President Taylor's death brought Millard Filmore to the presidency and Thomas Corwin (1794-1865) to the office of Secretary of the Treasury. Corwin had established himself as "the most captivating and effective political orator the country had ever produced" during his years as a Whig senator from Ohio (1845-1850). Like his immediate predecessor, William M. Meredith, Corwin believed in a protective tariff, but he did not want to make sudden or drastic changes in the free-trade tariff law of 1846.
He objected to that law's provisions, which taxed some imported raw materials at a higher rate than the imported manufactured goods made from those materials, stating in a report to Congress that, "such provisions certainly take from the manufacturer and artisan that encouragement which the present law was intended to afford." As a longtime Whig, however, Corwin was unsuccessful in passing any tariff legislation in a Congress controlled by Democrats. He retired as Secretary at the end of Filmore's administration.
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