ient to
satisfy their cupidity, and hence a variety of expedients and pretexts
were resorted to for the purpose of enlarging the expenditures and
thereby creating a necessity for keeping up a high protective tariff.
The effect of this policy was to interpose artificial restrictions upon
the natural course of the business and trade of the country, and to
advance the interests of large capitalists and monopolists at the
expense of the great mass of the people, who were taxed to increase
their wealth.

Another branch of this system was a comprehensive scheme of internal
improvements, capable of indefinite enlargement and sufficient to
swallow up as many millions annually as could be exacted from the
foreign commerce of the country. This was a convenient and necessary
adjunct of the protective tariff. It was to be the great absorbent of
any surplus which might at any time accumulate in the Treasury and of
the taxes levied on the people, not for necessary revenue purposes, but
for the avowed object of affording protection to the favored classes.

Auxiliary to the same end, if it was not an essential part of the system
itself, was the scheme, which at a later period obtained, for distributing
the proceeds of the sales of the public lands among the States. Other
expedients were devised to take money out of the Treasury and prevent
its coming in from any other source than the protective tariff. The
authors and supporters of the system were the advocates of the largest
expenditures, whether for necessary or useful purposes or not, because
the larger the expenditures the greater was the pretext for high taxes
in the form of protective duties.

These several measures were sustained by popular names and plausible
arguments, by which thousands were deluded. The bank was represented to
be an indispensable fiscal agent for the Government; was to equalize
exchanges and to regulate and furnish a sound currency, always and
everywhere of uniform value. The protective tariff was to give
employment to "American labor" at advanced prices; was to protect
"home industry" and furnish a steady market for the farmer. Internal
improvements were to bring trade into every neighborhood and enhance the
value of every man's property. The distribution of the land money was to
enrich the States, finish their public works, plant schools throughout
their borders, and relieve them from taxation. But the fact that for
every dollar taken out of the Treasur