n acquiring the elements of popularity adapted to
the ambition which all three alike shared.

Mr. Walker made an elaborate report on the question of revenue,
and attacked the tariff of 1842 in a manner which might well be
termed savage. He arraigned the manufacturers as enjoying unfair
advantages,--advantages held, as he endeavored to demonstrate, at
the expense and to the detriment of the agriculturist, the mechanic,
the merchant, the ship-owner, the sailor, and indeed of almost
every industrial class. In reading Mr. Walker's report a third of
a century after it was made, one might imagine that the supporters
of the tariff of 1842 were engaged in a conspiracy to commit fraud,
and that the manufacturers who profited by its duties were guilty
of some crime against the people. But extreme as were his declarations
and difficult as were the obstructions in his path, he was able to
carry his point. Mr. Buchanan, the head of the Cabinet, had voted
for the tariff of 1842, and Mr. Dallas, the Vice-President, had
steadily and ably upheld the doctrine of protection when a member
of the Senate. It was the position of Buchanan and Dallas on the
tariff that won the October election of 1844 for Francis R. Shunk
for governor of Pennsylvania, and thus assured the election of Mr.
Polk. The administration of which Buchanan and Dallas were such
conspicuous and influential members could not forswear protection
and inflict a free-trade tariff on Pennsylvania, without apparent
dishonor and the abandonment of that State to the Whigs. It was
therefore regarded not only as impracticable but as politically
impossible.

THE FREE-TRADE TARIFF OF 1846.

It was soon ascertained however that Mr. Polk sympathized with Mr.
Walker, and Mr. Buchanan was silenced and overridden. The free-
trade tariff of 1846 was passed; and Mr. Dallas, who had been
nominated because of his record as a protectionist, was subjected
to the humiliation of giving his casting vote as Vice-President in
favor of a tariff which was execrated in Pennsylvania, and which
was honestly believed to be inimical in the highest degree to the
interest of the American manufacturer and the American mechanic.
The Act had no small influence in the overthrow of the Polk
administration at the elections for the next ensuing Congress, and
in the defeat of General Cass for the Presidency in 1848. As
senator from Michigan, General Cass had vo