Then followed the great debates which led to the famous tariff of 1824, in which Mr. Clay, although Speaker of the House, took a prominent part in Committee of the Whole, advocating an increase of duties for the protection of American manufactures of iron, hemp, glass, lead, wool, woollen and cotton goods, while duties on importations which did not interfere with American manufactures were to be left on a mere revenue basis.  This tariff had become necessary, as he thought, in view of the prevailing distress produced by dependence on foreign markets.  He would provide a home consumption for American manufactures, and thus develop home industries, which could be done only by imposing import taxes that should “protect” them against foreign competition.  His speech on what he called the “American System” was one of the most elaborate he ever made, and Mr. Carl Schurz says of it that “his skill of statement, his ingenuity in the grouping of facts and principles, his plausibility of reasoning, his brilliant imagination, the fervor of his diction, the warm patriotic tone of his appeals” presented “the arguments which were current among high-tariff men then and which remain so still;” while, on the other hand, “his superficial research, his habit of satisfying himself with half-knowledge, and his disinclination to reason out propositions logically in all their consequences” gave incompleteness to his otherwise brilliant effort.  It made a great impression in spite of its weak points, and called out in opposition the extraordinary abilities of Daniel Webster, through whose massive sentences appeared his “superiority in keenness of analysis, in logical reasoning, in extent and accuracy of knowledge, in reach of thought and mastery of fundamental principles,” over all the other speakers of the day.  And this speech of.  Mr. Webster’s stands unanswered, notwithstanding the opposite views he himself maintained four years afterwards, when he spoke again on the tariff, but representing manufacturing interests rather than those of shipping and commerce, advocating expediency rather than abstract principles the truth of which cannot be gainsaid.  The bill as supported by Mr. Clay passed by a small majority, the members from the South generally voting against it.

After the tariff of 1824 the New England States went extensively into manufacturing, and the Middle States also.  The protective idea had become popular in the North, and, under strong protests from the agricultural South, in 1828 a new tariff bill was enacted, largely on the principle of giving more protection to every interest that asked for it.  This, called by its opponents “the tariff of abominations,” was passed while Clay was Secretary of State; the discontent under it was to give rise to Southern Nullification, and to afford Clay another opportunity to act as “pacificator.”  All this tariff war is set forth in clear detail in Professor Sumner’s “Life of Jackson.”