cians regarded it with scorn, as made up of
mere cheese-parings. Mr. Verplanck's plan of a tariff was more liberal. He
was not a protectionist, and his scheme contemplated a large reduction of
duties--as large as it was thought could possibly be adopted by
Congress--yet so framed as to cause as little inconvenience as might be to
the manufacturers. It was thought that Mr. Calhoun and his friends would
readily accept it as affording them a not ignoble retreat from their
dangerous position.

While these projects were before Congress, Mr. Littell, a gentleman of the
free-trade school, and now editor of the "Living Age," drew up a scheme of
revenue reform more thorough than either of the others. It proposed to
reduce the duties annually until, at the end of ten years the principle of
protection, which was what the southern politicians complained of, should
disappear from the tariff, and a system of duties take, its place which
should in no case exceed the rate of twenty per cent, on the value of the
commodity imported. The draft of this scheme was shown to Mr. Clay: he saw
at once that it would satisfy the southern politicians; he adopted it,
brought it before Congress, urged its enactment in several earnest
speeches, and by the help of his great influence over his party it was
rapidly carried through both houses, under the name of the Compromise
Tariff, to the astonishment of the friends of free-trade, the mill owners,
the Secretary of the Treasury, the Committee of Ways and Means, and, I
think, the country at large. I thought it hard measure for Mr. Verplanck
that the credit of this reform should be taken out of his hands by one who
had always been the great advocate of protective duties; but this was one
of the fortunate strokes of policy which Mr. Clay, when in the vigor of
his faculties, had the skill to make. He afterwards defended the measure
as inflicting no injury upon the manufacturers, and it never appeared to
lessen the good will which his party bore him.

About this time I was witness to a circumstance which showed the sagacity
of Mr. Verplanck in estimating the consequences of political measures. Mr.
Van Buren had been sent by President Jackson as our Minister to the
British Court while Congress was not in session, and the nomination yet
awaited confirmation by the Senate. It led to a long and spirited debate,
in which Mr. Marcy uttered the memorable maxim: "To the victor belong the
spoils of the enemy," which