We have already, in the lecture on Jackson, described the Nullification episode, with the threatening protests against the tariff of 1828 and its amendments of 1832; Jackson’s prompt action; and Clay’s patriotic and earnest efforts resulting in the Compromise Tariff of March, 1833.  By this bill duties were to be gradually reduced from 25 per cent ad valorem to 20 per cent.  Mr. Webster was not altogether satisfied, nor were the extreme tariff men, who would have run the risks of the threatened nullification by South Carolina.  It proved, however, a popular measure, and did much to tranquillize the nation; yet it did not wholly satisfy the South, nor any extreme partisans, as compromises seldom do, and Clay lost many friends in consequence, a result which he anticipated and manfully met.  It led to one of his finest bursts of eloquence.

“I have,” said he, “been accused of ambition in presenting this measure.  Ambition! inordinate ambition!  Low, grovelling souls who are utterly incapable of elevating themselves to the higher and nobler duties of pure patriotism—­beings who, forever keeping their own selfish aims in view, decide all public measures by their presumed influence on their own aggrandizement—­judge me by the venal rule which they prescribe for themselves.  I am no candidate for any office in the gift of these States, united or separated.  I never wish, never expect to be.  Pass this bill, tranquillize the country, restore confidence and affection for the Union, and I am willing to go to Ashland and renounce public service forever.  Yes, I have ambition, but it is the ambition of being the humble instrument in the hands of Providence to reconcile a divided people, once more to revive concord and harmony in a distracted land,—­the pleasing ambition of contemplating the glorious spectacle of a free, united, prosperous, and fraternal people.”

The policy which Mr. Clay advocated with so much ability during the whole of his congressional life was that manufactures, as well as the culture of rice, tobacco, and cotton, would enrich this country, and therefore ought to be fostered and protected by Congress, whatever Mr. Hayne or Mr. Calhoun should say to the contrary, or even General Jackson himself, whose sympathies were with the South, and consequently with slavery.  Therefore Clay is called the father of the American System,—­he was the advocate, not of any local interests, but the interests of the country as a whole, thus establishing his claim to be a statesman rather than a politician who never looks beyond local and transient interests, and is especially subservient to party dictation.  The Southern politicians may not have wished to root out manufacturing altogether, but it was their policy to keep the agricultural interests in the ascendent.