because the resolutions were merely for inquiry, and ordinarily such resolutions were never refused unless the subject-matter was offensive to the House. This was taken to show that Congress intended that the protective policy should be the settled policy of the country and no longer open to discussion. Surely, it was argued, this should be lesson enough for even that class in the community who were for hoping, believing, bearing, and forbearing as long as any hope remained.[1]
A little later, when Congress did discuss the tariff, and Mallory's report was published, it was referred to by the State Rights party as an avowal by the very leader of the tariff party that protection was the primary object of the law; that the manufacturers would continue to make common cause in support of the system ; that the separate items of the tariff would no longer be examined singly, because the system, as some South Carolina statesmen had hoped, might be destroyed that way. Two representatives of South Carolina, James Blair and William T. Nuckolls, who had been opposed to a convention because they had thought the tariff could be reduced piecemeal,
- ↑ Mercury, January 23, 1831; Congressional Debates, Vol. VII, pp. 359 and 449.
