But the arrangements of calculating politicians often end in disappointments. Such was the misfortune of Mr. Calhoun. His ambitious and apparently well contrived plans had most of them an abortive and hapless termination. Observation and experience convinced him, after leaving Mr. Monroe's Cabinet, that the educated and reflective Statists or State rights men of the country, and especially of the South, would never sanction or be reconciled to the exercise of power by the Federal Government to protect the manufacturing interests of New England, or to construct roads and canals in the West, at the expense of the National Treasury. These were, however, favorite measures of a class of politicians of the period who had special interests to subserve, and who carried with them the consolidationists, or advocates of a strong and magnificent central government. The tariff, internal improvements, and kindred subjects became classified and known in the party politics of that day as the "American system"--a system of high taxes and large expenditures by the Federal Government--without specific constitutional authority for either. Parties were arrayed on opposite sides of this system, which, besides the political principles involved, soon partook of a sectional character. High and oppressive duties on importations, it was claimed, were imposed to foster certain industries in the North to the injury of the South. Henry Clay, a politician and statesman of wonderful magnetic power, was the eloquent champion of the "American system," and enlisted in his favor the large manufacturing interest in the North and the friends of internal improvement in the West. These measures were made national issues, and Mr. Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives, appropriated them to his personal advancement, and was their recognized leading advocate. Mr. Calhoun could not be second to his Western rival, but abandoned the policy of protection, internal improvements, and great national undertakings, and allied himself to the commercial and plantation interests, which opposed the system, expecting to identify himself with and to receive the support of the Statists. But the strict constructionists of Virginia, Georgia, and other States of the old Jefferson school distrusted him and withheld their confidence and support.