Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/66

 hand of avarice. His bill was laid upon the table by a decisive vote. The bill which was finally passed, based largely upon the Mallory bill of the House Committee on Manufactures, met with little favor in South Carolina."

After the receipt of the first report in which the House committee declared itself adverse to any change, one paper after another in South Carolina began to urge that the state should be "anchored on her own energies" and "rely upon her own virtues." The report seemed to say that a System of consolidation would be fixed upon them, under which the southern states, taxed and oppressed for the benefit of the manufacturers, could not fail to sink into a deplorable state of poverty and degradation, unless!—unless they asserted their rights and strove for redress "by exercise of their own energies as sovereign states." It is worthy of notice that during these months the