test of South Resolved: That it is expedient to protest against the uncon- 66. The prostitutionality and oppressive operation of the system of protect- Carolina ing duties, and to have such protest entered on the Journals of against high the Senate of the United States Also, to make a public ex- tariff, 1828 position of our wrongs and of the remedies within our power, [273] to be communicated to our sister States, with a request that they will coöperate with this State in procuring a repeal of the Tariff for protection, and an abandonment of the principle; and if the repeal be not procured, that they will coöperate in such measures as may be necessary for arresting the evil. Resolved: That a committee of seven be raised to carry the foregoing resolution into effect. The special committee reported the famous "Exposition and Protest" from the pen of John C. Calhoun, vice president of the United States. The following extracts are taken from that part of the Exposition dealing with the economic evil of the tariff for the South: 1 The committee have bestowed on the subjects referred to them the deliberate attention which their importance demands; and the result, on full investigation, is a unanimous opinion that the act of Congress of the last session, with the whole system of legislation imposing duties on imports,—not for revenue, but the protection of one branch of industry at the expense of others - is unconstitutional, unequal, and oppressive, and calculated to corrupt the public virtue and destroy the liberty of the country. . . . The committee do not propose to enter into an elaborate or refined argument on the question of the constitutionality of the 1 This economic danger had already been realized by leaders in the South. President Thomas Cooper of the College of South Carolina had written five years earlier (even before the tariff of 1824) to the Congressmen from his state: "Let the Southern States look to it! They are not threatened with a system of unjust and burthensome taxation merely this is a trifle in the plan. They are threatened with the annihilation of their staple commodity—not with taxation but destruction!" - Thomas Cooper, Two Tracts on the Proposed Alteration of the Tariff, p. 27. Tariff system. The General Government is one of specific powers, and it can rightfully exercise only the powers expressly granted. . . . It results, necessarily, that those who claim to exercise power under the Constitution, are bound to show that it is expressly granted, or that it is necessary and proper as a means to some of the granted powers. The advocates of the Tariff have offered no such proof. It is true that the third section of the first article of the Constitution authorizes Congress to lay and collect an impost duty, but it is granted as a tax power for the sole purpose of revenue, a power in its nature essentially different from that of imposing protective or prohibitory duties. . . . The Constitution may be as grossly violated by acting against its meaning as against its letter. ... The facts are few and simple. The Constitution grants to Congress the power of imposing a duty on imports for revenue, which power is abused by being converted into an instrument of rearing up the industry of one section of the country on the ruins of another. . . . It is, in a word, a violation by perversion, the most dangerous of all because the most insidious and difficult to resist. . . . On entering this branch of the subject, the committee feel the painful character of the duty which they must perform. They would desire never to speak of our country, as far as the action of the General Government is concerned, but as one great whole, having a common interest, which all the parts ought zealously to promote. Previously to the adoption of the Tariff system, such was the unanimous feeling of this State; but in speaking of its operation, it will be impossible to avoid the discussion of sectional interest, and the use of sectional language. On its authors, and not on us, who are compelled to adopt this course in self-defence, by injustice and oppression, be the censure. So partial are the effects of the system, that its burdens are exclusively on one side and its benefits on the other. It imposes on the agricultural interest of the South, including the Southwest, and that portion of the country particularly engaged in commerce and navigation, the burden not only of sustaining the system itself, but that also of the Government. . . . That the manufacturing States, even in their own opinion, bear no share of the burden of the Tariff in reality, we may infer with the greatest certainty from their conduct. The fact that they urgently demand an increase, and consider every addition as a blessing and a failure to obtain one as a curse, is the strongest confession that, whatever burden it imposes, in reality falls not on them, but on others. Men ask not for burdens, but benefits. . . . Let us now trace the operation of the system in some of its prominent details, in order to understand, with greater precision, the extent of the burden it imposes on us, and the benefits which it confers, at our expense, on the manufacturing states. . . . The exports of domestic produce, in round numbers, may be estimated as averaging $53,000,000 annually; of which the States growing cotton, rice, and tobacco produce about $37,000,000. In the last four years, the average amount of the export of cotton, rice, and tobacco, exceeded $35,500,000; to which, if we add flour, corn, lumber, and other articles exported from the states producing the former, their exports cannot be estimated at a less sum than that stated. Taking it at that sum, the exports of the Southern or staple States, and other States, will stand as $37,000,000 to $16,000,000 or considerably more than the proportion of two to one; while their population, estimated in federal numbers, is the reverse; the former sending to the House of Representatives but 76 members, and the latter 137. It follows that about one third of the Union exports more than two thirds of the domestic products. . . . The Government is supported almost exclusively by a tax on this exchange, in the shape of an impost duty, and which amounts annually to about $23,000,000. Previous to the passage of the act of the last session, this tax averaged about 37 per cent. on the value of exports.... The present duty [averages] at least 45 per cent., which on $37,000,000, the amount of our share of the exports, will give the sum of $16,650,000 as our share of the contribution to the general Treasury. . . . ... ... What becomes of so large an amount of the products of our labor placed, by the operation of the system, at the disposal of Congress? One point is certain, a very small share returns to us, out of whose labor it is extracted. It would require much investigation to state, with precision, the proportion of the public revenue disbursed annually in the Southern, and other States respectively; but the committee feel a thorough conviction . . . that a sum of much less than two million dollars falls to our share of the disbursements; and that it would be a moderate estimate to place our contribution, above what we receive back, through all of the appropriations, at $15,000,000; constituting to that great amount, an annual, continued, and uncompensated draft on the industry of the Southern States, through the Custom-House alone. CHAPTER X "THE REIGN OF ANDREW JACKSON" NULLIFICATION stitutional [277] Two of the scores of foreigners who have visited our 67. Andrew country and written of our society and institutions stand Jackson, conout conspicuous for the accuracy, sympathy, and justice autocrat of their remarks. One of these men is the recent English ambassador to the United States, James Bryce (now Lord Dechmont), author of "The American Commonwealth "; the other, a young Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited us in 1831, with a commission from the French government to study our prison system. De Tocqueville duly visited and reported upon the prisons (Sing Sing, Auburn, and others), but this part of his work was soon forgotten in the interest and enthusiasm aroused by his general treatise on "Democracy in America." At the close of a long section entitled "What are the chances of duration of the American Union, and what dangers threaten it?" De Tocqueville writes of the President: Some persons in Europe have formed an opinion of the influence of General Jackson upon the affairs of his country which appears highly extravagant to those who have seen the subject nearer at hand. We have been told that General Jackson has won battles; that he is an energetic man, prone by nature and habit to the use of force, covetous of power and a despot by inclination. All this may be true, but the inferences which have been drawn from these truths are very erroneous. |