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From the beginning of his career he was in favor of internal improvements as a means of opening up the fertile but inaccessible West, and was opposed to the abuse of official patronage known as the [[spoils system]]. The most important of the national questions with which Clay was associated, however, were the various phases of [[slavery]] politics and protection to home industries. The most prominent characteristics of his public life were his predisposition to compromises and pacifications which generally failed of their object, and his passionate patriotic devotion to the Union.
His earliest championship of protection was a resolution introduced by him in the Kentucky legislature ([[1808]]) which favored the wearing by its members of home-made clothes; and one in the [[United States Senate]] (April Eectlonlst. [[1810]]), on behalf of home-grown and home-made supplies for the [[United States Navy]], but only to the point of making the nation independent of foreign supply. In [[1816]] he advocated the Dallas [[tariff]], in which the duties ranged up to 35% on articles of home production, the supply of which could satisfy the home demand; the avowed purpose being to build up certain industries for safety in time of war. In [[1824]] he advocated high duties to relieve the prevailing distress, which he pictured in a brilliant and effective speech. Although the distress was caused by the reactionary effect of a disordered currency and the inflated prices of the [[war of 1812]], he ascribed it to the country's dependence on foreign supply and foreign markets. [[Great Britain]], he said, was a shining example of the wisdom of a high tariff. No nation ever flourished without one. He closed his principal speech on the subject in the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] with a glowing appeal in behalf of what he called "'''The American System
* Federal funding of infrastructure improvements (such as the [[Erie Canal]], and a series of highways) funded by a raised tariff on imported goods. * Using protective tariffs to encourage development of domestic industry * Reliance on domestic financial resources In spite of the opposition of [[Daniel Webster|Webster]] and other prominent statesmen, Clay succeeded in enacting a tariff which the people of the Southern states denounced as a "tariff of abominations." As it overswelled the revenue, in [[1832]] he vigorously favored reducing the tariff rates on all articles not competing with American products. His speech in behalf of the measure was for years a protection text-book; but the measure itself reduced the revenue so little and provoked such serious threats of nullification and secession in [[South Carolina]], that, to prevent bloodshed and to forestall a free trade measure from the next Congress, Clay brought forward in [[1833]] a compromise gradually reducing the tariff rates to an average of 20%. To the Protectionists this was "like a crash of thunder in winter," but it was received with such favor by the country generally, that its author was hailed as "The Great Pacificator" as he had been thirteen years before at the time of the [[Missouri Compromise]] (see below). As, however, the discontent with the tariff in the South was only a symptom of the real trouble there: the sensitiveness of the slave-power. Clay subsequently confessed his serious doubts of the policy of his Interference. He was only twenty-two, when, as an opponent of slavery, he vainly urged an [[emancipation]] clause for the new [[constitution]] of Kentucky, and he never ceased regretting that its failure put his state, in improvements and progress, behind its free neighours. In [[1820]] he congratulated the new [[South America]]n republics on having abolished slavery, but the same year the threats of the Southern states to destroy the Union led him to advocate the [[Missouri Compromise]] which, while keeping slavery out of all the rest of the territory acquired by the [[Louisiana Purchase]] north of [[Missouri]]'s southern boundary, permitted it in that state. Then, greeted with the title The Great Pacificator as a reward for his success, he retired temporarily to private life, with a larger stock of popularity than he had ever had before.
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