A barrier to keep out
European goods and secure American interdependence seemed necessary.
Clay came down from the Speaker's chair to the floor of the House to
plead his policy of home production and home consumption, a principle
for which he had fought a duel in his early Kentucky days, when he had
been pronounced a demagogue for advocating dressing in homespun. He
was now accused by the opposition of aiming at a total prohibition of
foreign goods regardless of the resulting distress to the consumer.
"Protection in 1816 has grown to prohibition in 1824," exclaimed a
speaker. "This is the consummation of the 'American policy,'" said
Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, whose brilliant oratory was making
him the rival of Calhoun as the Southern spokesman. "A policy foreign
in all its features, confessedly borrowed from Great Britain, and
Chinese in its character, the policy of kings and tyrants, of
restriction and monopoly." If Britain has at any time since complained
of American protective policy, she must remember that it was inherited
by British colonies, and was fostered by a desire to retaliate on her
with her own methods before she became a freetrader.
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