rank.” In his third message, December, 1831, he invited attention to the fact that the public debt would be extinguished before the expiration of his term, and that, therefore, “a modification of the tariff, which shall produce a reduction of the revenue to the wants of the government,” was very advisable. He added that, in justice to the interests of the merchant as well as the manufacturer, the reduction should be prospective, and that the duties should be adjusted with a view “to the counteraction of foreign policy, so far as it may be injurious to our national interests.” This meant a revenue tariff with incidental retaliation. He had thus arrived at a sensible plan to avoid the accumulation of a surplus.
Clay took the matter in hand in the Senate, or rather in Congress, for he held a meeting of friends of protection among Senators and Representatives to bring about harmony of action in the two houses. At that meeting he laid down the law for his party in a manner, as John Quincy Adams records, courteous, but “exceedingly peremptory and dogmatical.” He recognized the necessity of reducing the revenue, but he would reduce the revenue without reducing protective duties. The “American system” should not suffer. It must, therefore, not be done in the manner proposed by Jackson. He insisted upon confining the reduction to duties on articles not coming into competition with American products. He would not make the reductions prospective, to begin after
