Sharswood.] QQQ [October. 



on Internal Improvements, and made an able report on the subject. 

 He introduced resolutions relative to the principles of the commercial 

 intercourse of the United States with foreign countries, arguing that 

 a system should be inaugurated by treaties on the great principle of 

 national equality and equal reciprocity, reducing or abolishing im- 

 posts, and allowing the products of one country to find free ingress 

 to every other. 



He was, in the first instance, warmly in favor of the protection of 

 domestic manufactures by the imposition of discriminating duties on 

 imports by the Federal Congress, under the power contained in the 

 Constitution. In this view, he attended and took an active part in the 

 proceedings of several conventions, one at Harrisburg, in 1827, an- 

 other at New York, in 1829, and still another at the last-named place, 

 in 1831. At this convention of 1831 he was one of a sub-committee 

 of three to prepare the address to the people. " This address, as far 

 as the last paragraph on page 21, was composed by Warren Button, 

 of Boston, with some parts contributed by John P. Kennedy, of Bal- 

 timore ; from that pai-agraph to the end by C J. I., with some con- 

 tributions by Mr. Kennedy." (Note in Mr. IngersoU's writing on 

 his copy of the address.) That he regarded such governmental pro- 

 tection as necessary only for the first beginning of manufactures is 

 evident from his urging at the New York convention the withdrawal 

 of the duties upon coarse cottons, a proposition by no means agree- 

 able to those interested. In a discourse delivered by him before the 

 New York Institute, in 1835, he maintained that liberty. Union, and 

 labor, protected everywhere by equal and just laws, are the most effec- 

 tual encouragement of domestic industry. 



It may be noticed that upon a kindred question of political 

 economy Mr. Ingersoll was very explicit in his views. He was a 

 decided bullionist. He looked at banks and paper money as ini- 

 mical to the purity of our political institutions, and as paving the 

 way for a kind of government which, under the forms of a represen- 

 tative democracy, would in truth be a plutocratic oligarchy, — the 

 worst because the most selfish of all governments. For this reason 

 he took an active part in favor of the measures of the administration 

 against the Bank of the United States, though upon terms of the 

 kindest friendship with Mr. Nicholas Biddle, and at a time when to 

 do so in Phihidelphia, required a gentleman to go through no common 

 social ordeal. 



We must rapidly run over the succeeding events of Mr. IngersoU's 

 political career. It having been determined by a vote of the people 



