ntrary, the power was then exercised, not without
opposition as to its expediency, but, as far as I remember or have
understood, without the slightest opposition founded on any supposed
want of constitutional authority. Certainly, SOUTH CAROLINA did not
doubt it. The tariff of 1816 was introduced, carried through, and
established, under the lead of South Carolina. Even the minimum policy
is of South Carolina origin. The honorable gentleman himself supported,
and ably supported, the tariff of 1816. He has informed us, Sir, that
his speech on that occasion was sudden and off-hand, he being called up
by the request of a friend. I am sure the gentleman so remembers it, and
that it was so; but there is, nevertheless, much method, arrangement,
and clear exposition in that extempore speech. It is very able, very,
very much to the point, and very decisive. And in another speech,
delivered two months earlier, on the proposition to repeal the internal
taxes, the honorable gentleman had touched the same subject, and had
declared "_that a certain encouragement ought to be extended at least to
our woollen and cotton manufactures_." I do not quote these speeches,
Sir, for the purpose of showing that the honorable gentleman has changed
his opinion: my object is other and higher. I do it for the sake of
saying that that cannot be so plainly and palpably unconstitutional as
to warrant resistance to law, nullification, and revolution, which the
honorable gentleman and his friends have heretofore agreed to and acted
upon without doubt and without hesitation. Sir, it is no answer to say
that the tariff of 1816 was a revenue bill. So are they all revenue
bills. The point is, and the truth is, that the tariff of 1816, like the
rest, _did discriminate_; it did distinguish one article from another;
it did lay duties for protection. Look to the case of coarse cottons
under the minimum calculation: the duty on these was from sixty to
eighty per cent. Something beside revenue, certainly, was intended in
this; and, in fact, the law cut up our whole commerce with India in that
article.

It is, Sir, only within a few years that Carolina has denied the
constitutionality of these protective laws. The gentleman himself has
narrated to us the true history of her proceedings on this point. He
says, that, after the passing of the law of 1828, despairing then of
being able to abolish the system of protection, political men went forth
among the people, and