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[430] another were properly regarded as handmaids, and not infrequently referred to as the means of strengthening and perpetuating the bonds by which the states were united. When duties were imposed, not for revenue, but as a bounty to a particular industry, it was regarded both as unjust and without warrant, expressed or implied, in the Constitution.

Then arose the controversy, quadrennially renewed and with increasing provocation, in 1820, in 1824, and in 1828—each stage intensifying the discontent, arising more from the injustice than the weight of the burden borne. It was not the twenty-shilling ship-money tax, but the violation of Magna Charta, which Hampden and his associates resisted. It was not the stamp duty nor the tea tax, but the principle involved in taxation without representation, against which our colonial fathers took up arms. So the tariff act in 1828, known at the time as “the bill of abominations,” was resisted by Southern representatives because it was the invasion of private rights in violation of the compact by which the states were united. In the last stage of the proceeding, after the friends of the bill. had advocated it as a measure for protecting capital invested in manufactures, Drayton of South Carolina moved to amend the title so that it should read, “An act to increase the duties upon certain imports, for the purpose of increasing the profits of certain manufacturers,” and stated his purpose for desiring to amend the title to be that, upon some case which would arise under the execution of the law, an appeal might be made to the Supreme Court of the United States to test its constitutionality. Those who had passed the bill refused to allow the opportunity to test the validity of a tax imposed for the protection of a particular industry. Though the debates showed clearly enough the purpose to be to impose duties for protection, the phraseology of the law presented it as enacted to raise revenue, and therefore the victims of the discrimination were deprived of an appeal to the tribunal instituted to hear and decide on the constitutionality of a law.

South Carolina, oppressed by onerous duties and stung by the injustice of a refusal to allow her the ordinary remedy against unconstitutional legislation, asserted the right, as a sovereign state, to nullify the law. This conflict between the authority of the United States and one of the states threatened for a time such disastrous consequences as to excite intense feeling in all who loved the Union as the fraternal federation of equal states. Before an actual collision of arms occurred, Congress wisely adopted the compromise act of 1833. By that the fact of protection remained, but the principle of duties for revenue was recognized by a sliding scale of reduction, and it was hoped the question had been

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