A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin Verplanck | Page 8

of South Carolina," published in 1831. Mr. Verplanck was through life a friend to the freedom of exchange, but he would not use in its favor any argument which did not seem to him just. His pamphlet was so ably reasoned that William Leggett said to him, in my presence, "Mr. Verplanck, you have convinced me; I was, till now, of a different opinion from yours, but you have settled the question against me. I now see that whatever may be the injustice of protective duties, Congress has the constitutional right to impose them."
It was while this controversy was going on that President Jackson issued his proclamation warning those who resisted the revenue laws that their resistance was regarded as rebellion, and would be quelled at the bayonet's point. Mr. Calhoun and his friends were not prepared for this: indeed, I do not think that in any of his plans for the separate action of the slave States, he contemplated a resort to arms on either side. They looked about them to find some plausible pretext for submission, and this the country was not unwilling to give. It was generally admitted that the duties on imported goods ought to be reduced, and Mr. McLane, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Verplanck, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, each drew up a plan for lessening the burdens of the tariff.
Mr. McLane had just returned from a successful mission to Great Britain, and had the advantage of considerable personal popularity. He was a moderate protectionist, and with great pains drew up a scheme of duties which kept the protection of home manufactures in view. Some branches of industry, he thought, were so far advanced that they would bear a small reduction of the duty; others a still larger; others were yet so weak that they could not prosper unless the whole existing duty was retained. The scheme was laid before Congress, but met with little attention from any quarter; the southern politicians regarded it with scorn, as made up of mere cheese-parings. Mr. Verplanck's plan of a tariff was more liberal. He was not a protectionist, and his scheme contemplated a large reduction of duties--as large as it was thought could possibly be adopted by Congress--yet so framed as to cause as little inconvenience as might be to the manufacturers. It was thought that Mr. Calhoun and his friends would readily accept it as affording them a not ignoble retreat from their dangerous position.
While these projects were before Congress, Mr. Littell, a gentleman of the free-trade school, and now editor of the "Living Age," drew up a scheme of revenue reform more thorough than either of the others. It proposed to reduce the duties annually until, at the end of ten years the principle of protection, which was what the southern politicians complained of, should disappear from the tariff, and a system of duties take, its place which should in no case exceed the rate of twenty per cent, on the value of the commodity imported. The draft of this scheme was shown to Mr. Clay: he saw at once that it would satisfy the southern politicians; he adopted it, brought it before Congress, urged its enactment in several earnest speeches, and by the help of his great influence over his party it was rapidly carried through both houses, under the name of the Compromise Tariff, to the astonishment of the friends of free-trade, the mill owners, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Committee of Ways and Means, and, I think, the country at large. I thought it hard measure for Mr. Verplanck that the credit of this reform should be taken out of his hands by one who had always been the great advocate of protective duties; but this was one of the fortunate strokes of policy which Mr. Clay, when in the vigor of his faculties, had the skill to make. He afterwards defended the measure as inflicting no injury upon the manufacturers, and it never appeared to lessen the good will which his party bore him.
About this time I was witness to a circumstance which showed the sagacity of Mr. Verplanck in estimating the consequences of political measures. Mr. Van Buren had been sent by President Jackson as our Minister to the British Court while Congress was not in session, and the nomination yet awaited confirmation by the Senate. It led to a long and spirited debate, in which Mr. Marcy uttered the memorable maxim: "To the victor belong the spoils of the enemy," which was so often quoted against him. I was in Washington, dining with Mr. Verplanck, when the vote on this nomination was taken. As we were at the table, two of the Senators, Dickinson, of New Jersey, and Tazewell, of Virginia, entered. Verplanck,