Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/16

6 he recommended a gradual diminution of duties to the revenue standard “as soon as a just regard to the faith of the government and to the preservation of the large capital invested in establishments of domestic industry will permit.” He alluded to the discontent created by the high tariff, adding that the people could not be expected to pay high taxes for the benefit of the manufacturers, when the revenue was not required for the administration of the government. He also mentioned the opposition to the collection of the revenue in one quarter of the United States, but hoped that the laws would be found adequate to the suppression thereof.

The message did not foreshadow a strong policy. John Quincy Adams wrote in his Diary: “It goes to dissolve the Union into its original elements, and is in substance a complete surrender to the nullifiers of South Carolina.” Neither did it alarm the nullifiers. They saw reason to think that Jackson, who in the case of the Georgia Indians had acquiesced in the most extravagant pretensions of the state, even refusing to enforce a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, did not materially differ from them as to the doctrine of state-rights. But both Mr. Adams and the nullifiers were mistaken.

Six days later, on December 10, came out Jackson's famous proclamation against the nullifiers, which spoke thus: —

“The Constitution of the United States forms a gov-