AND THE SENTIMENT OF UNION 385 



of protection to manufacturers, by means of tariff duties, 

 was a policy of which he had disapproved, whether as 

 a political economist or as a representative of the inter- 

 ests of New England. Against his own opposition 

 and that of New England the act of 1824 had passed. 

 " What, then, was New England to do ? . . . Was she 

 to hold out forever against the course of the govern- 

 ment, and see herself losing on one side and yet make 

 no effort to sustain herself on the other? No, sir. 

 Nothing was left for New England but to conform her- 

 self to the will of others. Nothing was left to her but 

 to consider that the government had fixed and deter- 

 mined its own policy ; and that policy was protection" 

 In other words, the tariff policy adopted at Washing- 

 ton, while threatening the commercial interests of 

 New England, had favoured the investment of capital 

 in manufactures there, and it was not becoming in a 

 representative of New England to take part in disturb- 

 ing the new arrangement of things. This argument, 

 if pushed far enough, would end in the doctrine now 

 apparently obsolete, though it has often been attacked 

 and defended that a senator is simply the ambas- 

 sador of his state in Congress. With Mr. Webster it 

 went so far as to modify essentially his expressions of 

 opinion as to the constitutionality of protective legis- 

 lation. He had formerly been inclined to interpret 

 the Constitution strictly upon this point, but in 1828 

 and afterward his position was that of the loose con- 

 structionists. From the economic point of view he 

 would doubtless have been a safer guide for New Eng- 

 land had he insisted upon acting up to the full meas- 

 ure of his convictions. He was too honest a thinker 

 to be able to conceal the real workings of his mind, 



2 C 



