have been preserved. But it cannot b6 doubted that the sentiment there expressed was common to the other States in that quarter, more especially to Connecticut and Rhode Island, the most thickly peopled of all the States, and having, of course, their thoughts most turned to the subject of manufactures. A like inference may be con fidently applied to New Jersoy, whose debates in Convention have not been preserved. In the populous and manufacturing State of Pennsyl vania, a partial account only of tlto debates ha ving been published, nothing certain is known of what passed in her Convention on this point. But ample evidence may be found elsewhere, that regulations of trade, for the encouragement of manufactures, were considered as within the power to be granted to the new Congress, as well as within the scope of the national policy. Of the States South of Pennsylvania, the only two in whose Conventions tho debates have been preserved, are Virginia and North Carolina, and from these no adverse inferences can be drawn. Nor is there the slightest indication that either of the two States farthest South, whose debates in Convention, if preserved, have not been made public, viewed the encouragement of manufac tures, as not within the general powerover trade to be iransferred to the Government of the Uni ted States. 6. If Congress have not the power, it is anni hilated for tho nation; a policy without example in any other nation, and not within the reason of the solitary one in our own. The example alluded to, is the prohibition of a tax on exports, which resulted from the apparent impossibility of raising, in that mode, a revenue from the States, proportioned to the ability to pay it the ability of some being derived, in a great mea sure, not from their exports, but from their fishe ries, from their freights, and from commerce at large, in some of its branches altogether external to theUnited States ; tho profits from all which, being invisible and intangible, would escape a tax, on exports. A tax on imports on the other hand, being a tax on consumption, which is in proportion to the ability df Hie consumers, whencesoever derived, was free from that ine quality. 7. If revenue be the sole object of a legiti mate impost, and the encouragement of domes tic articles be not within the power of regulating trade, it would follow that no monopolizing or unequal regulations of foreign nations could bo counteracted ; that neither the staple articles of subsistence, nor the essential implements for the public safety, could, under any circumstances, be insured or fostered at home, by regulations of commerce, the usual and most convenient mode of providing for both ; and that the Ame rican navigation, though the source of naval de fence, of a cheapening competition in carrying our valuable and bulky articles to market, and of an independent carriage of them during fo reign wars, when a foreign navigation might be withdrawn, must be at once abandoned, or spee dily destroyed: it being evident that a tonnage duty in foreign ports against our vessels, and an exemption from such a duty in our ports, in favor of foreign vessels, must have the inevitable ef fect of banishing ours from the ocean. To assume a power to protect our navigation, and the cultivation and fabrication of all articles requisite for the public safety, as incident to the war power, would be a more latitudinary con struction of the text of the Constitution, than to consider it as embraced by the specified power to regulate trade ; a power which has been exer cised by all nations for those purposes, and which effects those purposes with less of interference with the authority and conyeniency of the States, than might lesult from internal and direct modes of encouraging the articles, any of which modes would be authorized, as far as deemed " neccs- $ary and proper," by considering the power , as an incidental power. . !. , ' 8. That i the encouragement of manufactures was an object of the power to regulate trade, is proved by the use made of the power for that object, in the 6rst session of, the First Congress under the Constitution ; when among the mem bers present were so many who had been mem bers of the Fedoral Convention which framed the Constitution, and of the State Conventions which ratified it ; each of these classes consisting also of membecs who had opposed and who had espoused, the Constitution in its actual form. It does not appear from the printed proceedings of Congress on that 'occasion, that the power was denied by any of them. And it may be re marked, that Members from Virgiuia, in particu lar, as well of the anti-federal as the federal party, die names then distinguishing those who bad ppposod and those who had approved the Constitution, did not hesitate to propose duties and to suggest even prohibitions in favour of several articles of her production. By one a duty was proposed on mineral coal, in favour of the Virginia coal pits; by another, a duty on hemp was proposed, to encourage the growth of that article; and by a third, a prohibition even of foreign beef whs suggested, as a measure of sound policy. See Lloyd's Debates. A further evidence in support of the constitu tional power to protect and foster manufactures by regulations of trade, an evidence that ought, of itself, to settle tho question, is the uniform and practical sanction given to the power, by tho General Government, for nearly forty years; with a concurrence or acquiescence of every State Government, throughout the samo period; and, it may be added, through all the vicissitudes of party which marked the period. No novel construction, however ingeniously devised, or however respectable and patriotic its patrons, can withstand the weight of such authorities, or the unbroken current of so prolonging and uni versal a practice. And well it is that this can not bo done, without the intervention of the same authority which made the Constitution. If it could be so done, there would be an end to that stability in Government, and in Laws, which is essential to good government and good laws, a stability, the want of which is the imputation which has at all. times been levelled against Re publicanism, witli most effect, by its most dex trous adversaries. The imputation ought never, therefore, to be .countenanced, by innovating constructions, without any ph-a of a prccipitan-C3-, or a paucity of the constructive precedents they oppose ; without any appeal to material facts rewly brought to light ; and without any claim to a better knowledge of the original evils and inconveniences, for which remedies were needed, tho very best keys to the true object and meaning of all laws and constitutions. And may it not be fairly left to the nnbiassed judgment of all men of experience and of intelli gence, to decide, whicli is most to be relied on for a sound and safe test of the meaning of a Constitution, a uniform interpretation by all the successive authorities under it, commencing with its birth, and continued for a long period, through the varied state of political contests ; or the opinion of every new Legislature, heated as it may be by the strife of parties or warped, as often happens, by tho eager pursuit of some fa vourite object or carried away, possibly, by the powerful eloquence or captivating address of a few popular statesmen, themselves, perhaps, in fluenced by the same misleading causes? If the latter test is to prevail, every new legislative opinion might make a new Constitution, as the fool of every new Chancellor would make a new standard of measure. It is seen, with no little surprise, that an at tempt has been made, jn a highly respectable quarter, and at length reduced to a resolution, formally proposed in Congress, to substitute, for the power of Congress to regulate trade so as to encourage manufactures, a power in the several States to do so, with the consent of that body ; and this expedient is derived from a clause in the tenth section of article first of the Constitu tion, which says : " No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be ab solutely necessary for executing its inspection laws; and the nctt produce of all duties, and imposts, laid by any State on imports and ex ports, shall be for the use of the Treasury of the United States ; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and controul of the Congress." To say nothing of the clear indications in the Journal of the Convention of 1787, that the clause was intended merely to provide for ex penses incurred by particular States, in their In spection laws, and in such improvements as they might choose to make in their harbours and ri vers, with the sanction of Congress objects to which the reserved power has been applied, in several instances, at the request of Virginia and Georgia how could it ever be imagined that any State would wish to tax its own trade for the encouragement of manufactures, if possessed of the authority, or could, in fart, do so, 'if wish ing it! A tax on imports would bo a tax on its own consumption ; and the nett proceeds going, ac cording to the clause, not into its own Treasury, but into the Treasury of the United States, the State would tax itself separately for the equal gain of all the other States ; and as far as the manufactures, so encouraged, might succeed in ultimately increasing the stock in market, and lowering tho price by competition, this advantage, also, procured at the sole expense of the State, would be common to all the others. But the very suggestion of such an expedient to any State, would have an air of mockery, when its experienced impracticability L taken into view. No one, who recollects or recurs to the period when the power over commerce was in the indi vidual States, and separate attemps were made to tax, , or othenviso regulate it, need be told that the attempts were not only abortive, but, by de monstrating the necessity of general and uni form regulations, gave the original impulse to the constitutional reform, which providedfor such re gulations.. ' "-.I- : .;:.-v; ' , ; , To refer a State, therefore, to the exercise of a power, as reserved toJier by tho Constitution, the impossibility of exercising which was an in ducement to adopt the Constitution, is, of all re medial devices, the last that ought to be brought forward. And what renders it the more extraor dinary, is, that, as the tax on commerce, as far as it could be separately collected, instead of be longing to tho Treasury of the State, as previous to the Constitution, would be a tribute to the Uni ted States, the State would be in a worse condi tion, after the adoption of the Constitution, than before, in referenco to an important interest, the improvement of which was a particular object in adopting the Constitution. - Wero Congress to make the proposed declara tion of consent to state tariffs in favour of State manufactures, and the permitted attempts did not defeat themselves, what would be tho situation of States deriving their foreign supplies through the ports of other States t It is evident that they might be compelled to pay, in their con sumption of particular articles imported, a tax for the common treasury, not common to all the States, without having any manufacture or pro duct of their own, to partake of the contemplated benefit. , . . Of the impracticability of separate regulations of trade, and the resulting necessity of general regulations, no State was more sensible than Virginia. , She was accordingly among the most earnest for granting to Congress a power adequate to the object. On more occasions than one in the proceedings of her Legislative councils it was recited " that the relative situation of the States had been found, on trial, to require uniformity m their commercial regulations as the only effectual policy for obtaining in the -ports of foreign na tions a stipulation of privileges reciprocal to those enjoyed by the subjects of such nations in the ports of the United Slates ; for preventing ani mosities which cannot fail to ariso among the several States from the interference of partial and separate regulations ; and for deriving from com merce such aids to the public revenue as it ought to contribute, &c." During the delays and discouragements expe rienced in the attempts to invest Congress' with the necessary powers, the State of Virginia made various trials of what could be done by her indi vidual laws. She ventured on duties and im posts as a source of revenue : Resolutions were passed at one time to encourage and protect her own navigation and ship building ; and in conse quence of complaints and petitions from Norlolk, Alexandria, and other places, against the mono polizing navigation laws of Great Britain, parti cularly in the trado between the United States and the British West Indies, she deliberated, with a purpose controlled only by the inefneacy of separate measures, on the experiment, of forcing a reciprocity by prohibitory regulations of her own. See Journal of House of Delegates in 1785. The effect of her separate attempts to raise re venue by duties on imports, soon appeared in re presentations from her merchants, that the com merce of the State was banished by them into other channels, especially of Maryland, where imports were less burdened than in Virginia. See Do. for 178G. Such a tendency of separate regulations was in deed too manifest to escape anticipation. Among the projects prompted by the want of a Federal authority over commerce, was that of a concert first proposed on the part of Maryland for a uni formity of regulations between the two States, and Commissioners were appointed for that purpose. It was soon perceived, however, that the concur rence of Pennsylvania was as necessary to Mary land as of Maryland to Virginia, aud the concur rence of Pennsylvania was accordingly invited. But Pennsylvania could no more concur without New York than Maryland without Pennsylvania, nor New York without the concurrence of Bos ton, &c. These projects were supeiseded for the mo ment by that of the Convention at Annapolis in 1786, and forever by the Convention at Phila delphia in 1787, and the Constitution which was the fruit of it. There is a passage in Mr. Neckcr's work on the finances of France whicli affords a signal illus tration of the difficulty of collecting, in contigu ous communities, indirect taxes, when not the same in all, by the violent means resorted to against smuggling from one to another of them. Previous to the late Revolutionary war in that country, the taxes were of very different rates in the different Provinces; particularly the tax on salt, which was high in the interior provinces and low in the maritime, and the tax on tobacco, which was very high in general, whilst in some of the provinces the use of the article was altogether free. The consequence was, that the standing army of patrols against smuggling had swoln to the number of twenty-three thousand ; the annu al arrest of men, women, and children, engaged in smuggling, to five thousand five hundred and fifty; and the number annually arrested on ac count of salt and tobacco alone to seventeen or eighteen hundred, more than three hundred of whom were consigned to the terrible punishment of the Gallics. May it not be regarded as among the providen tial blessings to these States, that their geogra phical relations, multiplied as they will be by ar tificial channels of intercourse, give such addi tional force to tho many obligations to cherish that union whicli alone secures their peace, their safety, and their prosperity ! Apart from the moro obvious and awful consequences of their entire separation into independent sovereignties, it is worthy of special consideration, that, divided from each other as they must be by narrow wa ters and territorial lines merely, the facility of surreptitious introductions of contraband articles, would defeat every attempt at revenue in the easy and indirect modes of impost and excise; so that whilst their expenditures would be neces sarily and vastly increased by their new situa tion, they would, in providing for them, bo limit ed to direct taxes on land or other DrODertv. ta arbitrary assessments on invisible funds, and to the odious tax on persons. fV ;'! ";'vi .' J You will observe tha( I have confined myself, 111 what fins hpan cn?i 4 ti ftiA jvnnctitiitinnnlitv . and expediency of the power in Congress to en courage domestic products by regulations of com merce In tho exercise of the power, they are responsible to their constituents ; whose right and duty it is, in that as in all other cases, to brinf ' their measures to the test of justice and of the general good. ' . ; ' j'.' ' With great esteem and cordial regard, "'' ' JAMF.S MAniSOW 1 Jos. C. Cabell, Esq. ' V LONDON POLICE. The annexed affecting instance o abject po verty and distress, we find in the London Couri er of the SOth October. " V Yesterday Mary Saunders, a young creature, about three ana twenty j'ears of age; whose ema ciated countenance presented a miserable per sonification of poverty and distress, was charged, a little before the close of the office, before Mr." Chambers, the sitting magistrate, under the foU lowing circumstances : Mr. Dennett, foreman to Mr. Kirkham, pawn- broker, Newington causeway, stated, that about half an hour before, the prisoner seized a new pair of black trowsers, exposed at the shop for st. wvuvf ltwa4SUU VIS 1UUJVV WU t M1VU ml was seen to take them, and pursued. When, overtaken she made no resistance, but surrender ed herself at once to the officer. ' i Mr. Chambers Are you a married woman ? Prisoner I am. . , . Mr. Chambers Where is your husband I j , Prisoner I don't know. '. Mr. Chambers Does he know you are here 4 . Prisoner Oh, no; he knows nothing of it. Mr. Chambers Why did you attempt this fe lony t Prisoner I was starving. I had nothing to eat, nor was my husband able to assist me ; be was equally distressed with .myself. The constable asked her what sort of a man her husband was? on which she betrayed a con siderable degree of alarm, and, after hesitating for some time, replied, that he was a tall man, dressed in a short jacket of a light color. The constable then stated that his reason for asking the prisoner this question, was, that he observed a mart outside the office crying very bit terly, and whom he suspected to be her husband, but he did not, by any means, answer the de scription given of him by the prisoner. Mr. Chambers ordered him to be brought in. His appearance was equally miserable with that of the female, but, as the constable observed, the description given of her husband by the prisoner, was wholly inapplicable to this person, being short and wearing a long blue coat. The mo ment the prisoner saw him enter she uttered a most piercing shriek, and sinking upon her knees, exclaimed earnestly, " Oh, that is not my hus band ! indeed it is not !" Mr. Chambers asked him did he know her? to which he replied in the affirmative ; when she again exclaimed, " Oh, yes f he does know me j he's my brother." Mr. Chambers What relation arc yon to Iier ? Saunders I am her husband, sir. Prisoner Oh no, he is not my busbanj ; nor was ne witn me when l took the property. Saunders I was with her, and am equally guilty; but we wore starving. I am a watch cap manufacturer, and have been out of employ ment several months. I did all I could to earn what would support us, but failed. I applied to tho parish officers of Cripplegato and elsewhere, but they told us we were young and strong, and treated us like dogs ; and at last wc have been driven to this. We had not even a place to lie in'at night, but were forced Ui walk about the streets. Idr. Chambers i ou seem to have a lodging, ' for a key of a room door was found upon your' wife. ' Saunders This morning her sister gave her that key, belonging to an empty room in a bouse at Clerkenwell, belonging to her, that we might shelter ourselves there at night ; also a ticket for a sheet to cover us, to release which I expected to get a shilling from my uncle, but being disap pointed, she attempted to take the trowsers to obtain the money. The husband wept bitterly during his examina tion, and so melancholy a case of tiistress on the print of both, and so singular an instance of affec tion on the part of the prisoner, as displayod in her anxiety to screen her husband from any implica tion in her guilt, excited the sympathy of every oiK) present ; and Mr. Dennett the prosecuter, expressed himself unwilling to press the charge. Mr. Chambers readily assented to this humane proceeding, and directing Saunders to occupy the empty room in Clerkenwell to-night, and apply for parochial relief to-morrow, discharged the prisoner, a sum of six shillings being given them, half a crown of which was advanced by Mr. Den nett, the prosecutor. SALE JANUARY 15tii, 1829. N the 15th January, 1S29, I shall offer for sale, at my residence in Onslow, all the perishable nronertv of my late wife, not previously disposed of consisting of Horses, Cattle, Sheep, 50 head of fat Hogs, a number of Bows and Pigs, of the improved breeds, &c. &c. on a credit of six months. At the same time, will be sold on a credit of 12 months, about 400 Acres of valuable Piney Land. Notes with approved security will be required. MINOR HUNTINGTON, Ex'r Dec. 1220 vt . . R. HALSEY. CRAVEN-STREET, NEWBERN, HAS. just received per the Schooner Trent, a fresl assortment of CLOTHS such as handsome Drabs, suitable for Gentlemen's Over Coats Likew ise, fashionable Drab Cassimere, superfine Blue and Steel Mint Cloths, Genoa Velvet, &c. of which the subscriber will be happy to furnish his customers, on the most lite ral terms, made up in the latest London Faahinns. Dec. 2020