Bear in mind that this speech was made in 1824.
Then look around you and see how prophetically Mr. McDuffie pictured the future.
The Presidency is bought and sold. Congress is bought and sold. The confederated priesthood of politicians and manufacturers do dominate an infatuated people whom it deludes and plunders.
The Trusts are nothing in the world but the legitimate children of Privilege and Protection.
Campaign boodle-funds are nothing in the world but the sop which the Corrupt Combination of Capitalists pay to renew the lease which they hold on the Government.
And, as Mr. McDuffie said, the most astounding feature of the whole diabolical system is the completeness with which the politicians and the Privileged can dupe the victims of Protection into the belief that Privilege benefits the unprivileged.
With the doors of immigration standing wide open vomiting into our industrial world all the cheap white labor of the universe, our Protected capitalists are still able to convince our wage-earners that American capital protects American labor from the competition of foreign “pauper” labor!
Having ground down the price of factory labor to such a low point that they can undersell foreigners in the foreign market, our Privileged and Protected Capitalists can nevertheless convince American laborers that the motive for high tariffs is to enable the Capitalist to pay big wages!
And they swallowed it—the wage-earners swallow it, meekly, blindly, trustfully.