The adoption of the federal constitution operated like magic; produced a total change in the state of affairs; and actually removed no small portion of the public suffering, by the confidence it inspired, even before the measures of the government could be carried into effect.

The United States began their career in 1789 with advantages never exceeded, rarely equalled. The early administrators of the government had a high degree of responsibility. They were laying the foundations of an empire which may be the most extensive and powerful the world ever knew, and whose destinies they held in their hands.

The tariff was fraught with errors of the most grievous kind. Disregarding the examples and the systems of the wisest nations of Europe, it was calculated to sacrifice the resources of the country for the benefit of foreign manufacturing nations. And indeed had it been framed by an agent of any of those nations, it could not have answered the purpose better. It afforded them nearly all the benefits usually derived from colonies, without the expense of their support. It deprived our manufacturing citizens of all the advantages of reciprocity in their intercourse with the rest of the world.

The era is not long passed over, when any man who dared to arraign the conduct of the early congresses under the federal constitution, and accuse of having established tariffs which sacrificed the dearest interest of their country, and clipped its wings in its flight towards the high destinies to which extent, its government, the energies of the people and the great variety of other advantages which is possessed, bid it aspire, would be regarded with jealousy, and covered with obloquy.