Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/129

Rh by auction, has produced some results not at all anticipated.

Now since neither party ventures to suggest direct taxation, the actual question between the two is not between free trade and protection, but only between a protective and a revenue tariff. So the real and practical question between them is this: Shall there be a high tariff or a low one? At first sight a man not in favour of free trade might think the present tariff gave sufficient protection to those great manufactures of wool, cotton, and iron, and as much as was reasonable. But the present duty is perhaps scarcely adequate to meet the expenses of the nation, for with new territory new expenses must come; there is a large debt to be discharged, its interest to be paid; large sums will be demanded as pensions for the soldiers. Since these things are so, it is but reasonable to conclude that, under the administration of the whigs or democrats, a pretty high tariff of duties will continue for some years to come. So the great and substantial difference between the two parties ceases to be of any great and substantial importance.

In. the mean time another party rises up, representing neither of these interests; without developing any peculiar views relative to trade or finance, it proclaims the doctrine that there must be no more slave territory, and no more slave States. This doctrine is of great practical importance, and one in which the free soil party differs substantially from both the other parties. The idea on which the party rests is not new; it does not appear that the men who framed the Constitution, or the people who accepted it, ever contemplated the extension of slavery beyond the limits of the United States at that time; had such a proposition been then made, it would have been indignantly rejected by both. The principle of the Wilmot Proviso boasts the same origin as the Declaration of Independence. The state of feeling at the North occasioned by the Missouri Compromise is well known, but after that there was no political party opposed to slavery. No President has been hostile to it; no Cabinet; no Congress. In 1805, Mr. Pickering, a Senator from Massachusetts, brought forward his bill for amending the Constitution, so that slaves should not form part of the basis