79
WRITINGS OF SA:M HOUSTON, 1849
Unwilling to acknowledge this allegiance for myself or my con- stituents, I shall take the liberty of examining how far Mr. Cal- houn's asserted authority over Southern policy is allowed or allowable. Has he the confidence of the South? Does he deserve it? This is a point I would settle before I turn to my personal issues with him. Mr. Calhoun has been for many years the representative of South Carolina in the National Councils; but has he ever repre- sented the South? Has he ever deserved or received the support of the South, generally? Has he ever served the true interests, the true glory, or the true feeling of the South in its domestic policy? Take the great leading measure, which has cost so much bitterness and strife, and threatened such a fatal catastrophe. What has been his career on the tariff? He was a leading mem- ber of Congress, and contributed, at the close of the war in 1816, to convert the revenue laws into a protective system-into a prohibitory code-in regard to the coarse manufactures, which were necessaries with the great body of the people. The most odious and iniquitous feature that ever marked the fraudulent system, which, under pretense of collecting revenue for the Government, gave a monopoly to manufacturing capitalists to levy taxes on the loom through every article of their apparel, was prominent in the tariff which Mr. Calhoun first assisted in estab- lishing. Its feature of minimums charged the coarser and cheaper articles, worn by the many, with a rising duty ten times the tax (value considered) levied on the finer and higher priced articles used by those better able, and, by every principle more justly bound to bear the greater burden. Mr. Calhoun's first tariff for "protection," designed to put manufactures "beyond the reach of contingency," as he declared, thus reversing many ideas of equity, not only as it regarded sections, but individuals. T.he strong and rich were protected, not only from the payment of a fair impost to the government, in proportion to their means, but were protected, by a monopoly, in laying upon the producing multitude an impost to increase the profits of their capital, which, itself exempted from taxation, left the weight of the government to fall on that portion of the community already oppressed by the manufacturers' exactions. Mr. Calhoun's tariff of fraudulent minimums, and other covert contrivances to build up wealth and command political influence in the associated monopolies of the
Powered by FlippingBook