Hardly had the debate begun when Randolph, January 16, dragged the question of a protective system into the prominence it was thenceforward to maintain. Two years of repose had singularly improved his skill in the choice of language and in the instigation of class against class. “The manufacturer,” said he,[126] “is the citizen of no place or any place; the agriculturist has his property, his lands, his all, his household Gods to defend,--and like that meek drudge the ox, who does the labor and ploughs the ground, then for his reward takes the refuse of the farm-yard, the blighted blades and the mouldy straw, and the mildewed shocks of corn for his support.... Alert, vigilant, enterprising, and active, the manufacturing interest are collected in masses, and ready to associate at a moment’s warning for any purpose of general interest to their body. Do but ring the fire-bell, and you can assemble all the manufacturing interest of Philadelphia in fifteen minutes. Nay, for the matter of that they are always assembled; they are always on the Rialto, and Shylock and Antonio meet there every day as friends, and compare notes, and possess in trick and intelligence what, in the goodness of God to them, the others can never possess.” Randolph’s political sagacity was nowhere better shown than in replying, Jan. 31, 1816, to a speech of Calhoun: “On whom do your impost duties bear?” he asked.[127] “Upon whom bears the duty on coarse woollens and linens and blankets, upon salt, and all the necessaries of life? On poor men, and on slaveholders.” With a perception abnormally keen, Randolph fixed on the tariff and the slaveholders as the necessary combination to oppose the nationalizing efforts of Calhoun and Clay. No leader of note supported Randolph. He stood alone, or with only the support of Stanford, as far as concerned debate; but he led nearly half the House. Upon Benjamin Hardin’s motion, February 3, to repeal the direct tax immediately and altogether, a motion which struck at the root of Dallas’s scheme, the House decided by eighty-one votes against seventy-three to sustain the secretary. On the passage of the bill to continue the direct tax of three million dollars for one year, the minority lacked but a change of three votes to defeat it. The bill passed, March 4, by a vote of sixty-seven to sixty-three.