Mr. President, this power of discrimination, thus admitted, avowed, and practised upon in the first revenue act, has never been denied or doubted until within a few years past.  It was not at all doubted in 1816, when it became necessary to adjust the revenue to a state of peace.  On the contrary, the power was then exercised, not without opposition as to its expediency, but, as far as I remember or have understood, without the slightest opposition founded on any supposed want of constitutional authority.  Certainly, SOUTH CAROLINA did not doubt it.  The tariff of 1816 was introduced, carried through, and established, under the lead of South Carolina.  Even the minimum policy is of South Carolina origin.  The honorable gentleman himself supported, and ably supported, the tariff of 1816.  He has informed us, Sir, that his speech on that occasion was sudden and off-hand, he being called up by the request of a friend.  I am sure the gentleman so remembers it, and that it was so; but there is, nevertheless, much method, arrangement, and clear exposition in that extempore speech.  It is very able, very, very much to the point, and very decisive.  And in another speech, delivered two months earlier, on the proposition to repeal the internal taxes, the honorable gentleman had touched the same subject, and had declared “that a certain encouragement ought to be extended at least to our woollen and cotton manufactures.”  I do not quote these speeches, Sir, for the purpose of showing that the honorable gentleman has changed his opinion:  my object is other and higher.  I do it for the sake of saying that that cannot be so plainly and palpably unconstitutional as to warrant resistance to law, nullification, and revolution, which the honorable gentleman and his friends have heretofore agreed to and acted upon without doubt and without hesitation.  Sir, it is no answer to say that the tariff of 1816 was a revenue bill.  So are they all revenue bills.  The point is, and the truth is, that the tariff of 1816, like the rest, did discriminate; it did distinguish one article from another; it did lay duties for protection.  Look to the case of coarse cottons under the minimum calculation:  the duty on these was from sixty to eighty per cent.  Something beside revenue, certainly, was intended in this; and, in fact, the law cut up our whole commerce with India in that article.

It is, Sir, only within a few years that Carolina has denied the constitutionality of these protective laws.  The gentleman himself has narrated to us the true history of her proceedings on this point.  He says, that, after the passing of the law of 1828, despairing then of being able to abolish the system of protection, political men went forth among the people, and set up the doctrine that the system was unconstitutional. “And the people,” says the honorable gentleman, “received the doctrine.”  This, I believe, is true, Sir.  The people did then receive the doctrine;