If the rule had its exception, it was in localities where the strong pressure of special interest was operating, as in the case of the sugar-planter of Louisiana, who was willing to concede generous protection to the cotton-spinner of Lowell if he could thereby secure an equally strong protection, in his own field of enterprise, against the pressing competition of the island of Cuba.
PROTECTION AND FREE-TRADE SECTIONAL.
The general rule, after years of experimental legislation, resolved itself into protection in the one section and free-trade in the other.

And this was not an unnatural distinction.

Zeal against slavery was necessarily accompanied by an appreciation of the dignity of free labor; and free labor was more generously remunerated under the stimulus of protective laws.

The same considerations produced a directly opposite conclusion in the South, where those interest in slave labor could not afford to build up a class of free laborers with high wages and independent opinions.

The question was indeed one of the kind not infrequently occurring in the adjustment of public policies where the same cause is continually producing different and apparently contradictory effects when the field of its operation is changed.
The issues growing out of the subject of the tariff were, however, in many respects entirely distinct from the slavery question.