CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCIENTIFIC MEN. 49 



minded people in the other Southern States will probably 

 be slow to go these lengths, and I trust you may consider 

 the country as pacified for the present. 



TO MR. WILLIAM MACLURE. 



NEW HAVEN, October 31, 1833. 



YOUR remarks on our Federal Union and political 



measures certainly deserve serious consideration, although 

 I conceive our case is not exactly parallel with that of 

 Switzerland, an inland country, without foreign commerce, 

 and composed of members, I suppose, much more discor 

 dant than ours. I am much impressed with what you say 

 as to the tendency which the duty on sugar has to encour 

 age slavery. I think that must be true ; but I suppose 

 nothing can alter the policy. It is, I believe, a settled 

 thing that the cultivation of sugar in Louisiana is to be 

 thus encouraged at whatever hazard; the singular incon 

 sistency seems to have been overlooked of opposing a 

 Northern tariff for encouraging manufactures by freemen, 

 while a manufacture by slaves in the South is thus sus 

 tained. For myself, however, I wish to see as little as 

 possible of tariffs, and would prefer to have individual en 

 terprise and industry to work its own way with as little in 

 terference from Government as may be. I am glad to hear 

 that your distracted country Mexico is in a way to 

 get settled in anything like permanent order and tranquil 

 lity, a<nd hope that they may eventually find out the best 

 method of governing themselves. At present everything 

 appears tranquil in this country ; the high excitement in 

 Carolina seems to have subsided, and it will not be easy to 

 get up such a state of things again very soon. Congress 

 will soon meet again, and you will see in the annual budgets 

 of the President and his officers the state of the country. 

 Collisions and excitement must of course be expected in a 

 country where there is freedom ; at one time it will run on 



VOL. II. 4 



