Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/170

136 It was under the lead of the South that the systems of internal improvements and of the protection of home industry were inaugurated; it was the South, no less than the North, that insisted upon and exercised the power of Congress to exclude slavery from the territories. So long as these measures seemed to agree with the predominant interest there seemed to be no question about their constitutionality. Even Mr. Calhoun himself said in one of his most celebrated speeches, delivered in the session of 1815-16, “that it was the duty of the Government, as a means of defense, to encourage the domestic industry of the country.” But as soon as it was found out that this policy redounded more to the benefit of free labor than that of the unenterprising South, then the same men who had inaugurated it worked its overthrow, on the plea that it was at war with the principles of the Constitution. The constitutionality of the ordinance of 1787 was never questioned as long as the prevailing sentiment in the South ran against the perpetuation of slavery. The Missouri compromise was held as sacred and inviolable as the Constitution itself, so long as it served to introduce slave States into the Union; but no sooner, by virtue of its provisions, were free territories to be organized, than its unconstitutionality was discovered.

The predominance of interests determines the construction of the Constitution. So it was and it will ever be. Only those who remained true to the original program of the Fathers remained true to the original construction. Decide the contest of principles underlying interests, and the conflict of constitutional constructions will settle itself. This may seem a dangerous political theory. It is not an article of my creed, not a matter of principles, but a matter of experience; not a doctrine, but a fact.

Thus the all-pervading antagonism stands before us, gigantic in its dimensions, growing every day in the awful