the forms of the Constitution, he should look beyond that instrument for a remedy; that he would recur to first principlesto state rights; and even, if need be, to natural rights. As he had joined in the law to nullify, so he resolved to give it a practical test. For that purpose, he imported from England a quantity of woolens; bonded them, and, when the bonds became due, refused payment. He stood suit, and pleaded non est factum. Judgment was rendered against him. He still refused to pay, and the United States marshal levied on one of his houses. But the Nullifiers were so strong that the friends of the general government did not bid. General Jackson, on hearing this state of facts, dismissed the marshal, who was himself a Nullifier, and appointed a Union man in his place. The house, however, was never sold, nor was the money on the judgment ever paid, until Mr. Holmes was coming to Congress in 1839. He was a practical Nullifier.

After the Nullification party had obtained complete ascendency in the State of South Carolina, it was proposed to adopt a test oath, making an oath of allegiance to the state, as paramount to the obligation to the United States, essential to holding office. To this Mr. Holmes objected, because he had imbibed a horror of test oaths, whether religious or otherwise. He believed that his opponents, the Union men, were as honest and as patriotic as his own party; and although he was active in doing battle with them, he was unwilling to manacle them in the moment of victory. For this he was denounced by his own party, but he stood his ground firmly, although he was the only Nullifier who voted against the test. By the Constitution of the State of South Carolina, no amendment to that instrument can be effected unless by the decision of two Legislatures, the object being to afford the people an opportunity of passing upon it at the ballot-box. When the election was approaching, the Nullification party informed Mr. Holmes that, unless he agreed to vote for the test oath, he should not be nominated. He replied that he could not change his opinion, and that he would leave the party unembarrassed by retiring from public life. This he accordingly did. He went into the country, turned planter, and remained there until elected to the national House of Representatives in 1839. Of that body he has been successively elected a member up to this time.

During this period of service, honorable alike to himself and his constituents, Mr. Holmes has been placed respectively at the head of the Committees of Commerce and of the Navy. At the second session of the twenty-seventh Congress, he was appointed a member of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, to supply one of the vacancies occasioned by a then recent difficulty with its chairman. [See title, JOHN Q. ADAMS.] This service Mr. Holmes, through the medium of the following letter, declined:

To the Honorable Speaker of the House of Representatives: "Sir: I respectfully beg to be excused from serving as a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The reasons assigned by those gentlemen whose resignations occasioned the vacancies recently filled by the appointment of other Southern members, appear equally applicable to all representatives of slave-holding states, and were deemed satisfactory by the House, as evinced in the unhesitating acceptance of the aforesaid resignations. I would further observe, that the chairman of said committee, having applied to my constituents the most opprobrious epithets, and charged all the delegation from South Carolina with having banded in a base conspiracy to destroy his good name, I feel convinced that the public service would not be advanced, or the harmony of the committee promoted, by the councils of

"Your obedient servant,

"I. E. HOLMES."

The letter having been read, the record says,

"The question was taken, and Mr. Holmes was excused by a vote almost unanimous."

He is a Democrat of the State-rights party. He asserts the doctrine of free trade. But he claims to be a Conservative, not a Revolutionist. He thinks the progress of the age is rapid enough, and looks to the good sense and inertness of the substantial and well-educated portion the people to stay the headlong advance of the masses. Party ties bind him only to the extent to which his own inteligent judgment acknowledges their force. Hence he has never been able to go with any party to its ultimate. He supports the executive power whenever he deems that there is danger from the encroachments of

the representative. He opposes the President when he would absorb all power in the executive will. He considers the United States government a confederation as regards all domestic concerns, and as a government so far as it represents our international concerns. He looks upon the ordinance of 1787 as reserving the great waters of the West as public highways, and therefore as giving power to the general government to improve them for national purposes. He claims to have been the first to take that ground in Congress, and was thanked for it by Mr. Weller, in the name of the West, on the floor of the House. His position, as explained on a proposition to appropriate money for the improvement of the Mississippi and its tributaries, has been this: that the general government had a right to extend its jurisdiction to facilitate the carrying of commercial articles down those rivers; a proposition proved by the ordinance of 1787. This ordinance provided that the Mississippi should be free to all the citizens of the United States, and of the states that should thereafter come into the Union, and should not be molested or interfered with by any particular states. Now, if the government could not improve this river, one of two things followed: either that the jurisdiction which it had in consequence of the ordinance did not extend to the improvement of the river, or that the ordinance was unconstitutional. What was the ordinance? It was a contract made by the State of Virginia with the United States, then consisting of thirteen states; and all the essentials to a valid contract were embraced in it, viz., the subject contracted for, the conditions, and the power of the parties to contract. Nobody doubted the power of the parties to contract, and, in that view, the compact was legal. He supposed that no man would doubt that it was lawful or the United States to contract with the State of Virginia for the land granted in the compact, and to parcel it out into states and territories. Then, if the State of Virginia had a right to contract for the land, and the United States to receive it, unless the conditions took place, the land must go back to the State of Virgina. Either that whole country now parceled out into states and territories must revert to the State of Virginia, or these rivers were common highways, the improvement of which fell within the jurisdiction of this government. The proposition being laid down, he proved it thus:

The United States contracted to receive this territory; but were they not to give reciprocal conditions for it? Surely; and the conditions were, that these rivers should be common to all the people of the Union, divesting Virginia of her jurisdiction. Moreover, Virginia, when she parted with her jurisdiction, did not intend that any of her sister states should have it, and so provided in the compact. It followed, therefore, that the government, in not complying with the condition, destroyed the ordinance. And, further, no state having the right to improve this highway, and no state having jurisdiction over it, the United States had exclusive jurisdiction, and was bound to improve it. It must be improved by the government of the Union, or not at all.

If the constitutionality of these appropriations was thus clear, Mr. Holmes regarded the expediency of them as equally so; and, looking to the immense loss of property and life resulting from the obstructions in this navigation, he has been willing at all times to vote any amount of money that might be required for their improvement.

While entertaining these opinions, he has resisted appropriations by Congress for a general system of internal improvements which embraced every section and every interest. He has contended that, if carried out, it would require millions for its commencement, and untold millions for its prosecution. The treasury might be improved by all the means and facilities within the power of Congress; the tariff might be increased; the public lands put up at public auction; direct taxation even. might be resorted to; and yet all would not suffice to carry on this system to the extent which had been carved out. He had hoped that the system had received its quietus years ago; but it seemed, like the giant of old, to have risen with fresh vigor from its fall; and he warned gentlemen that, if allowed to go on, as he feared it would, the most disastrous consequences would ensue. In his opinion, there was a growing disposition to make this Union of States a vast consolidated empire, and to take from the people the means of controlling their expendiThe consequence would be, that the public treasury must be filled per fas aut nefas, and that the whole country would be bribed with the money unjustly wrung from them.

tures.

An allusion made by Mr. Douglas, in the twenty-eighth Con

gress, to the course of Mr. Holmes on this particular braneh of public policy, elicited the following reply:

"The gentleman from Illinois," said Mr. Holmes, "in default of legitimate argument to justify his course, resorted to the more effectual mode of argument, drawn, not from premises, but from men, and voted under the sevenfold shield of the Telamon Ajax. Jackson said so, ergo it is so. That was the gentleman's mode of reasoning.

"Mr. Douglas interposing, said that he would refer to another authority, John C. Calhoun.

"Mr. Holmes. I am no man's man. I will neither defer to General Jackson nor to John C. Calhoun, when the Constitution of the country is concerned. And I will tell gentlemen another thing: if I do not possess the great light which burns with so much effulgence about those great men, yet I will not attempt to illuminate the pathway of rivers by merely lighting a loco-foco match.

"The gentleman has attacked me because, at the commencement of the session, I advocated the improvement of those great highways of the West, the Ohio and the Mississippi. The gentleman, then, will not allow of my assistance at all; for it seems that, unless I go to the whole extent for national improvement with the zeal of a Western man on one side, or of a member of the Federal party on the other, I had better stand out of the way altogether. I asserted that the appropriation for the improvement of harbors was unconstitutional; and, at the same time, I also asserted that the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, as contradistinguished from other rivers, are great national highways, over which the authority of Congress did extend. My position was this: that whenever there was a proprietary right in the United States, and not in a state-and I beg gentlemen to mark the distinction-it was the bounden duty of the United States to improve those rivers, and keep them open for the navigation of the whole country.

،،، Such was the argument and illustration of the Telamon Ajax behind whose shield the gentleman retired. But General Jackson, though he possessed great tenacity of will, was nevertheless not tenacious of a particular line of policy; for I must say that I have never known a public man whose policy has varied so much and so often, in accordance with his