eld that the power to lay duties being given
to Congress, without reservation by the Constitution, the end or motive of
laying them was left to the discretion of the Legislature. He showed also
that the power to regulate commerce given to that body in the
Constitution, was, from an early period in our history, held to imply a
right, by laying duties, to favor particular traffics, products or
fabrics.

This view of the subject was presented with great skill and force in a
pamphlet entitled "A Letter to Colonel William Drayton, of South
Carolina," published in 1831. Mr. Verplanck was through life a friend to
the freedom of exchange, but he would not use in its favor any argument
which did not seem to him just. His pamphlet was so ably reasoned that
William Leggett said to him, in my presence, "Mr. Verplanck, you have
convinced me; I was, till now, of a different opinion from yours, but you
have settled the question against me. I now see that whatever may be the
injustice of protective duties, Congress has the constitutional right to
impose them."

It was while this controversy was going on that President Jackson issued
his proclamation warning those who resisted the revenue laws that their
resistance was regarded as rebellion, and would be quelled at the
bayonet's point. Mr. Calhoun and his friends were not prepared for this:
indeed, I do not think that in any of his plans for the separate action of
the slave States, he contemplated a resort to arms on either side. They
looked about them to find some plausible pretext for submission, and this
the country was not unwilling to give. It was generally admitted that the
duties on imported goods ought to be reduced, and Mr. McLane, Secretary of
the Treasury, and Mr. Verplanck, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and
Means, each drew up a plan for lessening the burdens of the tariff.

Mr. McLane had just returned from a successful mission to Great Britain,
and had the advantage of considerable personal popularity. He was a
moderate protectionist, and with great pains drew up a scheme of duties
which kept the protection of home manufactures in view. Some branches of
industry, he thought, were so far advanced that they would bear a small
reduction of the duty; others a still larger; others were yet so weak that
they could not prosper unless the whole existing duty was retained. The
scheme was laid before Congress, but met with little attention from any
quarter; the southern politi