ht.

Then followed the great debates which led to the famous tariff of 1824,
in which Mr. Clay, although Speaker of the House, took a prominent part
in Committee of the Whole, advocating an increase of duties for the
protection of American manufactures of iron, hemp, glass, lead, wool,
woollen and cotton goods, while duties on importations which did not
interfere with American manufactures were to be left on a mere revenue
basis. This tariff had become necessary, as he thought, in view of the
prevailing distress produced by dependence on foreign markets. He would
provide a home consumption for American manufactures, and thus develop
home industries, which could be done only by imposing import taxes that
should "protect" them against foreign competition. His speech on what he
called the "American System" was one of the most elaborate he ever made,
and Mr. Carl Schurz says of it that "his skill of statement, his
ingenuity in the grouping of facts and principles, his plausibility of
reasoning, his brilliant imagination, the fervor of his diction, the
warm patriotic tone of his appeals" presented "the arguments which were
current among high-tariff men then and which remain so still;" while,
on the other hand, "his superficial research, his habit of satisfying
himself with half-knowledge, and his disinclination to reason out
propositions logically in all their consequences" gave incompleteness to
his otherwise brilliant effort. It made a great impression in spite of
its weak points, and called out in opposition the extraordinary
abilities of Daniel Webster, through whose massive sentences appeared
his "superiority in keenness of analysis, in logical reasoning, in
extent and accuracy of knowledge, in reach of thought and mastery of
fundamental principles," over all the other speakers of the day. And
this speech of. Mr. Webster's stands unanswered, notwithstanding the
opposite views he himself maintained four years afterwards, when he
spoke again on the tariff, but representing manufacturing interests
rather than those of shipping and commerce, advocating expediency rather
than abstract principles the truth of which cannot be gainsaid. The bill
as supported by Mr. Clay passed by a small majority, the members from
the South generally voting against it.

After the tariff of 1824 the New England States went extensively into
manufacturing, and the Middle States also. The protective idea had
become popular in the North, and, under