Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/205

Rh we shall see, each of these questions that had in turn been apparently settled, were only deferred; except the tariff and internal improvements. The latter of these was practically settled during Houston's connection with the House, and the latter was battled through during his absence. Each of the three remaining questions, relations to the African, Indian, and Mexican races, by the annexation of Texas and the entrance of Houston again into Congress, were to be rediscussed under new circumstances, and to be settled under new complications.

The question "battled through" during Houston's separation from Congress, as intimated, was the tariff. As already noted, Daniel Webster, who in the history of the American Union will, from the force of succeeding events, be regarded the exponent of a tariff for protection rather than for revenue, was really, at the commencement and to the close of his career, the student of a revenue system which should promote commerce rather than manufactures; inviting, instead of excluding, the purchase of foreign products, and seeking, by a careful observation of the effect of a high or low tariff, to so adjust the amount of revenue levied on foreign goods as to promote at the same time the wish of the people who bought, and of the Treasury whose chief supply must come from that revenue. No man, in the history of the American Union, brought more careful observation of facts, and more sagacious adaptation of legislation to this end, than did Mr. Webster; and that this was his ruling aim his whole course in Congress indicates. Having pursued with success this aim in the House, from 1823 to 1827, he consented to come into the Senate, where he was prominent from 1827 to 1841. In 1828, though from expediency personally advocating a different course, he gave his adhesion to the high protective tariff which bore unfavorably on the interests of the cotton-growing States. Elected in 1828 as President, aside from this issue, Jackson was understood to be opposed to the measures fixed under the administration of President Adams. Submitting for two or three years to its depressing influence on her productive industry, South Carolina called a convention of her citizens, whose representatives, recurring to the injurious requirement before acted upon, that the State should be taxed to pay for internal improvements in whose benefits she had no share, now urged more strongly the prostration of her industries, which the high tariff for the protection of Northern manufacturers had produced. In November, 1832, just after the vote which was to make Jackson President for a second term, the Convention of South Carolina passed the ordinance of "Nullification," so called from these declarations:—That the existing ordinance of