The tariff was undoubtedly producing a valuable revenue; and, as the administration of Mr.Polk was about to engage in war, revenue was what they most needed.

Being about to enter upon a war, every dictate of prudence suggested that aggressive issues should not be multiplied in the country.

But Mr.Walker was not Secretary of War or Secretary of State, and he was unwilling to sit quietly down and collect the revenue under a tariff imposed by a Whig Congress, against which he had voted, while Buchanan in directing our foreign relations, and Marcy in conducting a successful war, would far outstrip him in public observation and in acquiring the elements of popularity adapted to the ambition which all three alike shared.
Mr.Walker made an elaborate report on the question of revenue, and attacked the tariff of 1842 in a manner which might well be termed savage.

He arraigned the manufacturers as enjoying unfair advantages,--advantages held, as he endeavored to demonstrate, at the expense and to the detriment of the agriculturist, the mechanic, the merchant, the ship-owner, the sailor, and indeed of almost every industrial class.

In reading Mr.Walker's report a third of a century after it was made, one might imagine that the supporters of the tariff of 1842 were engaged in a conspiracy to commit fraud, and that the manufacturers who profited by its duties were guilty of some crime against the people.