“The gentleman from Massachusetts has declared this bill to be an attempt, by one portion of the Union for its own peculiar advantage, to impose ruinous taxes on another. He has represented it as an effort to compel the agriculturists of the South to pay tribute to the manufacturers of the North; he has proclaimed it to be a tyrannical measure. He has gone further, and boldly declared that the people of the South should resist such a law, and that they ought to resist it. The gentlemen from Massachusetts and Georgia (Mr. Tattnall) have proclaimed it tyranny, and tyranny which ought to be resisted. I confess I never expected to hear inflammatory speeches of this kind within these walls which ought to be sacred to union; I never expected to hear the East counselling the South to resistance, that we might thus be deterred from prosecuting a measure of policy, urged upon us by the necessities of the country. It was by a combination between the cotton-growers of the South and the manufacturers of the North, that the introduction of coarse cottons from abroad has been in effect prohibited by the high rates of duties. It is ungenerous, then, for the South and the East to sound the tocsin of alarm and resistance when we wish indirectly to benefit the agriculturists and manufacturers of the Middle and Western States by the imposition of necessary duties. If I know myself, I am a politician neither of the East nor of the West, of the North nor of the South; I, therefore, shall forever avoid any expressions, the direct tendency of which must be to create sectional jealousies, sectional divisions, and, at length, disunion—that worst and last of all political calamities. I will never consent to adopt a general restrictive system, because the agricultural class of the community would then be left at the mercy of the manufacturers. The interest of the many would thus be sacrificed to promote the wealth of the few. The farmer, in addition to the premium which he would be compelled to pay the manufacturer, would have also to sustain the expenses of the Government. If this bill proposed a system which leads to such abuses, it should not receive my support. If I could, for a single moment, believe in the language of the gentleman from Georgia—that this bill would compel the agricultural to bow down before the manufacturing interest—I should consider myself a traitor to my country in giving it any support.” In the subsequent Congress, Mr. Buchanan spoke twice on the subject of the tariff, namely, March 23d and April 9th, 1824. But the foregoing extract from his speech in February, 1823, is sufficient to show how moderate and just his views were on the subject of protection.