DOCUMENTS, Ordered by the Convention of the People of South-Carolina, to be transmitted to the President of the United States, and to the Governor of each State. REPORT Of the Committee of Twenty-one, to the Convention of the People of South-Carolina, on the subject of the several Acts of Congress, imposing duties for the protection of domestic manufactures, with the Ordinance to nullify the same. c. } IN CONVENTION, COLUMBIA, S. C. Resolved, That copies of the Ordinance just adopted by this Convention, with the Report thereon, and the Addresses to the People of the several States, and of this State, be transmitted by the Governor to the President of the United States, to be by him submitted to Congress, and also to the Governors of the several States, for the information of their respective Legislatures. ATTEST, J. W. HAYNE, Clerk REPORT OF THE CONVENTION. The Committee to whom was referred the "Act to provide for the calling of a Convention of the People of this State," with instructions to consider and report thereon, and especially as to the measures proper to be adopted by the Convention in reference to the violations of the Constitution of the United States, in the enactments by Congress on divers occasions of laws laying duties and imposts, for the purpose of encouraging and protecting domestic manufactures, and for other unwarrantable purposes," beg leave respectfully to submit the following REPORT. The committee, deeply impressed with the importance of the questions submitted to them, and the weight of responsibility involved in their decision, have given to the subject their most deliberate and anxious consideration. In stating the conclusions to which they have arrived, they feel that it is due to themselves, to this Convention, and to the Public at large, briefly to review the history of the Protecting System in this country, to show its origin, to trace its progress, to examine its character, point out its evils, and suggest the appropriate remedy. They propose to execute this task with all possible brevity and simplicity, sensible that the subject is too well understood in all its bearings to require at this time a very elaborate investigation. In the natural course of human affairs, the period would have been very remote when the people of the United States would have engaged in manufactures, but for the restrictions upon our commerce which grew out of the war between Great Britain and France, and which led to the non-intercourse act, the embargo, and finally our own war of 1812. Cut off by these events from a free commercial intercourse with the rest of the world, the people of the United States turned their attention to manufactures; and on the restoration of peace in 1815, an amount of capital had been already invested in these establishments, which made a strong appeal to the liberality-we might almost say to the justice of the country for protection, at least against that sudden influx of foreign goods which it was feared would entirely overwhelm these domestic establishments. When, therefore, in 1816, it became necessary that the Revenue should be brought down to the peace establishment, by a reduction of the duties upon imports, it was almost by common consent conceded to the claims of the manufacturers, that this reduction should be gradual; and three years were accordingly allowed for bringing down the duties to the permanent revenue standard, which, embracing all the ordinary expenses of the government, with liberal appropriations for the navy and the army, an extensive system of fortifications, and the gradual extinction of the public debt, (then amounting to $130,000,000,) was fixed at 20 per cent. If the manufacturers had at that time even hinted that permanent protection was deemed indispensable to their success; if the slightest suspicion had been entertained, that instead of the gradual reduction expressly provided for by the act of 1816, there would be claimed a gradual increase of the protecting duties; and that instead of being brought down in three years to 20 per cent, the duties were to be carried up to 50 or 100 per cent, and in many cases to prohibition, the painful contest in which the country has been engaged for the last ten years on this subject, would have commenced immediately; and it is confidently believed, that in the temper of the public mind at that time, ample security would have been found against the introduction of such a system. But in de fiance of the clear understanding of the whole country, and in violation of the principles of justice and of good faith, that part of the act above mentioned which required that the duties should be reduced in three years to 20 per cent, was repealed, and a broad foundation thus laid for the permanent establishment of the protecting system. This system has been still further extended and fortified by the several successive acts of 1820, 1824 and 1828, until, by the passing of the act of 1832, (to take effect after the discharge of the public debt,) it has become incorporated into our political system, as the SETTLED POLICY OF THE COUNTRY." We have not deemed it necessary, in tracing the origin and progress of this system, to go further back than the commercial restrictions which preceded the late war; for whatever theoretical opinions may have been expressed by Alexander Hamilton and others in relation to it at an earlier period, it cannot be denied that no duties were actually imposed beyond those deemed indispensable for the public exigencies; and that prior to the year 1816, no protection whatever was actually extended to manufactures, beyond what was strictly incidental to a system for revenue. The discrimination between the protected and unprotected articles, now contended for as the very corner stone of the protecting system, was so far from being established by that act, that the highest duties were actually imposed on the very articles now admitted duty free, while the foreign manufactures which came into competition with our domestic fabrics were subjected to a lower rate of duty. The truth then unquestionably is, that the protecting policy, according to the principles now contended for, was never introduced into this country until the period we have mentioned, when it crept insidiously into the legislation of Congress in the manner above described. This will be made abundantly manifest to every one who will take the pains to trace the progress of the duties from 7 per cent in 1790, up to 25 per cent in 1816, 40 per cent in 1824, and 50, 60, and even 100 per cent in 1828 and 1832, and who will merely examine the manner in which these duties were adjusted in the various acts here referred to. As early as 1820-so soon indeed as the capitalists who had relied upon the powers of the Federal Government to enhance the profits of their investments by legislation, began to look forward to its eventual establishment as the settled policy of the country-they clearly perceived that an extension of the appropriations to objects not embraced in the specific grants of the Federal Constitution, was the necessary appendage of their system. They well knew that the people would not long submit to the levying of a large surplus revenue merely for the protection of manufactures, carried on almost exclusively in one quarter of the Union; and they therefore sought, in the extension of the appropriations to new objects, for a plausible and popular excuse for the continuance of a system of high duties. With that instinctive sagacity which belongs to men who convert the legislature of a country into an instrument for the promotion of their own private ends, they clearly saw that the distribution of an enormous surplus treasure would afford the surest means of bringing over the enemies of the American System to its support, and of enlisting in their cause not only large masses of the people, but entire States who had no direct interest in maintaining the protecting system, or who were even in some respects its victims. No scheme that the wit of man could possibly have devised, was better calculated for the accomplishment of this object. It proposed simply to reconcile men to an unjust system of national policy, by admitting them to a large share of the spoils; in a word, to levy contributions by the aid of those who were to divide the plunder. If the United States had constituted one great nation, with a consolidated government, occupying a territory of limited extent, inhabited by a people engaged in similar pursuits, and having homogeneous interests, such a system would only have operated as a tax upon all the other great interests of the State, for the benefit of that which was favored by the laws; and when time had been allowed for the adjustment of society to this new condition of its affairs, the final result must have been an aggregate diminution of the profits of the whole community, by diverting a portion of the people from their accustomed employments to less profitable pursuits. In such a case, the hope might perhaps have been indulged that experience would demonstrate the egregious folly of enacting laws, the only effect of which would be to supply the wants of the community at an increased expense of labor and capital. But it is the distinguishing feature of the American System, and one which stamps upon it the character of peculiar and aggravated oppression, that it is made applicable to a CONFEDERACY of twenty-four Sovereign and Independent States; occupying a territory upwards of 2000 miles in extent; embracing every variety of soil, climate and productions; inhabited by a people whose institutions and interests are in many respects diametrically opposed to each other; with habits and pursuits infinitely diversified; and, in the great Southern section of the Union, rendered by local circumstances altogether incapable of change. Under such circumstances, a system which, under a consolidated government, would be merely impolitic, and so far an act of injustice to the whole community, becomes in this country a scheme of the most intolerable oppression, because it may be, and has in fact been, so adjusted as to operate exclusively to the benefit of a particular interest, and of particular sections of country, rendering in effect the industry of one portion of the confederacy tributary to the rest. The laws have accordingly been so framed as to give a direct pecuniary interest to a sectional majority, in maintaining a grand system, by which taxes are in effect imposed upon the few for the benefit of the many, and imposed too by a system of indirect taxation so artfully contrived as to escape the vigilance of the common eye, and masked under such ingenious devices as to make it extremely difficult to expose their true character. Thus under the pretext of imposing duties for the payment of the public debt, and providing for the common defence and general welfare, (powers expressly conferred on the Federal Government by the Constitution,) acts are passed, containing provisions designed exclusively and avowedly for the purpose of securing to the American manufacturers a monopoly in our own markets, to the |