and where participation of the masses in
the business of government reaches its fullest and freest expression. The
freer and the more intelligent a people, all things else being equal, the
more productive will be their labor over that of a rival's who may be
wanting in these regards. The early and unexpected revival and expansion
of slavery in the South was thus followed and met by a rapid
counterexpansion of free industrialism at the North on an extraordinary
scale.

This conflictive situation evolved presently industrial complications and
disturbances of the gravest national importance. Following the treaty of
Ghent, the South fell into financial difficulties, and experienced quite
generally an increasing pressure of hard times. Although wealthy and
prosperous heretofore, it then began to exhibit symptoms of industrial
weakness, and to assume more and more a dependent attitude toward the
monied classes of the free States. On the other hand, the free
industrialism of those States waxed bolder in demands for national
protection with the thing it fed on. Its cry was always for more, and so
the tariff of 1816 was followed by that of 1824, and it in turn by the one
of 1828, during which period industrial depression reached a crisis in the
South, producing widespread distress among its slave-planting interests.

Here is Benton's gloomy picture of that section in 1828: "In place of
wealth a universal pressure for money was felt; not enough for common
expenses; the price of all property down; the country drooping and
languishing; towns and cities decaying, and the frugal habits of the
people pushed to the verge of universal self-denial for the preservation
of their family estates." What was the cause of all this misfortune and
misery? Benton found it, and other Southern leaders also, in the unequal
action of federal fiscal legislation. "Under this legislation," he
shrewdly remarks, "the exports of the South have been made the basis of
the federal revenue. The twenty-odd millions annually levied upon imported
goods are deducted out of the price of their cotton, rice and tobacco,
either in the diminished prices which they receive for these staples in
foreign ports, or in the increased price which they pay for the articles
they have to consume at home."

The storm centre of this area of industrial depression passed over
Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. The very heart of the slave system
was thus attacked by the unequal fis