strong protests from the
agricultural South, in 1828 a new tariff bill was enacted, largely on
the principle of giving more protection to every interest that asked
for it. This, called by its opponents "the tariff of abominations," was
passed while Clay was Secretary of State; the discontent under it was to
give rise to Southern Nullification, and to afford Clay another
opportunity to act as "pacificator." All this tariff war is set forth in
clear detail in Professor Sumner's "Life of Jackson."

This question of tariffs has, for seventy years now, been the great
issue, next to slavery, between the North and South. More debates have
taken place on this question than on any other in our Congressional
history, and it still remains unsettled, like most other questions of
political economy. The warfare has been constant and uninterrupted
between those who argue subjects from abstract truths and those who look
at local interests, and maintain that all political questions should be
determined by circumstances. When it seemed to be the interest of Great
Britain to advocate protection for her varied products, protection was
the policy of the government; when it became evidently for her interest
to defend free trade, then free trade became the law of Parliament.

On abstract grounds there is little dispute on the question: if all the
world acted on the principles of free trade, protection would be
indefensible. Practically, it is a matter of local interest: it is the
interest of New England to secure protection for its varied industries
and to secure free raw materials for manufacture; it is the interest of
agricultural States to buy wares in the cheapest market and to seek
foreign markets for their surplus breadstuffs. The question, however, on
broad grounds is whether protection is or is not for the interest of the
whole country; and on that point there are differences of opinion among
both politicians and statesmen. Formerly, few discussed the subject on
abstract principles except college professors and doctrinaires; but it
is a most momentous subject from a material point of view, and the great
scale on which protection has been tried in America since the Civil War
has produced a multiplicity of consequences--industrial and
economic--which have set up wide-spread discussions of both principles
and practical applications. How it will be finally settled, no one can
predict; perhaps through a series of compromises, with ever le