Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/208

Rh of despotic governments throughout the continent.

One of the points upon which the State Rights men relied to demonstrate that South Carolina was justified in taking extreme measures of redress was the allegation that, because of the oppression under which the state suffered, she was in a ruinous condition of decay. They declared that it was notorious that every kind of property had fallen greatly in value; that all classes of her citizens were embarrassed; that South Carolina's commerce was expiring, her agriculture depressed, the spirit of enterprise gone; that emigration was alarmingly increasing—in short, that South Carolina, once so prosperous and happy, now exhibited the most melancholy evidences of a general decay. And why was this? It had all arisen from an artificial, sectional, and tyrannical system of legislation, by which the state was crippled in order that northern manufactures might increase, and drained of her resources in order that the West might be provided with roads and canals.

There was, however, abundant testimony contradicting the statements concerning this decay