interests for the temporary losses they might incur by reason of the increased duties. This was a strongly tinted picture upon both sides. It represented the distress of the country too darkly, and it painted the speculative benefits of the high tariff in too vivid colors. Moreover, Mr. Clay now omitted any reference to the temporary character of protection. It now appeared to be a permanent article of his creed. [Sidenote: Mr. Clay's argument answered.] [Sidenote: The first expression of the doctrine that protection and slavery were hostile interests.] Webster for Massachusetts, Cambreleng for the city of New York, and Barbour for the South, denied Mr. Clay's statement in regard to the intense and general financial distress throughout the country, and demonstrated the destructive effects of a high tariff upon agriculture and commerce, and upon the existing manufacturing interests themselves. They contended that such a tariff would so prohibit importation of foreign products as to make it impossible for Europe to buy the agricultural products of the United States, since Europe would not be able to pay for them; that the promised increase of domestic markets would not at all compensate for the loss of {114} foreign markets; that commerce would thus be destroyed both ways; and that even the manufacturing industries already established would suffer from the unnatural competition which would be created by the inducements which the high tariff would hold out to capital otherwise employed. Mr. Barbour frankly declared that the slave labor of the South could not be used in the development of manufactures, and that, therefore, the high tariff must inure to the benefit of the North, by making the South tributary to the North for all manufactured goods. The theory accepted by all parties, however, at the moment, was, that the duties were paid ultimately by the consumers of the imported goods. Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, pronounced this doctrine himself. Upon this view the North must pay the duties equally, at least, with the South. So long, then, as this idea was held, and so long as the commercial interests of Massachusetts, Maine, and the city of New York made common cause with the agricultural interests of the South against the bill, it could not be strictly regarded as sectional legislation, it could not develop into a political and constitutional question between the North and the South. [Sidenote: The bill amended and passed.] While this combination of interests was not able to prevent the House from finally passing the bill by a narrow majority, it did succeed in imposing several very substantial modifications upon it in the direction of more moderate protection.