The recommendations of the President in regard to the matter were referred to the committee of the House on Ways and Means, the regular revenue committee. At that moment this committee was composed of seven members, four from Commonwealths south of Maryland, and three from those north of Maryland. Mr. Lowndes, of South Carolina, was its chairman. It is fair, therefore, to call it a Southern committee, and to regard the bill which it produced as a Southern measure.
| The Tariff Bill reported. |
The committee first asked for a continuation of the existing duties until the thirtieth day of the following June, in order to give proper time to mature the bill, which request was voted by both houses of Congress; and on March 20th, Mr. Lowndes announced that he was prepared to report the draft of the new Act. The measure contained virtually the continuation of the war tariff as the permanent rule and policy in time of peace. It was now manifestly a protective tariff, and it was intended to be such. Mr. Ingham of the committee said, at the beginning of the debate upon it, that "its great primary object was to make such a modification of duties upon the various articles of importation as would give the necessary and proper protection and support to the agriculture, manufactures, and commerce of the country." He went so far as to say that revenue considerations ought not to have any influence in the decision of the House upon the committee's propositions.
| The character of the Tariff Bill. |
It is entirely evident, however, that the committee did not regard the bill as proposing advantages for the manufacturers only, or as having for its principal aim the increase of the wages of the employees in the manufacturing establishments, but considered it a great national measure, a measure necessary to the industrial independence of the country. It is also evident that the bill was not thought by anybody to rest upon a perfect and permanent principle. Mr. Clay himself said of it, "that the object of protecting manufacturers was, that we might eventually get articles of necessity made as cheap at home as they could be imported, and thereby to produce an independence of foreign countries;" that "in three years we could judge of the ability of our establishments to furnish those articles as cheap as they were obtained from abroad, and could then legislate with the lights of experience;" and that "he believed that three years would be sufficient to place our manufacturers on this desirable footing."
| Mr. Calhoun's speech upon the Tariff Bill. |
It was Calhoun again, however, who surpassed them all in broadness of view and in patriotic devotion to the interests of the nation. The immediate occasion of his speech was a motion made by John Randolph, which seemed to Mr. Calhoun to attack the principle of the bill. He said, that so long as the debate had been confined to questions of detail he had refrained from joining in it; but now that the general policy of the measure had been attacked he felt obliged to come forward in support of that policy, which he could do with all the more grace and sincerity since his own private interests were primarily subserved by the advancement of agriculture, as were those of his section. He began his argument with the assertions that commerce and agriculture were the chief sources of the wealth of the country at the moment, almost the only sources, and that manufactures must be added to these in order to accomplish industrial independence. In proof of this latter proposition he referred to the well known effect of war between a maritime power and the United States upon the prosperity of the latter. He simply pointed to the historic facts that such a war destroyed the commerce of the country with foreign powers, and that the destruction of commerce caused the products of agriculture, usually exported to pay for manufactured goods imported from foreign countries, to perish in the hands of the producers. Domestic manufactures, he contended, would not only relieve us from dependence upon foreign countries for manufactured goods, but would create home markets for agricultural products. Encouragement to manufactures was, therefore, a sound national, a truly American, policy. As Mr. Calhoun proceeded in his speech, his strong patriotism became more manifest. He affirmed that the policy of protection to manufactures was calculated to bind more closely together the different parts of our widely extended country, since it would increase the mutual dependence of these different sections on each other in proportion as it decreased their dependence on foreign markets. And he declared that he considered the production of this result to be the most fundamental of all our policies, for the reason that the absence of such mutual dependence would tend toward disunion, and disunion comprehended almost the sum and substance of our political dangers, against which, therefore, we ought to be perpetually guarded.