ion money of the banks and served as
the basis of exchange with foreign countries.

The South had preached free trade since 1828. Polk and his Secretary of
the Treasury had been prominent exponents of the idea, despite some
campaign bargaining with Pennsylvania. In England Richard Cobden, John
Bright, and Sir Robert Peel were about to secure the repeal of the
age-old protective system, and in both France and Germany the free-trade
agitation was daily winning recruits. Polk and his advisers set
themselves the task of securing the passage of a "free-trade tariff" for
the United States. Walker submitted an able report in December, 1845. A
very high rate was recommended on all luxuries, including wines and
liquors; an average duty of twenty-five per cent was to be laid on the
great bulk of imports which would compete with American cotton, wool,
and iron manufactures; and a long list of articles of every day
consumption on which no duties should be imposed was submitted. Though
the Pennsylvanians denounced the proposed tariff bill as un-Democratic,
it became a law in July, 1846, proved to be successful, and remained the
corner-stone of the Democratic structure till 1861.

The _douceur_, in the form of a bill for liberal internal improvements
for the Northwest, whose leaders all voted for the tariff reductions,
passed both houses of Congress; but the members from the lower South,
led by Robert Barnwell Rhett, protested to the last. Polk accepted their
view and vetoed the bill. Northwestern men cried out "treachery" so
loudly that summer, in a great mass meeting in Chicago, that the
President feared the party was seriously endangered. Still, the three
problems over which Clay, Calhoun, and Webster had wrestled since 1816
had been solved. The United States was henceforth to manage its finances
independently; the free-trade element had won the ascendancy, and there
was not to be another high-tariff campaign until after the Civil War;
and internal improvements on a large national scale were not to be
undertaken until the passage of the Pacific Railway Bill in 1862. The
only cloud above the political horizon was the anger of the Northwestern
Democrats.

There was more danger in carrying forward the program which was intended
to secure to the United States Oregon, California, and New Mexico. But
the first step had already been taken. In April, 1846, both House and
Senate, in spite of the opposition of the older leaders, authorize