The resolution having been carried, the following gentlemen were
appointed to father Mr. Calhoun's paper: James Gregg, D.L. Wardlaw,
Hugh S. Legaré, Arthur P. Hayne, William C. Preston, William Elliott,
and R. Barnwell Smith. The duty of this committee consisted in causing
a copy of Mr. Calhoun's paper to be made and presenting it to the
Legislature. This was promptly done; and the Exposition was adopted by
the Legislature on the 6th of December, 1828. Whether any protest was
forwarded to the Secretary of the United States Senate for insertion
in the journal does not appear. We only know that five thousand copies
of this wearisome and stupid Exposition were ordered to be printed,
and that in the hubbub of the incoming of a new administration it
attracted scarcely any attention beyond the little knot of original
nullifiers. Indeed, Mr. Calhoun's writings on this subject were
"protected" by their own length and dulness. No creature ever read one
of them quite through, except for a special purpose.
The leading assertions of this Exposition are these:--1. Every duty
imposed for protection is a violation of the Constitution, which
empowers Congress to impose taxes for revenue only. 2. The _whole_
burden of the protective system is borne by agriculture and commerce.
3. The _whole_ of the advantages of protection accrue to the
manufacturing States. 4. In other words, the South, the Southwest, and
two or three commercial cities, support the government, and pour a
stream of treasure into the coffers of manufacturers. 5. The result
must soon be, that the people of South Carolina will have either to
abandon the culture of rice and cotton, and remove to some other
country, or else to become a manufacturing community, which would only
be ruin in another form.
Lest the reader should find it impossible to believe that any man out
of a lunatic asylum could publish such propositions as this last, we
will give the passage. Mr. Calhoun is endeavoring to show that Europe
will at length retaliate by placing high duties upon American cotton
and rice. At least that appears to be what he is aiming at.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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