14 INTRODUCTION. 



and a perfect security of liberty and possessions 

 springs from her just and salutary laws. Whilst 

 the decayed and exhausted monarchies of the 

 old world are plunged in embarrassment and 

 debt -taxing, \*y e^ery indirection, an indus- 

 -trious and oppressed population, circumscri- 

 bing 'their liberties, and drawing from the 

 sweat of their brows the means which minister 

 to the vices of pageantry, it is reserved to these 

 States to exhibit to the world the anomalous 

 spectacle of a treasury embarrassed in its opera- 

 tions from excess of revenue, and a people delv- 

 ing amid the mysteries of finance, not to 

 devise the ways and means of supplying a defi- 

 cient income, but to shape their course with the 

 swelling tide of national prosperity, and so to 

 adapt under auspicious circumstances their sys- 

 tem of import, as to lessen the requirements of 

 government on the resources of the nation, with- 

 out a formal surrender of the right inherent to 

 the social compact, to call on the citizen in the 

 hour of emergency, for his just and equitable pro- 

 portion of the public burdens. 



Such is the paradox presented to the world, 

 by the condition of the United States. The in- 

 trepid firmness of our ancestors wrested from the 

 iron gripe of oppression the fairest portion of 

 the globe, and the rich inheritance blooms in 

 the delegated administration of constitutional 

 laws. 



The onward march of the country to power 

 an'd distinction is unchecked by foreign broils, 

 and vexatious collisions, and though, as we have 

 seen, the stormy passions inseparable from hu- 



