Turning with prophetic ken to his Augusta friends, he asked what would be the effect were the Savannah River turned through the beautiful plains of Augusta, and manufactures built up where the industrious could find employment. Hundreds of persons, he said, would be brought together to spin the raw cotton grown in the State, to consume the provisions which the farmers raised, thus diversifying their employment and increasing their profits. "Would any man tell me," shouted the orator, his eyes blazing, and his arms uplifted, "that this would impoverish the country--would make paupers of the people? To increase the places where the laborer may sell his labor would never make him a pauper. Be controlled," said he, "in the administration of government and in all other things, by the improvement of the age. Do not tie the living to the dead. Others may despise the lights of science or experience; they have a right, if they choose, to be governed by the dreams of economists who have rejected practical evidence. But no such consistency is mine. I will have none of it." McDuffie in his speech declared that all the plundering which England had been subjected to from the days of Hengist and Horsa could not equal the plundering which the people of the exporting States had sustained. Toombs answered that if a man must pay tax to sustain the government it was better he should pay it in such a way as to benefit his own countrymen than for the benefit of foreign manufacturers and foreign capitalists. Mr. Toombs alluded to a letter of James K. Polk to a Pennsylvania manufacturer, as leaning toward protection. McDuffie said that Polk's letter was "composed for that meridian." "Henry Clay does not need an interpreter," cried Toombs. "He is the same in the North as in the South. He would rather be right than President." "Dallas, the Democratic nominee for vice president, is a high-tariff man," said Toombs. "He voted for the tariff of 1832 and against the compromise measures. Although the sword was drawn to drink the blood of McDuffie's friends in Carolina, Dallas would still adhere to his pound of flesh." Toombs concluded his great reply to McDuffie: "We have lived under the present order of things for fifty years, and can continue to live under it for one thousand years to come, if the people of the South are but content to stand upon their rights as guaranteed in the Constitution, and not work confusion by listening to ambitious politicians: by taking as much pains to preserve a good understanding with our Northern brethren, the vast majority of whom are inclined to respect the limitations of the Constitution."