change of foreign Ministers. Accordingly, Mr. M‘Lane, of Delaware, was appointed Minister to Great Britain, Mr. Rives to France—both of whom had been distinguished by their zeal and ability in opposing the late Administration. Mr. Preble was appointed to the Netherlands, and Mr. Van Ness to Spain.

Political parties were now about to assume a new phasis, or rather they had already assumed it. The union of the friends of Messrs. Calhoun, Crawford, and Jackson having effected their common object of overthrowing the Adams Administration, according to the ordinary course of independent allies, as soon as their main purpose was attained, began to disagree among themselves. The question about the successor to General Jackson, who seemed committed, by his public and repeated declarations, against serving a second term, presented a ready ground, first of competition, and subsequently of open hostility.

Mr. Calhoun, who had been twice elected Vice-President, and whose zeal and management had contributed to the large vote which General Jackson had received in 1824, seemed to have the first claim, and it was thought probable by most people, and more than probable by himself, that he would be elected after General Jackson had served one term. But there was an engine brought into play against him, of which he appeared to have entertained no suspicion, and. of which, had he been aware, it is not easy to see how he could have averted its effects.

In the summer of 1828, Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Cambreling went to Georgia, for the ostensible purpose of paying a friendly visit to Mr. Crawford, then withdrawn from the political arena, and for whose elevation to the Presidency it was known they had made every exertion in their power. Whether they had been invited on to

receive the communication then made by Mr. Crawford, is not known. The communication, however, was made during this visit, that it was Mr. Crawford who, in the divisions of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet concerning General Jackson's conduct in the Seminole campaign, had been the friend of the General, whereas Mr. Calhoun, who had the credit of defending him, had been his accuser, and had even proposed that he should be subjected to a court-martial.

Soon after Messrs. Van Buren and Cambreling returned home, a letter appeared in the newspaper from James C. Hamilton to Mr. Calhoun, inquiring of him, under some pretext, respecting his course towards General Jackson in the Cabinet. When thus directly called on, Mr. Calhoun was obliged to state that he disapproved of the General's course, and had voted accordingly in the Cabinet. As soon as the intelligence reached General Jackson, he was outrageous that he who had recently assumed the character of his friend, and had in fact proved a very efficient one, had some time before been his opponent; and he was now regarded by the General as having been guilty of the blackest perfidy, and the vilest hypocrisy. It is an every day occurrence for recent injury to cancel all gratitude for past services, and for former injuries to be forgiven in consideration of present benefits; but the cases are rare when the past injury is remembered, while the recent benefit is forgotten: and when one sees a course of action so opposite to that which ordinarily governs mankind, it leads us to suppose that the impulsive nature of General Jackson was acted on by others, by means of artful appeals to the resentments to which he was so prone, and to that pride which was mortified by having its sagacity deceived, and its confidence abused. However effected, there is no doubt

that, from the time of this discovery, General Jackson felt a violent animosity against Mr. Calhoun, which he retained for the rest of his life.

While these divisions were taking place among the leading politicians, the mass of the nation was divided into two great parties by the tariff, which, as an instrument for protecting manufactures, was cherished and defended by the Northern and Middle States, and vehemently opposed by those of the South and South-western.

The policy of encouraging domestic manufactures by taxing those imported from abroad had been at first opposed by the slaveholding States as injurious to their interests, since they would thus be compelled to buy an inferior or dearer article made at home, for the benefit of the manufacturer; but the opposition gaining strength by the discussion and the agitation it produced, it was at length deemed unconstitutional; from which it followed that duties laid for this purpose were not obligatory upon the disapproving States, and therefore void. By this short process, the doctrine of nullification, or the right of a State to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional and invalid, arose. It was a doctrine which soon made proselytes in all the Southern States, until in some it obtained the support of a large majority of the people, and consequently of the Legislature; and the discontent which it occasioned was industriously fomented by those politicians who expected to profit by Southern votes; and as no one was so likely as Mr. Calhoun to obtain those suffrages, South Carolina embraced the doctrine with more zeal and unanimity than any other State. Political ambition thus lent new force to party feelings and pecuniary interests.

This controversy had been making steady progress ever since the tariff act of 1828, but it had not yet

reached its greatest height. While it furnished the most copious subject of public discussion both in Congress and out of it, another topic, brought before Congress at this session, gave occasion to one of the most interesting and memorable debates which ever took place in Congress, and a part of which made an indelible impression upon the minds of all who heard or read it.

This debate concerned the public lands of the nation, on which the most discordant opinions were entertained in Congress, and in different parts of the Union. While most of the new States felt more or less of discontent that such a large portion of their unsettled territory should be owned by another government, and that it was even exempt from taxation, and while some of late had even gone so far as to lay claim, upon principles of abstract and primordial law, to the property in these lands, the old States generally insisted that, by the manner in which this territory had been acquired, and by compacts among the States, both express and implied, they constituted a common fund for the benefit of all; and that not merely justice, but liberality, had been shown to the new States in the large grants made to them of these lands, for education and other useful purposes.

In December, Mr. Foot, one of the Senators from Connecticut, desirous of maintaining the value of those lands, offered a resolution:

"That the Committee on the Public Lands inquire into the expediency of limiting, for a certain period, the sales of the public lands to such lands only as have heretofore been offered for sale, and are subject to entry at the minimum price: and also, whether the office of Surveyor-general may not be abolished without detriment to the public interest."

The whole policy of the public lands was brought under review by this resolution. Many speeches were made on the subject; but those of Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, and of Mr. Webster, chiefly engrossed public attention, not only from the ability which they displayed, but because they touched on other topics interesting at the time, and yet more from the passages of personal attack and defence of unwonted force and skill. These speakers were more or less considered as embodying the parties of the tariff and anti-tariff policy, and of the North and the South.

Mr. Hayne, though from an Atlantic and an old State, maintained the views of the Western States, and insisted that the policy of the General Government towards the new States had been harsh, illiberal, and unwise: that, instead of exacting the highest price for these lands, they ought to have been freely granted to the settlers, by which course the new States would have rapidly increased in wealth as well as numbers, instead of being always kept poor by a continual drain of their specie.

He then took occasion to object to revenue from the sale of lands, and also from an impost, and gave a decided preference to direct taxation, as favoring economy in the public expenditures, and depriving the General Government of a fund for corruption. He deprecated the policy which some persons entertained of keeping up the price of the public lands, so that, by retarding their settlement, the manufacturers might obtain hands on lower terms; and he also favored the plan of distributing those lands among all the States: and though he thought that the claims lately advanced by the States of Alabama and Indiana to the public lands within their respective limits, were entirely untenable, VOL. IV. -3