Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/320

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The Compromise Tariff and the Force Bill
301

papers had been filled with little else than the all-absorbing political issue. Day after day, and week after week, the reader found the columns of the papers filled with long reports of speeches, debates, and arguments on political questions. Although in these months some great contributions to the literature of political science were made, it is not to be wondered at that the readers of these papers became somewhat wearied with so much heavy material, and craved something in a lighter vein. At any rate, the editors felt called upon to apologize for having given so much space to political matter, and they assured their readers that in the futiure they would devote their columns more to the general news of the day—market prices, miscellaneous productions of history, biography, poetry, tales, anecdotes, and agricultiural essays in an effort to stay the process of exhaustion of the soil which was going on. One editor added that miurders and accidents would have their due proportion of attention.[1]

For a few months following the passage of the compromise tariff there continued some discussion as to the merits of the bill. Some of the nullification papers claimed a great victory for

  1. Mountaineer, April 6, 1833; Messenger, May 15.