be better adapted to the production than those which were
earlier in the field; and, besides, it is a just remark of
Mr. Rae, that nothing has a greater tendency to promote
improvement in any branch of production, than its trial
under a new set of conditions. But it cannot be expected
that individuals should, at their own risk, or rather to
their certain loss, introduce a new manufacture, and bear
the burden of carrying it on, until the producers have been
educated up to the level of those with whom the processes
are traditional. A protecting duty, continued for a
reasonable time, will sometimes be the least inconvenient
mode in which the nation can tax itself for the support of
such an experiment. But the protection should be confined to
cases in which there is good ground of assurance that the
industry which it fosters will after a time be able to
dispense with it; nor should the domestic producers ever be
allowed to expect that it will be continued to them beyond
the time necessary for a fair trial of what they are capable
of accomplishing."[1]

In the quiet of his library at Ashland, Mr. Clay, we believe, would,
at any period of his public life, have assented to the doctrines of
this passage. But at Washington he was a party leader and an orator.
Having set the ball in motion, he could not stop it; nor does he
appear to have felt the necessity of stopping it, until, in 1831, he
was suddenly confronted by three Gorgons at once,--a coming Surplus, a
President that vetoed internal improvements, and an ambitious Calhoun,
resolved on using the surplus either as a stepping-stone to the
Presidency or a wedge with which to split the Union. The time to have
put down the brakes was in 1828, when the national debt was within