he thought that the noise about the tariff would all end in smoke, for the people would soon learn that they could get their coarse clothing cheaper that year than the year before. He wrote:
I have bought my negro clothing and shoes l0 per cent lower this than last year, and 60 per cent less than when I imported the former direct from England a few years ago; and the fabric is at least 16 per cent better in wearing. And, besides, what has our tariff to do with the fall in price of all the cottons raised in other parts of the world? It is all madness and folly. The whole secret is, we raise too much of it and ought to turn our attention to something more promising and productive.
This was apparently the theory of the Courier editor also.[1]
There were champions, not only of the tariff, but of federal internal improvements also. "One of the People" said he did not believe that all the people of the state were strongly opposed to internal improvements directed by the general government, despite the fact that the South Carolina representatives in Congress had declared against this function, for the planters of the interior sorely needed means of communication and had been shamefully neglected.[2]
- ↑ Courier, September 30, 1828; see also Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, chap. iii.
- ↑ Courier, June 18, 1828.
