followed, and then came the customary challenge and the “hostile encounter,” in which both combatants were slightly wounded, whereupon the seconds interfered to prevent more serious mischief. Henry Clay may, therefore, be said to have fought and bled for the cause of protection when he first championed it, by a demonstration in favor of home manufactures as against those of a foreign enemy.
In the winter of 1809-10 Clay was again sent to the Senate of the United States to fill an unexpired term of two years, Mr. Buckner Thurston having resigned his seat. In April, 1810, he found an opportunity for expressing his opinions on the “encouragement of home industry” in a more tangible and elaborate form. To a bill appropriating money for procuring munitions of war and for other purposes, an amendment was moved instructing the Secretary of the Navy to purchase supplies of hemp, cordage, sail-cloth, etc., and to give preference to articles raised or manufactured on American soil. The discussion ranged over the general policy of encouraging home manufactures. Clay's line of argument was remarkable. A large conception of industrial development as the result of a systematic tariff policy was entirely foreign to his mind. He looked at the whole subject from the point of view of a Kentucky farmer, who found it most economical to clothe himself and his family in homespun, and who desired to secure a sure and profitable market for his hemp. Besides this,
