All the issues involved in the new Act were elaborately and intelligently debated. The first Congress contained a large proportion of the men who had just before been engaged in framing the Federal Constitution, and who were therefore fresh from the councils which had carefully considered and accurately measured the force of every provision of that great charter of government. It is therefore a fact of lasting importance that the first tariff law enacted under the Federal Government set forth its object in the most succinct and explicit language. It opened, after the excellent fashion of that day, with a stately preamble beginning with the emphatic "whereas," and declaring that "it is necessary for the support of government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, _and for the encouragement and protection of manufactures_, that duties be laid on imported goods, wares, and merchandise." Among the men who agreed to that declaration were some of the most eminent in our history. James Madison, then young enough to add junior to his name, was the most conspicuous; and associated with him were Richard Henry Lee, Theodorick Bland, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Rufus King, George Clymer, Oliver Ellsworth, Elias Boudinot, Fisher Ames, Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, Jonathan Trumbull, Lambert Cadwalader, Thomas Fitzsimons, the two Muhlenbergs, Thomas Tudor Tucker, Hugh Williamson, Abraham Baldwin, Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, and many other leading men, both from the North and the South.