s necessary in order to reveal it; but
still, if war must come, if it has been decreed that Oregon must be
consecrated to liberty in the blood of the brave and the sufferings of
the free, Georgia will be found ready with her share of the offering,
and, whatever may be her sacrifice, she will display a magnanimity as
great as the occasion and as prolonged as the conflict."

Mr. Toombs indorsed the conservative action of the Senate, which forced
President Polk from his extreme position and established the parallel of
49 deg. as the northern boundary.

The tariff bill of 1846 was framed, as President Polk expressed it, in
the interest of lower duties, and it changed the basis of assessment
from specific, or minimum duties, to duties _ad valorem_.

Mr. Toombs made a most elaborate speech against this bill in July, 1846.
If his Oregon speech had shown thorough familiarity with the force and
effect of treaties and the laws of nations, his tariff speech proved him
a student of fiscal matters and a master of finance. His genius, as
Jefferson Davis afterward remarked, lay decidedly in this direction. Mr.
Toombs announced in his tariff speech that the best of laws, especially
tax laws, were but approximations of human justice. He entered into an
elaborate argument to controvert the idea that low tariff meant
increased revenue. The history of such legislation, he contended, had
been that the highest tariff had raised the most money. Mr. Toombs
combated the _ad valorem_ principle of levying duty upon imports.

Mr. Toombs declared to his constituents in September, 1846, that the
President had marched his army into Mexico without authority of law.
"The conquest and dismemberment of Mexico, however brilliant may be the
success of our arms," said he, "will not redound to the glory of our
republic."

The Whigs approached the Presidential campaign of 1848 with every chance
of success. They still hoped that the Sage of Ashland might be the
nominee. George W. Crawford, ex-Governor of Georgia, and afterward
member of the Taylor Cabinet, perceiving that the drift in the West was
against Mr. Clay, offered a resolution in the Whig convention that
"whatever may have been our personal preferences, we feel that in
yielding them at the present time, we are only pursuing Mr. Clay's own
illustrious example." Mr. Toombs stated to his constituents that Clay
could not be nominated because Ohio had declared that no man who had
opposed the Wilmot Pr