Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/66

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Nullification Advocated and Denounced
47

ing hand of avarice. His bill was laid upon the table by a decisive vote.[1] The bill which was finally passed, based largely upon the Mallory bill of the House Committee on Manufactures, met with little favor in South Carolina."[2]

After the receipt of the first report in which the House committee declared itself adverse to any change, one paper after another in South Carolina began to urge that the state should be "anchored on her own energies" and "rely upon her own virtues." The report seemed to say that a System of consolidation would be fixed upon them, under which the southern states, taxed and oppressed for the benefit of the manufacturers, could not fail to sink into a deplorable state of poverty and degradation, unless!—unless they asserted their rights and strove for redress "by exercise of their own energies as sovereign states."[3] It is worthy of notice that during these months the

  1. Congressional Debates, Vol. VI, Part I, pp. 555, 556.
  2. Mercury, February 16, 1830; Telescope, May 7; Congressional Debates, Vol. VI, Parts I and II.
  3. Telescope, January 15, 1830; Mercury, January 13, February 16. Thenceforward these papers daily recited the wrongs which the whole governmental system inflicted upon the South, and asked whether the states would submit or whether they would not prove themselves worthy of the Revolutionary legacy of liberty. The Mercury, May 1, 1830, contains a typical editorial.