This conflictive situation evolved presently industrial complications and disturbances of the gravest national importance. Following the treaty of Ghent, the South fell into financial difficulties, and experienced quite generally an increasing pressure of hard times. Although wealthy and prosperous heretofore, it then began to exhibit symptoms of industrial weakness, and to assume more and more a dependent attitude toward the monied classes of the free States. On the other hand, the free industrialism of those States waxed bolder in demands for national protection with the thing it fed on. Its cry was always for more, and so the tariff of 1816 was followed by that of 1824, and it in turn by the one of 1828, during which period industrial depression reached a crisis in the South, producing widespread distress among its slave-planting interests. Here is Benton's gloomy picture of that section in 1828: "In place of wealth a universal pressure for money was felt; not enough for common expenses; the price of all property down; the country drooping and languishing; towns and cities decaying, and the frugal habits of the people pushed to the verge of universal self-denial for the preservation of their family estates." What was the cause of all this misfortune and misery? Benton found it, and other Southern leaders also, in the unequal action of federal fiscal legislation. "Under this legislation," he shrewdly remarks, "the exports of the South have been made the basis of the federal revenue. The twenty-odd millions annually levied upon imported goods are deducted out of the price of their cotton, rice and tobacco, either in the diminished prices which they receive for these staples in foreign ports, or in the increased price which they pay for the articles they have to consume at home."