With Adams still laboring on his bill, McDuffie called his up with a slashing speech. This prodigiously long philippic was historical in that it tended to force the issue of Nullification a little earlier than its sponsors had planned. In the meanwhile the Administration measure, with McLane’s report, had been submitted, providing for the repeal of the existing tariff after March 3, 1833, and the reduction of the revenue to the financial requirements of the Government. This contemplated the reduction of the revenue to $12,000,000 a year, and the arrangement of the rates so as sufficiently to protect the great interests involved. Using the Administration measure as a basis, Adams thereupon prepared his bill and report. In his statement the patriotic statesman, indifferent to the clamor of party, or class, or section, shines forth luminously. It may have been unnecessary to expose the protectionist’s fallacy that raising the duties lowers the price of the domestic product; equally unnecessary to warn the Southerners that a persistence in their course would lead to appalling consequences, but he made these points. In presenting his bill, Adams frankly explained that it was based on the Administration measure, with some changes as to details. With the Adams bill before it, the House made short shrift of the McDuffie measure. The protectionists were in despair. The Legislatures of Pennsylvania and Connecticut passed condemnatory resolutions, and mass meetings were held protesting against reductions. An unsuccessful attempt was made to substitute the Clay Senate plan. And yet Clay himself was fairly well satisfied, and on its passage in the House wrote that “with some alterations it will be a very good measure of protection.”[413] At the time he wrote, however, he was convinced that the alterations would be made in the Senate and accepted by the House, and upon the failure of these plans to materialize hangs another story of politics. The Senate lost no time making amendments, and as it was now July, with all anxious to adjourn, no time was wasted on unnecessary speeches, and the amendments, which were numerous, were hurried through. In a few instances, not many, the protectionists lost, but on the whole theirs was the victory when the bill went back to the House. There a few of the Senate amendments were accepted, but the majority were rejected and the bill was thrown into conference.