Currency and Tariff as Political Issues.

Unfortunately during this period—the period in which financial and fiscal questions were studied and understood by the American people better than at any other time in our history—those questions were made issues in party politics. I see no reason why they should not be political issues. Indeed, I am convinced that such questions never will be settled until they become political issues. But the reason why the struggles of the thirties proved so fruitless in the end was that parties did not divide according to intelligent conviction in regard to tariff and hard-money, but parties already formed took sides on these questions. President Jackson, elected as much for military prestige as anything, had imbibed from what he had seen of paper money in Tennessee and Kentucky a fierce, but not too intelligent, detestation of it. He committed his friends and the democratic party to hard money. Thus thousands of men who were democrats on previous issues became hard-money men without knowing why. Mr. Clay committed himself to protection without any thorough knowledge or true conviction of the principles involved. He carried the Whig party (proper exceptions being understood) into the support of protection. Mr. Webster, originally free trader and hard-money man by the convictions of a sober and clear reason, gave his support to protection because Massachusetts had been turned from a commercial into a manufacturing State, and, as he thought, could not go back. He advocated the bank originally for the purpose of checking paper issues by hundreds of petty banks. In the party contest he found himself committed to the bank so far that he could not draw back even if he wished. Mr. Calhoun, a protectionist in 1816, when it was thought that cotton needed protection, turned free trader when the South came to bear the burden of protection without any benefit. Thus it appeared to be a mere question of interest. If Thomas H. Benton's story is correct, the compromise tariff of 1833 was made to save Mr. Calhoun from a trial for treason, and to enable Mr. Clay to retire from a position from which he found it impossible to advance on account of his enemies, or to retreat on account of his friends. Looking at the history of these three men, one is forced to believe, that if any one of them had been less politic and more honest to his convictions, he might have been far more successful. It remains yet for some statesman to show that the. commonplaces about “ yielding to circumstances” and “ doing what you can” are only a petty wisdom; that, so far from being the grand principles of politics in a republic, the latter is just the place for that man to succeed who, by showing that he understands himself, and knows whither he wants to go, proves to the mass that he is fit to lead. The time must come when the people will learn that to rule by the small men is the most expensive and ruinous of all methods of government. History will, moreover, set its verdict upon the position of the South in 1832, selling their product in a free market and buying their manufactures in one loaded by obstructive taxation; that, although the means they employed were unlawful, and their conversion to free trade was due to self-interest, yet their grievance was great and their protest was just. Probably this will come about when the farmers of the West, who have inherited the grievance of the South, shall have learned, as they will learn, what it is which really afflicts them, and shall have broken the system to pieces. The history we have now to follow will show that when existing political organizations take up scientific questions as party capital, they use them only to support ambition, and the questions reach no satisfactory or permanent solutions. It is a vital question for the republic whether parties shall form and reform around issues as they arise, or whether the issues shall arise under and inside of permanent party organizations.