s of enterprising and
self-made men, who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient
and diligent labor. Comparisons are odious, and but in defence would
not be made by me. But is there more tendency to aristocracy in a
manufactory, supporting hundreds of freemen, or in a cotton plantation,
with its not less numerous slaves, sustaining perhaps only two white
families--that of the master and the overseer?

I pass, with pleasure, from this disagreeable topic, to two general
propositions which cover the entire ground of debate. The first is,
that, under the operation of the American system, the objects which it
protects and fosters are brought to the consumer at cheaper prices than
they commanded prior to its introduction, or, than they would command if
it did not exist. If that be true, ought not the country to be contented
and satisfied with the system, unless the second proposition, which I
mean presently also to consider, is unfounded? And that is, that the
tendency of the system is to sustain, and that it has upheld, the prices
of all our agricultural and other produce, including cotton.

And is the fact not indisputable that all essential objects of
consumption affected by the tariff are cheaper and better since the act
of 1824 than they were for several years prior to that law? I appeal for
its truth to common observation, and to all practical men. I appeal to
the farmer of the country whether he does not purchase on better
terms his iron, salt, brown sugar, cotton goods, and woollens, for his
laboring people? And I ask the cotton-planter if he has not been better
and more cheaply supplied with his cotton-bagging? In regard to this
latter article, the gentleman from South Carolina was mistaken in
supposing that I complained that, under the existing duty, the Kentucky
manufacturer could not compete with the Scotch. The Kentuckian furnishes
a more substantial and a cheaper article, and at a more uniform and
regular price. But it was the frauds, the violations of law, of which I
did complain; not smuggling, in the common sense of that practice, which
has something bold, daring, and enterprising in it, but mean, barefaced
cheating, by fraudulent invoices and false denominations.

I plant myself upon this fact, of cheapness and superiority, as upon
impregnable ground. Gentlemen may tax their ingenuity, and produce a
thousand speculative solutions of the fact, but the fact itself will
remain undisturbed. Let u