“Resolved, That it is expedient to protest against the unconstitutional and oppressive operation of the system of protective duties, and to have such protest entered on the journals of the Senate of the United States.  Also, to make a public exposition of our wrongs, and of the remedies within our power, to be communicated to our sister States, with a request that they will co-operate with this State in procuring a repeal of the tariff for protection, and an abandonment of the principle; and if the repeal be not procured, that they will co-operate in such measures as may be necessary for averting the evil.

     “Resolved, That a committee of seven be raised to carry
     the foregoing resolution into effect.”

The resolution having been carried, the following gentlemen were appointed to father Mr. Calhoun’s paper:  James Gregg, D.L.  Wardlaw, Hugh S. Legare, Arthur P. Hayne, William C. Preston, William Elliott, and R. Barnwell Smith.  The duty of this committee consisted in causing a copy of Mr. Calhoun’s paper to be made and presenting it to the Legislature.  This was promptly done; and the Exposition was adopted by the Legislature on the 6th of December, 1828.  Whether any protest was forwarded to the Secretary of the United States Senate for insertion in the journal does not appear.  We only know that five thousand copies of this wearisome and stupid Exposition were ordered to be printed, and that in the hubbub of the incoming of a new administration it attracted scarcely any attention beyond the little knot of original nullifiers.  Indeed, Mr. Calhoun’s writings on this subject were “protected” by their own length and dulness.  No creature ever read one of them quite through, except for a special purpose.

The leading assertions of this Exposition are these:—­1.  Every duty imposed for protection is a violation of the Constitution, which empowers Congress to impose taxes for revenue only. 2.  The whole burden of the protective system is borne by agriculture and commerce. 3.  The whole of the advantages of protection accrue to the manufacturing States. 4.  In other words, the South, the Southwest, and two or three commercial cities, support the government, and pour a stream of treasure into the coffers of manufacturers. 5.  The result must soon be, that the people of South Carolina will have either to abandon the culture of rice and cotton, and remove to some other country, or else to become a manufacturing community, which would only be ruin in another form.

Lest the reader should find it impossible to believe that any man out of a lunatic asylum could publish such propositions as this last, we will give the passage.  Mr. Calhoun is endeavoring to show that Europe will at length retaliate by placing high duties upon American cotton and rice.  At least that appears to be what he is aiming at.