On the tariff the House was more closely divided. The Committee of Ways and Means consisted of seven members. Lowndes was chairman. Three other members were from the South, one of whom, Robertson of Louisiana, wished protection for sugar. Three members were from the North, one of whom, Ingham of Pennsylvania, represented Dallas’s views. The chief question concerned the duty on cottons and woollens. So close was the division that Ingham, to use his own words, was struck dumb with astonishment when the committee, after adopting a duty of fifty-six per cent for the protection of sugar, voted to impose a duty of only twenty per cent on cottons and woollens. “It was, however, too glaringly inconsistent and palpably wrong to be persisted in, and therefore it was that the Committee of Ways and Means, upon reconsideration, substituted the twenty-five per cent which was reported in the bill.”[128] When the bill came before the House, Clay moved, March 21, to substitute the rate of thirty-three and one third per cent for that of twenty-five per cent on cottons, for the express purpose of testing the sense of the House. Clay and the Northern protectionists held that the committee’s bill did not afford protection enough. The committee, also admitting the propriety of protection, maintained that twenty-five per cent was sufficient. On both sides some temper was shown, and charges of sectionalism were made. By a vote of sixty-eight to sixty-one, the House in committee voted, March 22, to impose a duty of thirty per cent. Daniel Webster then moved to limit this rate to two years, after which the duty should be twenty-five per cent for two years more, when it should be reduced to twenty per cent. Finally the House adopted a duty of twenty-five per cent for three years. Webster also carried, March 27, a motion to reduce the proposed duty on bar-iron from seventy-five to forty-five cents a hundred weight. All the members of note, except Randolph, professed to favor protection. Calhoun was as decided as Ingham. “He believed the policy of the country required protection to our manufacturing establishments.”[129] The bill was assumed to offer protection enough, and the House disputed only whether the adopted duties were or were not sufficient. The actual free-trade sentiment was shown, April 8, when Randolph made a final motion to postpone, and was beaten by a vote of ninety-five to forty-seven.