Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/47

 and held that just cause for its exercise did not exist. He then proceeded to show the fallacy of the contention that the tariff operated so as to levy on one part of the community a tribute to be bestowed as a bounty on another. To him the idea of regarding it as a tribute levied by a few, the manufacturers, upon the many, the consumers, was absurd, and the calculations by which the consumers of goods not actually imported were shown to be tributary to the manufacturers in proportion to the amount of the duty that would be paid on the goods if imported seemed to him theoretical folly contradicted by the clearest practical proof. The tariff was not an arbitrary, uncalled-for interference of the government, but an institution arising from a combination of circumstances which could not be well overlooked by a vigilant and paternal government striving to assist the laudable aims of one part of the community without imposing any sacrifice upon another. Neither would it in its remote, any more than in its immediate, effects result in injustice or oppression to the consumers of the South. There were certain classes in the North whom it would affect indeed far more than it would the South. As for the southern agriculturists, the