The advocates of the measure in the second debate made use of the national spirit as they had in the first. Clay's "American system," as the protective policy began to be called, was declared a remedy for the commercial depression under which the country suddenly found itself suffering. Petitions, asking such relief, poured into Congress. The economic conditions of Europe had become adjusted to peace, a condition which had not existed since the Constitution had been first put into execution. The United States began to realise the force of competition. The distress which prevailed in European countries a few years before was suddenly transferred to the United States. A barrier to keep out European goods and secure American interdependence seemed necessary. Clay came down from the Speaker's chair to the floor of the House to plead his policy of home production and home consumption, a principle for which he had fought a duel in his early Kentucky days, when he had been pronounced a demagogue for advocating dressing in homespun. He was now accused by the opposition of aiming at a total prohibition of foreign goods regardless of the resulting distress to the consumer. "Protection in 1816 has grown to prohibition in 1824," exclaimed a speaker. "This is the consummation of the 'American policy,'" said Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, whose brilliant oratory was making him the rival of Calhoun as the Southern spokesman. "A policy foreign in all its features, confessedly borrowed from Great Britain, and Chinese in its character, the policy of kings and tyrants, of restriction and monopoly." If Britain has at any time since complained of American protective policy, she must remember that it was inherited by British colonies, and was fostered by a desire to retaliate on her with her own methods before she became a freetrader. The debates on tariff and public improvements of 1824 indicated a speedy termination of the era of good feeling and a return to some kind of political parties. This was to be accomplished not by a revival of the old Federalists and Republicans, but by a division in the ranks of the leaders. The Republicans, as has been pointed out in preceding pages, were so transformed as to be scarcely recognisable. Only an occasional veto and a conservative minority stood between old party principles and the desires of an expanding people and the demands of growing industries. The old Republicans were bewildered by the onward march of events under the hand of compulsion. Familiar landmarks had disappeared. "We have our bank," complained one writer, "our standing army, our permanent navy, with all the officers, sub-officers, and their connections, ramified throughout the whole nation, all of which appears to me to be of a piece and in direct hostility with the liberties of the people. The people seem contented with the government's pursuing a policy which in 1800 caused a complete revolution."