efore our
manufactures--really "infant industries"--could compete successfully
with foreigners in anything. At the present time there are many
interests which need no protection at all, and the protection of these
interests, as a matter of course, fosters monopolies. And hence, the
progress which is continually being made in manufactures, enabling this
country to be independent of foreign industries, makes protective duties
on many articles undesirable now which were expedient and even necessary
sixty years ago,--an illustration of the fallacy of tariffs founded on
immutable principles, when they are simply matters of expediency
according to the changing interests of nations.

We have already, in the lecture on Jackson, described the Nullification
episode, with the threatening protests against the tariff of 1828 and
its amendments of 1832; Jackson's prompt action; and Clay's patriotic
and earnest efforts resulting in the Compromise Tariff of March, 1833.
By this bill duties were to be gradually reduced from 25 per cent _ad
valorem_ to 20 per cent. Mr. Webster was not altogether satisfied, nor
were the extreme tariff men, who would have run the risks of the
threatened nullification by South Carolina. It proved, however, a
popular measure, and did much to tranquillize the nation; yet it did not
wholly satisfy the South, nor any extreme partisans, as compromises
seldom do, and Clay lost many friends in consequence, a result which he
anticipated and manfully met. It led to one of his finest bursts of
eloquence.

"I have," said he, "been accused of ambition in presenting this measure.
Ambition! inordinate ambition! Low, grovelling souls who are utterly
incapable of elevating themselves to the higher and nobler duties of
pure patriotism--beings who, forever keeping their own selfish aims in
view, decide all public measures by their presumed influence on their
own aggrandizement--judge me by the venal rule which they prescribe for
themselves. I am no candidate for any office in the gift of these
States, united or separated. I never wish, never expect to be. Pass this
bill, tranquillize the country, restore confidence and affection for
the Union, and I am willing to go to Ashland and renounce public service
forever. Yes, I have ambition, but it is the ambition of being the
humble instrument in the hands of Providence to reconcile a divided
people, once more to revive concord and harmony in a distracted
land,--the pleasing amb