Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:SPEECH ON THE POWER AND DUTY OF CONGRESS TO CONTINUE THE POLICY OF PROTECTING AMERICAN LABOR. DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OP THE UNITED STATES, MARCH H, 1842. [the resolutions of Mr. Clay being under consideration, one of which was in the following terms : " Resolved, That, in the adjustment of a tariff to raise an amount of twenty-six millions of revenue, the principles of the Compromise Act generally should be adhered to, and that especially a maximum rate of ad valorem duties should be established, from which there ought to be as little departure as possible," Mr. Choate spoke as follows: ] Mr. President, — I Had wished to say something on one branch of one of the subjects to which the resolutions extend; I mean that of the readjustment of the tariff, as it may affect domestic industry. In my view, it is the great subject of the session and of the day. I agree with the Pennsylvania memorialists, whose petition has just been read, that the subject of the currency — difficult, delicate, and important as it is, and creditable as it will be to my friend from New York, [Mr. Tallmadge,] and useful to the country to adjust it — bears no comparison, in point of importance, with this. We are coming, whether we will or not, by the progress of the Compromise Act, to an era in the history of the national industry and the national prosperity. We have it in our power to mark this era by the commission of a stupendous mistake, or by the realization of a splendid felicity and wisdom of policy. This very tariff which we are about to construct may, on the one hand, paralyze American labor, drive it from many of its best fields ofemployment, arrest the development of our resources of growth and wealth, and even the development of the mind and genius of America, our main resource, turni...