HUGH S. LEGARÉ

Hugh Swinton Legaré was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1797. He graduated from the College of South Carolina in 1814, studied law for three years, and then spent some time in foreign travel. In 1820 he was elected to the Legislature, and began the practice of law in 1822. He was not successful, and in 1824 accepted another nomination to the Legislature, remaining in that body until 1830. He was then made Attorney-General, and became noted for eloquence. In 1832 he was appointed chargé d'affaires at Brussels, returning to America in 1836. He was at once elected to Congress, and in the extra session of 1837, called to discuss the financial condition of the country, he added to his reputation as a speaker. He did not succeed in obtaining reelection, however, and returned to the practice of law. In 1841, having in the interim made for himself a great reputation as a brilliant writer, he was appointed Attorney-General, and upon the withdrawal of Webster from the Secretaryship of State, Legaré was appointed in his place. He died suddenly while attending the ceremony of the unveiling of the Bunker Hill Monument at Boston in 1843.

Legaré was an impressive speaker, delighting with his grace of manner and diction while he convinced by his logic. He had the power of rarely wasting a word, each link in the verbal chain appearing to the hearers at once fitting and necessary.

Legaré's life and best speeches are to be found in the memoir written by his sister (Charleston, 1848).

VOL. IX.-22

[Selection.]

Legaré. The following speech was delivered before the Union and States Rights party, at Charleston, S. C., on July 4, 1831. The question of the tariff was at that time the most absorbing of all those before the country, and South Carolina was divided in her opinions. Nullification was the issue of the hour, and those who opposed this extreme remedy were branded as submissionists. The speech was an able exposition of the position of this party, and was a plea for peace and harmony, even at the price of yielding to injustice.

IR, it is not only as a Southern man that I pro

SIR,

test against the tariff law. The doctrine of Free Trade is a great fundamental doctrine of civilization. The world must come to it at last, if the visions of improvement in which we love to indulge are ever to be realized. It has been justly remarked that most of the wars which have for the last two centuries desolated Europe and stained the land and sea with blood originated in the lust of colonial empire or commercial monopoly. Great nations cannot be held together under a united government by anything short of despotic power, if any one part of a country is to be arrayed against another in a perpetual scramble for privilege

and protection, under any system of protection. They must fall to pieces; and, if the same blind selfishness and rapacity animate the fragments which had occasioned the disunion of the whole, there will be no end to the strife of conflicting interests. When you add to the calamities of public wars and civil dissensions the crimes created by tyrannical revenue laws and the bloody penalties necessary to enforce them, the injustice done to many branches of industry to promote the success of others, the pauperism, the misery, the discontent, the despair, and the thousand social disorders which such a violation of the laws of nature never fails to engender, you will admit, I think, that the cause of Free Trade is the great cause of human improvement. Sir, I can never sufficiently deplore the infatuation which has brought such a scourge upon this favored land which has entailed, so to speak, the curse of an original sin upon a new world and upon the continually multiplying millions that are to inhabit it. Most heartily shall I coöperate in any measure, not revolutionary, to do away with the system which has already become a foundation of bitter water to us, which threatens to become to another generation a source of blood and tears,—and I heartily rejoice at the dawn of hope which has opened upon us in the proposed convention at Philadelphia. Not that I am sanguine as to the