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