The changes have been rung throughout the United States, since the commencement of the government, on the immensity of the favours conferred on the manufacturers, in point of protection—their insatiable temper—the impossibility of satisfying them—and the dreadful injustice of “taxing the many for the benefit of the few,” which has been used as a sort of war whoop for exciting all the base passions of avarice and selfishness in battle array against those to whom the tax is supposed to be paid.

It rarely happens, in private life, that vociferous claims for gratitude can stand the test of enquiry. When weighed in the balance of justice and truth, they are uniformly found wanting. And as a public is an aggregation of individuals, acted upon by the same views, and liable to the same and greater errors, it would be extraordinary, if similar claims of collections of people were not found to rest on as sandy a foundation.

To investigate the correctness of this everlasting theme has become a duty. To place the subject on its true ground, will dispel a dense mist of error and delusion with which it is enveloped. If the debt can be paid, let it, in the name of heaven, be discharged, and let us commence de novo.