Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/71

Rh market in which prices were kept low by the competition of the world. This feeling of injustice done was then most strongly manifested in the planting States; but it was shared by many in the North, who, the venerable Albert Gallatin prominent among them, in 1831 made strong demonstrations in favor of low duties. When, in spite of all this, in 1832 a revision of the tariff having been made necessary by a redundant revenue, the protective system was defiantly maintained in the tax laws of 1832, the nullification movement broke out in South Carolina, threatening to sweep over a large part of the South. That movement, attacking the very vitality of the republic, was frowned down by the best patriotic sentiment of the country. But the complaints of injustice done through the high tariff to the agricultural population were nevertheless widely recognized as just. They were, in fact, the same complaints that arise now from the wheat fields of the West, as well as from the cotton fields of the South, in constantly increasing volume. Thus it was high protection which, with all the partial prosperity it boasted of, had produced a discontent among those not favored by it, which at last came near endangering the peace of the country.

Such are the lessons taught by our first protective period from 1789 to 1833. Then came Clay's compromise tariff, practically recognizing the justice of the existing discontent and intended as a great act of conciliation. It put an end to the tariff of 1828, reducing duties by gradual diminution to a maximum of twenty per cent., to be reached in 1842. Crazy speculation and the wildest financial mismanagement, with which the tariff had nothing to do, brought on the great crisis of 1837. The depression following and the insufficiency of revenue were sought to be remedied by the tariff of 1842, again a protective one, but very short-lived. In 1846, when Polk was