If the tariff adopted at the last session of Congress
shall be found by experience to bear oppressively upon the interests of
any one section of the Union, it ought to be, and I can not doubt will
be, so modified as to alleviate its burden. To the voice of just
complaint from any portion of their constituents the representatives of
the States and of the people will never turn away their ears. But so
long as the duty of the foreign shall operate only as a bounty upon the
domestic article; while the planter and the merchant and the shepherd
and the husbandman shall be found thriving in their occupations under
the duties imposed for the protection of domestic manufactures, they
will not repine at the prosperity shared with themselves by their
fellow-citizens of other professions, nor denounce as violations of the
Constitution the deliberate acts of Congress to shield from the wrongs
of foreign laws the native industry of the Union. While the tariff of
the last session of Congress was a subject of legislative deliberation
it was foretold by some of its opposers that one of its necessary
consequences would be to impair the revenue.
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