Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/321

302 nullification, and nearly all of them were eager to prove that the new tariff was really a victory for the South. They reviewed recent tariff history for the purpose of proving that such a concession as the new bill embodied was much greater than could have been expected shortly before, when Congress had ridiculed a proposal by Hayne that no duty on any article should exceed 100 per cent. Now they had a law demanding the gradual reduction of the duty on every article to 20 per cent; ad valorem duties were to become general, and the abominable minimum system was to be abandoned; a number of articles received almost exclusively in return for the productions of the South were in a few months to be admitted duty-free. These same papers pointed out that the bill, though objectionable in some of its provisions, was decidedly more advantageous