d, thus diversifying their employment and
increasing their profits. "Would any man tell me," shouted the orator,
his eyes blazing, and his arms uplifted, "that this would impoverish the
country--would make paupers of the people? To increase the places where
the laborer may sell his labor would never make him a pauper. Be
controlled," said he, "in the administration of government and in all
other things, by the improvement of the age. Do not tie the living to
the dead. Others may despise the lights of science or experience; they
have a right, if they choose, to be governed by the dreams of economists
who have rejected practical evidence. But no such consistency is mine. I
will have none of it."

McDuffie in his speech declared that all the plundering which England
had been subjected to from the days of Hengist and Horsa could not equal
the plundering which the people of the exporting States had sustained.

Toombs answered that if a man must pay tax to sustain the government it
was better he should pay it in such a way as to benefit his own
countrymen than for the benefit of foreign manufacturers and foreign
capitalists.

Mr. Toombs alluded to a letter of James K. Polk to a Pennsylvania
manufacturer, as leaning toward protection.

McDuffie said that Polk's letter was "composed for that meridian."

"Henry Clay does not need an interpreter," cried Toombs. "He is the same
in the North as in the South. He would rather be right than President."

"Dallas, the Democratic nominee for vice president, is a high-tariff
man," said Toombs. "He voted for the tariff of 1832 and against the
compromise measures. Although the sword was drawn to drink the blood of
McDuffie's friends in Carolina, Dallas would still adhere to his pound
of flesh."

Toombs concluded his great reply to McDuffie: "We have lived under the
present order of things for fifty years, and can continue to live under
it for one thousand years to come, if the people of the South are but
content to stand upon their rights as guaranteed in the Constitution,
and not work confusion by listening to ambitious politicians: by taking
as much pains to preserve a good understanding with our Northern
brethren, the vast majority of whom are inclined to respect the
limitations of the Constitution."

This was perhaps the greatest political meeting Georgia ever held.
Politics were at white heat. Toombs and McDuffie each spoke two hours.
The campaign cry was for the Whigs: "Clay,