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venient, forsooth, for them to pay their debts; they must contract their business to do it, and this would be very distressing.

Suppose a debtor, having a note falling due at a bank, adopt the bank morality. He calls upon the president and directors, and informs them that it is more convenient not to pay his note. "I have," says he, "a great many such notes coming due about this time, and if I should pay them all, I should be obliged to reduce my business very much. Nobody else can supply my customers so well as I can, so that it would be very distressing to them if I should stop selling. The wholesale dealers who supply me say that it would be very distressing to them if I should stop buying. So, from the most disinterested regard for the public good, I have determined never to pay a single note to a bank until it is more convenient for me to pay than to keep the money. With the funds I shall save by this operation I shall do a large business, highly beneficial to the public, who can never too highly applaud this judicious and virtuous decision, and the firmness with which I shall adhere to it in spite of the prejudices of the ignorant. I beg, gentlemen, that you will not be alarmed on account of my solvency. I have property enough in my hands to pay my debts twice over. My notes are perfectly good, therefore, although I never mean to pay them. I am sure, gentlemen, you have nothing to complain of; you have my notes in your hands, which are as good as specie. I consider them so myself, and hope you will feel no foolish scruples about it; for nothing is wanting to make them better than specie, but that mutual confidence which should always exist, at such a crisis as this, between those who depend on each other, as you and I do. We now understand each other. I know that you never mean to pay your notes, and you know that I never mean to pay mine."

Would not the directors pronounce this man to be a swindler? But if so, then how do they justify their own conduct?

CHAPTER VIII.

HIS OPINIONS ON COMMERCE AND TRADE, BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC, ALWAYS DEMANDED FOR THOSE INTERESTS THE LARGEST FREEDOM.

WITHOUT adverting again to his earnest support of the principles of free trade, in the intellectual contests of his early youth, it is but just to remark, that in 1827, 1828, 1829, that is, in his 22d, 23d, and 24th year, he wrote many articles, of which a considerable number were published in the Salem Gazette, in illustration and defence of principles he deemed so important. These essays, evincing an extent of information, and a maturity of intellect, unlooked for in one so young, were ascribed to Mr. Pickering, in whose office Mr. Rantoul was then a student of law. They were, it is believed, the earliest of his political writings that were given to the press. To republish them here seems unnecessary, as the principles they involved were more perfectly developed and sustained in his subsequent works. They prove, at least, that the principles which his early studies justified to his understanding, grew with his growth, and strengthened with his strength. It is believed that no man in the Union has been a more earnest, consistent, and able advocate of free trade. His knowledge of the great economical principles which constitute the basis of all just laws relative to the industrial pursuits of the world, was gathered from every source of information, and was accurate and profound. More than one Secretary of the U. S. Treasury has been indebted, largely and directly to Robert Rantoul, Jr., for statistical information of the first importance, and which was the systematized result of his wide research and indefatigable labor.

He was always ready to meet the ablest champions of the restrictive system, and answer their arguments, overthrow their positions, expose the sophistry and clumsy reasoning of their attempts to sustain, either the justice or policy, of a high rate of duties on imports. He has, again and again, proved by irrefragable statistical facts, the inherent and essential injustice of this mode of taxation; its burdens falling, practically, the heaviest, upon those classes of the public the least able to bear them, and tending in results, like the modern manufacture of paper money, to enrich a few at the expense of "the many." This advocacy of freedom of trade sprung from broad and generous principles. As he held that the best interests of humanity are advanced by increasing the facilities of intercourse between communities and nations, and that, as subservient to this end, it is the glory of modern science and skill to surmount mountain barriers, and annul ocean distances, so he believed that governmental restrictions on commerce and trade, would have to yield to the force of truth, and the progressive knowledge and civilization of mankind. The same great principles which impelled him, against the remonstrance of his party, to advocate granting State aid to the Western Railroad, made him an inflexible and faithful supporter of free trade through the whole of his political life.

But his own words best illustrate and sustain his principles. It happens, however, that upon this great theme, which had for years engaged him in the most laborious and profound investigations, and in relation to which his knowledge was, beyond all question, as various and accurate as ever was attained by an American statesman, he has left fewer speeches and writings than upon some topics of vastly inferior interest to himself and the public. This fact his friends will never cease to regret. They will account for it, however, not on the ground of the paucity of ideas, the want of matter, with which to employ the press, and enlighten public opinion, but on the very opposite, and the real ground of this scarcity of his printed speeches upon free trade, namely, his perfect familiarity with every historical detail, every statistical fact, and every philosophical opinion bearing upon the subject. It was this very fulness and completeness of knowledge, and his marvellous readiness to

comm and, on the spur of any occasion, his immense resources, that prevented his writing out his numerous speeches on this subject,-speeches which, while the hearers of them live, will be remembered as some of the most instructive, logical, and eloquent, ever listened to by popular assemblies. Those speeches were not only full of sound reasoning, glowing thought, and varied information, but were also of great length and thorough elaboration. This was true of one which he delivered in Fanueil Hall, on the evening of the 29th October, 1844. On this occasion he continued a strain of rapid, logical, and convincing oratory for nearly four hours.

The hall was crowded to its utmost capacity. He took for his text the free trade resolutions passed in the same place in 1820, through the influence of Daniel Webster, William Appleton, Abbot Lawrence, and other distinguished whig leaders, then professing to be satisfied with a tariff for revenue with incidental protection; now dissatisfied with a tariff three times as high, and denouncing the democracy as demagogues, and as setting the poor against the rich, for advocating the former. "We now," said he, "see Daniel Webster going wrong by the light he then kindled in Fanueil Hall." Mr. Rantoul commented with severe and well deserved sarcasm on the rapid and extreme changes of opinion, through which Mr. Clay had passed in a few preceding months, and Mr. Webster's inability in 1844, to answer his own arguments of 1820. Mr. Rantoul exposed the fallacies in the then recent report by Mr. Hudson, of the U. S. House of Representatives, and the sophistries which ran through it. Mr. Rantoul went into a masterly review of the occupations of different classes of the people of the United States, and showed that only about one fortieth are engaged in producing articles protected by the tariff. By analyzing the provisions of the tariff of 1842, he gave positive proof, from mathematical demonstration, that the revenue is raised, almost exclusively, on articles consumed by the working people. On this point he was very able and elaborate. This speech, so full of unanswerable argument and true eloquence, if ever published entire, has eluded the pursuit of the editor.

SPEECH AT SALEM."

The familiar faces which I see around me, persuade me that we have come back again to the old times; that the power of the democratic party, which some have fondly hoped was gone, is in fact as fresh, as lively, and likely to be as effective as in any of those old contests when we all stood shoulder to shoulder, and when every conflict showed an accession of strength. We have come together to-night to take our part in that grand consultation which is now going on among the free people of the whole North American Union, a consultation upon one of the most important temporal concerns that man can advise upon the government of a great nation. We are proposing to take our part in deciding, not merely to whom that government shall be committed, but what shall be the nature of that government; upon what principles, for what measures, with what views and end it shall be conducted. I know nothing upon the face of this globe, of a mere temporal nature, that deserves to be so carefully pondered upon, so judiciously settled, and so energetically carried out, as the political views which a man entertains.

Now, my friends, we have all of us lived long enough to see the operations of two great political systems which have been contrasted with each other in this country. One system has been tried; and tried long enough, one would think, to decide whether it be or not the true system on which the government of this country should be conducted; I mean that system of which the greatest political philosopher of this age, I refer to De Tocqueville, but a few weeks since, speaks of in the National Assembly of France, when he refers to democracy; and points to that great nation, "where alone it had been freely and fully exhibited, and where it had wrought out its natural results, the United States of America." When the eyes of the old world are turned to us, they are turned here for an answer to the great question, whether man is, or is not, capable of self-government; they look to us and say, the experiment we are trying is the experiment of democracy. They know our government has been a democratic government, carried on upon democratic principles, and they overlook all smaller, minor matters of detail, and look to the grand results, and say, if democracy be founded in truth, if man be capable of self-government, then we shall expect to see the North American experiment successful; and if he be not, if democracy be false, if man is forever doomed to be governed by those in whose

* Delivered October 6, 1848.

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