It was Calhoun again, however, who surpassed them all in broadness of view and in patriotic devotion to the interests of the nation. The immediate occasion of {11} his speech was a motion made by John Randolph, which seemed to Mr. Calhoun to attack the principle of the bill. He said, that so long as the debate had been confined to questions of detail he had refrained from joining in it; but now that the general policy of the measure had been attacked he felt obliged to come forward in support of that policy, which he could do with all the more grace and sincerity since his own private interests were primarily subserved by the advancement of agriculture, as were those of his section. He began his argument with the assertions that commerce and agriculture were the chief sources of the wealth of the country at the moment, almost the only sources, and that manufactures must be added to these in order to accomplish industrial independence. In proof of this latter proposition he referred to the well known effect of war between a maritime power and the United States upon the prosperity of the latter. He simply pointed to the historic facts that such a war destroyed the commerce of the country with foreign powers, and that the destruction of commerce caused the products of agriculture, usually exported to pay for manufactured goods imported from foreign countries, to perish in the hands of the producers. Domestic manufactures, he contended, would not only relieve us from dependence upon foreign countries for manufactured goods, but would create home markets for agricultural products. Encouragement to manufactures was, therefore, a sound national, a truly American, policy. As Mr. Calhoun proceeded in his speech, his strong patriotism became more manifest. He affirmed that the policy of protection to manufactures was calculated to bind more closely together the different parts of our widely extended country, since it would increase the mutual dependence of these different sections on each {12} other in proportion as it decreased their dependence on foreign markets. And he declared that he considered the production of this result to be the most fundamental of all our policies, for the reason that the absence of such mutual dependence would tend toward disunion, and disunion comprehended almost the sum and substance of our political dangers, against which, therefore, we ought to be perpetually guarded. [Sidenote: The passage of the Tariff Bill.]