In the absence of that tariff, they maintain that England, under the influence of actual free-trade, had monopolized our market and controlled our industries.

Finally they declare that the free-traders yield the whole case in acknowledging that the first tariff imparted an impetus to manufactures and to commercial independence wholly unknown while the States were under the Articles of Confederation and unable to levy uniform duties on imports.
COMPARISON OF REVENUE SYSTEMS.
The free-traders point to the destructive effect of the war tariff of 1812, which unduly stimulated and then inevitably depressed the country.

They assume this to be a pregnant illustration of a truth, otherwise logically deduced by them, as to the re-action sure to follow an artificial stimulus given to any department of trade.
The protectionists declining to defend the war duties as applicable to a normal condition, find in the too sudden dropping of war rates the mistake which precipitated the country into financial trouble.
Depression, they say, would naturally have come; but it was hastened and increased by the inconsiderate manner in which the duties were lowered in 1816.

From that time onward the protectionists claim that the experience of the country has favored their theories of revenue and financial administration.

The country did not revive, or prosperity re-appear, until the protective tariff of 1824 was enacted.