passed, earnestly requesting South Carolina not to proceed further under the ordinance, etc., and declaring that the people of Virginia expect that the General Government and the government of South Carolina will carefully abstain from all acts calculated to disturb the tranquillity of the country.

"After further resolving that they adhere to the principles of the Virginia resolutions of 1798, but that they do not consider them as sanctioning the proceedings of South Carolina, or the President's Proclamation, they proceeded to appoint Benjamin W. Leigh, as a commissioner on the part of the State, to proceed to South Carolina, to communicate the resolutions, etc.

"The State of New Hampshire expressed no opinion as to the doctrines of South Carolina, but the Legislature passed resolutions in favor of reducing the tariff to the revenue standard.

"On the other hand, the Legislatures of Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania”—manufacturing States-"declared themselves to be opposed to any modification of the tariff."

After the evident intention of Congress to adjust the tariff so as to avoid a collision between General Jackson and South Carolina had abated the excitement in that State, its political leaders held a convention in Charleston (January 31), and resolved that the nullification ordinance and the laws passed in pursuance of it should be suspended during the then session of Congress. 2

Congress had much difficulty in agreeing to a satis

1 Statesman's Manual, Volume II, pages 1,008-1,010.

2 The fairness of New England historians can be inferred from the following remark made by Montgomery (p. 243): "So saying, the President ordered General Scott to go forthwith to Charleston and enforce the law. It was done, and the duties on imported goods in that city were collected as usual."

factory bill; but at last a bill was passed, 119 to 95 in the House and 29 to 16 in the Senate, and was approved by the President on the 2d of March.

Mr. Calhoun, in a speech approving the bill, said: "He who loves the Union must desire to see this agitating question brought to a termination. Until it should be terminated, we could not expect a restoration of peace or harmony, or a sound condition of things, throughout the country. He believed that to the unhappy divisions which had kept the Northern and Southern States apart from each other, the present entirely degraded condition of the country, for entirely degraded he believed it to be, was solely attributable.

* * *

"He said that it had been his fate to occupy a position as hostile as any one could in reference to the protecting policy; but, if it depended on his will, he would not give his vote for the prostration of the manufacturing interest. A very large capital had been invested in manufactures, which had been of great service to the country, and he would never give his vote to suddenly withdraw all those duties by which that capital was sustained in the channel into which it had been directed.” Such was the end of the seventh nullification.' The act provided "that where the duties exceeded 20 per cent, there should be one-tenth part of the excess deducted after December 30, 1833, and one-tenth each alternate year, until December 31, 1841, when one-half of the residue was to be deducted, and after June 30, 1842, the duties on all goods were to be reduced to 20 per cent."

But although the tariff struggle had been thus ended for the time, it had left wounds on the Constitution

'South Carolina's Convention reassembed on the 11th of March, and repealed her nullification ordinance.

which never healed. The doctrines taught by Daniel Webster and Andrew Jackson, which they both shrank from in after years-the former in 1851, and the latter in 1837-made impressions on the people which were destined to lead to deplorable results.

CHAPTER XV.

SUGAR AND RUM DRAWBACKS, AND FRAUDS: ANOTHER BURDEN ON THE SOUTH.

Any attempt to sum up the wrongs attending our tariff legislation would be incomplete if it omitted the favors granted to, and the frauds practiced by, the refiners of sugar and the distillers of rum. Our sources of information are meagre; it would be a reflection on the cuteness of "the wise men of the East" to suppose otherwise. But enough has been made public to warrant the suspicion that these two classes of "patriots" have been handsomely rewarded for their share in building up "home" industries, and rendering us independent of foreigners.

It was only simple justice to return to the refiner of sugar for export and to the distiller of rum for export the duties which had been paid on the raw sugar and the molasses consumed in their operations; and accordingly provision was made in the early tariff acts for these drawbacks.

The results were what might have been expected; Louisiana sugar was mixed with imported sugars, and cheap whiskey was mixed with the rum.

As far back as the session of Congress which met in December, 1827, it was proved before a committee of the House of Representatives that large quantities of cheap whiskey were used in the manufacture of New England rum, having been deprived of its peculiar taste and flavor by filtration through charcoal; and that the exporters of this rum demanded and received the drawback they would have been entitled to if nothing but imported molasses had been used in the manufacture. The sugar refiners, however, escaped public attention

till after the revelations made by the working of the compromise tariff act of 1833. That act provided for a reduction of import taxes on molasses and raw sugar, but it made no corresponding reduction of the drawbacks. Hence the reports of the Treasury Department made the revelation that in 1837 the drawback on exported refined sugar exceeded the revenue collected on imported raw sugar by $861.71; and that in 1839 about all the molasses imported (392,368 gallons) was exported as rum (356,699 gallons), leaving for the "home market" no rum and no molasses except that produced in Louisiana.

The excess of drawback on sugar (according to Doc. No. 275, submitted to the Senate by the Secretary of the Treasury in the winter of 1839 and 1840) rose in 1838 to $12,690, and in 1839 to $20,154; and the report showed that in 1839 the refiners exported 400,000 pounds of sugar more than was imported.

It went further; it estimated that the excess of the sugar drawback, supposing the amount imported not to increase over what it was in 1839, would be $37,343 in 1840, $37,343 in 1841, $114,693 in 1842, and $140,477 in 1843.1

The beneficiaries of these bounties and frauds were twenty-nine refineries, "the whole of which," said Mr. Benton, "omitting some small ones in the West, and three in New Orleans, were situate on the north side of Mason and Dixon's line."

The frauds perpetrated by the distillers seem to have been productive of more "gayneful pilladge" than the sugar frauds. The average yield of a gallon of molasses, according to evidence in Mr. Benton's possession, was less than a gallon of rum. But the census of 1850

1See chapter 53, Volume II, Thirty Years' View.