Page:HOUSE CR Exposition and Protest 1828-12-19.pdf/39



1st. Because the good people of this Commonwealth believe, that the powers of Congress were delegated to it, in trust for the accomplishment of certain specified objects which limit and control them, and that every exercise of them, for any other purposes, is a violation of the Constitution as unwarrantable as the undisguised assumption of substantive, independent powers not granted or expressly withheld.

2nd. Because the power to lay duties on imports is and in its very nature can be only a means of effecting objects specified by the Constitution; since no free government and least of all a government of enumerated powers, can of right impose any tax, any more than a penalty which is not at once justified by public necessity and clearly within the scope and purview of the social compact, and since the right of confining appropriations of the public money, to such legitimate and constitutional objects, as isis as [sic] essential to the liberties of the people, as their unquestionable privilege to be taxed only by their own consent.

3rd. Because they believe that the Tariff Law passed by Congress at its last session, and all other acts of which the principal object is the protection of manufactures, or any other branch of domestic industry, if they be considered as the exercise of a supposed power in Congress to tax the people at its own good will and pleasure, and to apply the money raised to objects not specified in the Constitution, is a violation of these fundamental principles, a breach of a well defined trust and a perversion of the high powers vested in the Federal Government for federal purposes only.

4th. Because such acts considered in the light of regulation of commerce, are equally liable to objection—since although the power to regulate commerce, may like other powers be ex-