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CONTENTS 
 
 cno.N Free-trade and the navigation laws, 
 practically considered, by G-. F. Young. 1849. 
 
 cno.Sa An answer to the President T s message 
 to the Fiftieth Congress by the Manufacturers’ 
 Club of Philadelphia, c 1888 a 
 
 cno.3a Protection and free trade, compared, in 
 their influence on National industry, and the 
 balance of wealth and power. 1846. 
 
 cno.4n The logic of protection, by V. B. Dens- 
 low. c 1883a 
 
 c no.5a An argument for a protective tariff. 
 
 The farmer’s question: being a reply to the Cob- 
 den Club tract entitled ’’The western farmer of 
 America.” By J. B. Wise. 1880. 
 

FREE-j. 
 
 AND 
 
 THE NAVIGATION LAWS, 
 
 “ Qui mare teneat, eum necesse est rerum potiri.” — Cicero. 
 
 “ Whosoever commands the seas commands the trade ; whosoever com- 
 mands the trade commands the riches of the world, and consequently the 
 world itself .” — Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 
 “Our Navigation Laws have a twofold object: first, to create and 
 maintain a great commercial marine ; and secondly (an object not less 
 important in the eyes of statesmen), to prevent any one other nation 
 from engrossing too large a portion of the navigation of the rest of the 
 world.” — Speech of Mr. HusJcisson , 2 6th May , 1826. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY PELHAM RICHARDSON, CORNHILL, 
 
 PRACTICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE FREDERICK YOUNG, Esq. 
 
 AND 
 
 W. H. DALTON, COCKSPUR STREET. 
 
 1849. 
 
Printed by J. & H. Cox (Brothers), 74 & 75, Great Queen Street, 
 Lincoln’s-Inn Fields. 
 
$ul( \7wia* api Stomcf 1 9 1954 SLOCUM 
 
 337 
 
 P/9/ 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Yielding to the representations and wishes of friends, 
 to whose judgment I must defer in a case where delicacy 
 makes me distrustful of my own, and who are of opinion 
 that the republication of the following controversy, on 
 Free Trade and the Navigation Laws, is calculated, at 
 this critical moment, to benefit the cause of British navi- 
 gation, I have consented to its being laid before the 
 public in its present connected form. The convictions I 
 entertain that the proposed measure for the repeal of 
 those laws is a tissue of inconsistency, injustice, rashness, 
 and folly, without a parallel in British legislation, are 
 impressed with such overwhelming f orce upon my mind, 
 that I have not found language adequate to convey 
 them. But the Editor of the Morning Chronicle , in his 
 desire for a fair discussion of this great question, having 
 
 : for a statement of the facts and arguments which support 
 the Navigation Laws, himself, in leading articles , under - 
 staking the advocacy of free trade in shipping, I eagerly 
 
 linnn thp nnnnrtnnitv. and imnrnvprl it t.n thp hpst 
 
 offered me space in the columns of that journal 
 
IV 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 qualifications for the task, is so far desirable, that it en- 
 ables the public to form an estimate of the weight due 
 to the most popular arguments of both sides, which 
 are here, for the first time, deliberately contrasted. I 
 now submit the controversy to the ordeal of public 
 opinion, from which I well know there is no appeal, 
 cheered by the consciousness of having exerted myself 
 to the utmost in the discharge of what I consider a grave 
 public duty, and confident of the strength and final 
 success of the cause I have here supported. 
 
 GEORGE FREDERICK YOUNG. 
 
FREE-TRADE 
 
 AND 
 
 THE NAVIGATION LAWS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE. 
 
 Sir, — Observing in your journal for Thursday an article upon 
 the operation of the Navigation-laws, as regards the carrying 
 trade between America and this country, it appears to me a 
 favourable opportunity for entering upon a discussion of Free- 
 trade principles as affecting the shipping interest and the general 
 welfare of the country. I seize it with alacrity, convinced that 
 the arguments I have to offer in support of those laws will not 
 be without effect upon the thinking portion of the public. 
 
 The question, then, being, whether it is most expedient to 
 repeal the Navigation-laws, or to maintain the principles on 
 which they are founded, I should enter at once upon its discus- 
 sion, were I not precluded from doing so by the tactics of the 
 party to whose opinions I am opposed. But the assailants of the 
 Navigation-laws, instead of proving by facts, or incontrovertible 
 arguments, that those laws are impolitic and injurious, have 
 assumed that they are so, because they conflict with their dogma 
 of free trade ; and they have called on the public to support them 
 in demanding their abolition, as a further step towards what they 
 complacently term “ the complement of free trade.” To such 
 politicians it would be vain to assert that the Navigation-laws 
 are indispensable to the existence of our maritime commerce, for 
 
2 
 
 the free traders regard that commerce as a class interest, hateful 
 as a monopoly, and requiring to be swept away. Equally un- 
 heeded would be the argument that, as it is to the extent and 
 excellence of our mercantile marine that the superiority of our 
 navy is mainly due, the destruction of our maritime commerce 
 would of necessity involve a decline of naval power ; for this they 
 in a measure concede, but at the same time they gravely assert, as 
 an infallible consequence of the adoption of free-trade principles, 
 that there will no longer exist the necessity for a navy, inasmuch 
 as then a universal brotherhood of nations will prevail, and obvi- 
 ate for ever the arbitrament of arms. By this course of reasoning 
 it is rendered impossible that I can do justice to my argument in 
 favour of the principle of the Navigation-laws, without first 
 clearing the ground by showing how the new doctrine has failed, 
 and that it is at least not on the allegation that the abolition of 
 those laws is necessary for perfecting the “ complement of free- 
 trade” that their repeal can lay claim to support. And if I can 
 establish even rational ground for doubt whether the consum- 
 mation of that system might not, instead of completing pros- 
 perity, work out the complement of ruin, I shall have detached 
 from the consideration of the question that plea in favour of 
 repeal of the Navigation-laws, and have left the policy of that 
 measure to be determined (as it ought to be) solely on the 
 merits of the question itself. Reluctantly, therefore, but un- 
 avoidably, I am compelled, before entering on the immediate 
 subject for discussion, briefly to urge on the consideration of 
 Englishmen the reasons which should induce them at once to 
 reject the popular, but illusive argument, against which I have 
 above protested, and to limit their attention to the simple issue — 
 “ Is it, or is it not, advisable for the interests, and consistent 
 with the safety of the country, that the Navigation-laws should 
 be repealed ?” In maintaining the negative of this proposition, 
 it is obvious that I must impugn the entire doctrines of the school 
 of ultra free-traders and political economists ; for. 
 
 First, I contend that those doctrines, carried out to their 
 final results, are inapplicable to the circumstances of the British 
 nation, and to the true policy indicated by those circumstances ; 
 that their operation is to destroy extensive private interests, — 
 the aggregate of which constitutes the public interest, and that. 
 
3 
 
 if systematically and consistently worked out, they are calcu- 
 lated to degrade Britain from her lofty position, and reduce her 
 to the level of a second-rate power. And next, I assert that, 
 where the experiment has been tried, success has not resulted in 
 any leading branch of commercial enterprise, while in many it 
 has proved a signal and decided failure. Should I succeed in 
 establishing these positions, I think I may with reason call on 
 the public at least to suspend its judgment, and to withhold its 
 sanction from further radical changes till experience shall have 
 shown whether this practical failure of the free-trade scheme be 
 the result of counteracting circumstances, which have but tempo- 
 rarily obstructed the beneficial operation of sound principles, or the 
 natural consequence of a course of policy inherently vicious and 
 ruinous. It is conceded that the free-traders have evinced a high 
 degree of sagacity in their proceedings ; they have, indeed, made 
 the most of their case. They hold out allurements equally to the 
 generous and the sordid-minded. To the first they say, that the 
 effect of unrestricted commercial intercourse is to establish per- 
 manent peace and harmony between nations ; to extend individual 
 comfort, by facilitating the interchange of articles of necessity and 
 luxury, the production of various climes ; to enforce by its essence 
 — which is good faith, the moral obligations of man to man as 
 members of one common family, and there is moreover some- 
 thing in their adopted word “free” which indirectly commends 
 the system to the liking of Englishmen. On the other hand, 
 those who are less open to noble impulses, and look mainly 
 to themselves, are flattered and cajoled by the brilliant prospect 
 laid before them of thriving in this flow of commerce, “ buying 
 in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market,” — a principle 
 by no means new, since every merchant and trader, from the 
 hour he entered business, has acted upon it, but which, for the 
 unthinking, though a mere sound, has an indescribable charm. 
 
 Thus have they contrived to enlist at once in their cause the 
 lofty aspirations of the liberal and the grovelling desires of the 
 selfish, — the first extending their views to the benefit of the whole 
 human race, the other regarding only the advancement of their 
 own individual interests. To improve our condition is one of the 
 most powerful and pervading of human wishes. The advance- 
 ment of the whole is but the aggregate of advancement of the 
 
4 
 
 parts. Hence, if the whole community is most likely to flourish, 
 by each individual of it following his own particular interest, 
 it may be fairly argued that, by each nation pursuing the 
 same course, the welfare of the great family of nations may be 
 most effectually promoted. Let us, however, at once proceed to 
 the practical consideration of the inapplicability of free-trade doc- 
 trines to promote the wealth and advantage of the inhabitants of 
 Great Britain. To facilitate exchange of the products of home 
 industry for those of foreign countries, on the most advantageous 
 terms and in the mode least liable to interruption, would appear to 
 be the legitimate aim of a wise commercial policy. In effecting 
 this object, it is indispensable to every nation under heaven. Great 
 Britain alone excepted, either by direct treaties with foreign 
 powers or by independent legislative regulations, to open its 
 markets for the reception of foreign productions. It has been said 
 that Great Britain is exempted from this necessity. Let us see 
 why. In her colonial possessions, studding every spot of the earth’s 
 wide surface, and teeming with every production which necessity, 
 convenience, or luxury demand, she is secure of an inexhaustible 
 supply of all she requires, freed, by the number and distance of 
 her sources of supply, from the interruptions which partial visita- 
 tions of unfavourable seasons might occasion. Peculiarly adapted 
 for the pursuits of manufacturing industry, she finds in the cir- 
 cumstances of her colonies a marvellous and providential adapta- 
 tion to her own. Receiving the cotton, the silk, the dyes of 
 India ; the wools and the ores of Australia ; the timber of Moul- 
 mein, Sierra Leone, Honduras, and Canada ; she finds in them 
 the raw materials of all her staple manufactures, and may pay, in 
 the produce of her looms and forges, for the articles which she 
 must import from abroad. Jamaica, Guiana, and the Mauritius 
 might furnish her sugar ; Ceylon, her coffee and spices ; Hong- 
 Kong, her teas; — holding all in proud independence of every 
 foreign nation ; encouraging, advancing, enriching all, by reci- 
 procal exchanges; exposed to no interruption of her commerce 
 from the ambition of sovereigns, the jealousy of statesmen, or 
 the fickleness of republics. 
 
 Thus circumstanced, what is to her, after all, the real im- 
 portance of trade with foreign nations ? It is not necessary 
 she should reject it ; but why should she court it as indis- 
 
5 
 
 pensable ? Above all, why should she, by discouraging her 
 colonies for its sake, and thus depriving them of the means 
 of being consumers of her exports, check their advancement, 
 and place herself in dangerous dependence, for the supply of 
 her own wants, and for a market for her manufactures, on 
 nations which caprice, or jealousy, or cupidity, or prejudice, 
 may render unwilling, or poverty or political distractions unable, 
 either to supply her necessities or consume her productions ? 
 Yet to this inconceivable folly has she been tempted by the falla- 
 cies and the illusions of free-trade. It compliance with its 
 dogmas, instead of encouraging the growth of cotton in India and 
 the West Indies, by the retention of a moderate differential duty, 
 under which, by improved cultivation, its quality might long ere 
 this have rivalled the best Sea Island samples of America, we 
 have given the monopoly of supply of the raw material for our 
 staple manufacture to our most jealous manufacturing rival ; — 
 receiving with extraordinary inconsistency, annually, 500 millions 
 of pounds of that material duty free, on the assumption that our 
 manufacturing superiority will enable us to turn it into cotton 
 goods wherewith to furnish the payment, and sending those very 
 goods back for that purpose to America, there to be met by pro- 
 tective duties in favour of similar American manufactures, varying 
 in amount from 10 to 70 per cent. ! Misled by the same delusion, 
 after paying twenty millions to abolish slavery in our colonies, 
 we have, by the admission of foreign slave-grown sugar, extended 
 the numbers and rivetted the fetters of the slaves whom we 
 impoverished ourselves to set free, while we have ruined the colo- 
 nists we professed to encourage, and destroyed that market for 
 our manufactures which starving millions at home in vain look 
 for from the foreign nations on whom we have insanely rendered 
 ourselves dependent.* I know it is said that the failure of the 
 potato crop, with deficient harvests at home, and the convulsions 
 that have shaken every part of the Continent abroad, are the 
 causes which have prevented the realization of the promised 
 benefits from the application of free-trade principles. I utterly 
 deny it. And I ask, can that be a wise and prudent, or even a 
 cautious policy, which renders the success of every interest in this 
 
 * Nor has any nation in the world met our advances with reciprocal 
 liberality. 
 
6 
 
 country dependent on visitations and accidents of not infrequent 
 occurrence — such as a famine at home — a revolution in France — 
 an insurrection in Italy — distractions in Germany — commercial 
 blindness in Spanish, or Dutch, or Belgian statesmen — or even 
 on a presidential election in America ? Does not common sense, 
 if we would but listen to its dictates, impress on us the convic- 
 tion that a policy subject to so many deranging influences cannot 
 be wise ? That to encourage domestic and colonial production 
 and consumption by a system of moderate protection, so gra- 
 duated as to admit foreign competition to the full extent requisite 
 for stimulating domestic energies, but so restricted as not to de- 
 stroy domestic interests, is the true policy for such a country as 
 Great Britain, seems to me clear and indisputable. Steadily 
 pursuing it, the unbounded resources of India would be rapidly 
 developed ; the West Indies, drawn to the mother-country by 
 ties of interest as well as of dependence, would flourish, in- 
 stead of sink, as they do at present, into hopeless decay; 
 the North American provinces might long continue giving and 
 receiving benefit from British connection, instead of being held 
 by costly efforts in precarious and discontented annexation 
 to the British Crown ; the Australian colonies would more 
 rapidly advance in wealth and importance ; and all would 
 pour riches into the lap of the mother-country. Unaffected 
 by wars, uninterrupted by revolutions, undisturbed by political 
 distractions, the pursuits of a commerce really free among our- 
 selves would exhibit active importations of colonial products into 
 our ports, and busy employment of our mills for the supply of 
 colonial wants. This, I maintain, is the policy that practical 
 wisdom would prescribe for such a country as England. Were 
 the advantages of the course we have pursued under the guidance 
 of ultra free-trade principles ten times greater than is pretended, 
 the very precariousness of the tenure on which they must be held 
 would suffice to condemn the system. The first application of 
 these principles must at all events ever deeply injure existing inte- 
 rests. Before the losses they inflict can be compensated by new 
 arrangements, fresh disturbing causes will continually arise. 
 Certainty, stability — the very elements of commercial prosperity, 
 must ever be wanting in a commerce exposed to constant and 
 inevitable interruptions. I conclude, therefore, that unless we 
 
7 
 
 prefer the pursuit of dreamy abstractions to that of substantial 
 good, we shall do wisely to regard that only as the true theory 
 which in such matters offers the surest prospect of practical bene- 
 fit, and to check the further application of free-trade principles to 
 commercial legislation, till its advocates may point to a more 
 satisfactory fulfilment of their predictions than they now can. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful and obedient servant, 
 
 George Frederick Young. 
 
 Limehouse, Dec. 15, 1848. 
 
 Following close upon the publication of the above Letter , appeared 
 the following editorial article in the same journal. 
 
 ** Sheridan was once earnestly advised to clear up some popular 
 misapprehensions regarding his conduct in 1807. To pave the 
 way for an answer, he caused a complete recapitulation of the 
 charges to be inserted in a newspaper, and then forgot all about 
 the matter. We should act as indiscreetly as Sheridan, if, after 
 inserting Mr. G. F. Young’s long and elaborate epistle against 
 commercial freedom, we were to take no further notice of it ; for, 
 although it really contains nothing beyond the ordinary fallacies 
 upon the subject, these are stated with a degree of confidence 
 which, coming from a practical man highly esteemed in the mer- 
 cantile world, might lead many, if no answer were given, to 
 think or say that there was no answer to give. Mr. G. F. Young 
 is also the chosen organ of the shipping interest ; but on this 
 occasion they will hardly thank him for his advocacy, for it is 
 difficult to conceive a greater mistake than to preface a defence of 
 the Navigation Laws, resting exclusively on the advantages of a 
 large mercantile marine, by a diatribe against free -trade. We shall 
 next be requested to insert a letter of a column and a half from 
 some railway director or coachmaster against travelling. If, instead 
 of importing food and raw materials, and exporting manufactured 
 goods, the nation were to make and grow everything at home, 
 what would become of Mr. G. F. Young’s clients? Is it not 
 clear to demonstration that the more we deal with foreigners, or 
 customers of any sort beyond the seas, so much the better for the 
 shipowners ? It is all very well to talk of the colonial trade, but 
 our great naval power was not originally owing to our colonies ; 
 nor will any practical man, who values his character for judgment, 
 assert that it could now be supported by them. 
 
 The lives of Clive and Hastings have made every one familiar 
 with the modern and romantic origin of our empire in the East ; 
 and Burke’s beautiful allegory, in which Lord Bathurst is addressed 
 by the angel, sufficiently indicates the period when British America 
 
8 
 
 began to grow into importance : — “ Young man, there is America, 
 which at this day (1704) serves for little more than to amuse you 
 with stories of savage men and uncouth manners What- 
 
 ever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of 
 improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by a succession 
 of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements, in a series of 
 seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by 
 America in the course of a single life.” 
 
 Adam Smith (vol. ii. p. 413), states that the trade, which at 
 that time (the date of the Navigation Act) supported our great 
 naval power, was not, and could not have been, the colonial 
 trade, but “ the trade of Europe and of the countries which lie 
 round the Mediterranean sea.” If, therefore, the Protectionist 
 policy had been rigidly enforced by our ancestors, we should have 
 had no marine at all but what was engaged in the coasting trade. 
 If our marine had subsequently grown up w r ith, and depended on, 
 our colonial empire, we should have lost the greater part of it on 
 the commencement of the War of Independence. If Mr. G. F. 
 Young could have his own way now, he would throw out of 
 employment at a blow five- eighths of the shipping engaged in 
 the export and import trade, and compel the whole of the British 
 merchants who depend on the foreign trade, to seek fresh invest- 
 ments for their capital. If he does not mean this, he means 
 nothing. “ To facilitate exchange, on the most advantageous 
 terms, and in the mode least liable to interruption, of the pro- 
 ducts of home industry for those of foreign countries, would 
 appear to be the legitimate aim of a wise commercial policy. In 
 effecting this object, it is indispensable to every nation under 
 heaven, Great Britain alone excepted, either by direct treaties 
 with foreign powers, or by independent legislative regulations, to 
 open its markets for the reception of foreign productions. It has 
 been said that Great Britain is exempted from this necessity. 
 Let us see this. In her colonial possessions, studding every spot 
 of the earth’s wide surface, and teeming w r ith every production 
 which necessity, convenience, or luxury demand, she is secure of 
 an inexhaustible supply of all she requires.” 
 
 Then will Mr. G. F. Young have the goodness to tell us why, 
 in 1846, the British tonnage employed in the colonial trade 
 amounted to 1,610,037 tons, and that employed in the foreign 
 trade to 2,558,809 : the colonial having been strictly “ pro- 
 tected,” and the foreign carried on under reciprocity treaties, or 
 (as he and Mr. Richmond originally described it) virtually “ un- 
 protected ?” The British people must have been under some 
 strange delusions as to the superiority of foreign products ; and 
 we very much fear that their habits are too firmly fixed to be 
 shaken by Mr. G. F. Young’s eloquence. He will hardly per- 
 suade them to give up French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish 
 
9 
 
 wines, or Chinese tea, to enhance the price of gooseberries and 
 sloe-leaves, or protect the manufacture of Madeira at the Cape. 
 Nor do we think it would be altogether prudent to prohibit 
 American cotton, in the hope that fifty or a hundred millions of 
 British capital would be forthwith employed in growing it in 
 Hindostan. In fact, it is preposterous to talk of our colonies as 
 “ teeming with every production which necessity, convenience, or 
 luxury demand ;” although, assuming waste of capital and labour 
 to be of no importance and quality immaterial, it may be true 
 that most productions might be forced in any country. But 
 foreign trade, forsooth, is subject to constant derangement, whilst 
 the home and colonial is not; and Mr. G. F. Young actually 
 names “ famine at home” at the head of the “ visitations and 
 accidents” to which we are exposed by the liberal system of 
 commercial intercourse he condemns ? But a self-dependent 
 community, particularly an agricultural one, is most liable to 
 suffer from causes which no human prudence can avert ; and the 
 prosperity which depends on distant colonies is the most pre- 
 carious of the whole. 
 
 Let every one calmly meditate on the condition of the East 
 Indies and the Cape, surrounded by warlike tribes, familiarised 
 to the use of fire-arms ; or turn to the West Indies, the Canadas, 
 and Australia, refusing to submit to restrictions or monopolies. 
 Suppose, after ruining the existing race of Manchester manufac- 
 turers by a high duty on the raw material of their trade, we were 
 to succeed in making cotton the staple of Hindostan — how long 
 would the East Indian cotton-grower submit to be excluded from 
 the general market of the world ? Even if it were good for com- 
 merce to be kept in leading strings, she has grown up, and will 
 not stand it any longer. Platitudes about the evils of competition 
 and the dangers of extended speculation, are about as much to 
 the purpose as the wise saws we read in copy-books. Practi- 
 cally, they are disregarded and despised; and the moment an 
 attempt is made to push a Protectionist doctrine to its legitimate 
 conclusion, the very propounder shrinks from it. A landholder 
 demands a law to prevent the English shopkeeper from buying 
 French corn or cattle ; and forthwith sets off for France, where 
 the best part of his income goes to French shopkeepers. A law 
 forbidding Englishmen to visit foreign countries would be just as 
 reasonable as a law forbidding Englishmen to buy foreign goods. 
 Why is it not proposed ? Because mankind is too far advanced 
 for such absurdities ; because it is almost universally felt, that the 
 highest advantages of civilization are only attainable by liberality ; 
 because perfect freedom of intercourse and interchange between 
 nations is confessedly the best mode of promoting the common 
 progress, and the only mode of eventually securing that most 
 inestimable of all national blessings — Peace.” 
 
 c 
 
10 
 
 The discussion ivas thereupon continued as follows : — 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Sir, — Your remarks on my letter are severe ; but, as I 
 challenged the controversy, I will not complain. You deprecate 
 my “ mistake in prefacing a defence of the Navigation Laws by a 
 diatribe against free trade,” without noticing my explanation of 
 the reasons which urged me to grapple with the general argument 
 in favour of the repeal of those laws, — as the necessary “ com- 
 plement of the free-trade system,” — before proceeding to a con- 
 sideration of the laws themselves. This course was forced upon 
 me. To have entered at once on the discussion of those laws, 
 without first clearing the ground by disposing of this specious 
 plea, would have been both illogical and dangerous. In common 
 with all reasoners of the ultra school of political economy, you 
 desire that free-trade should be regarded as the settled policy of 
 the State, assuming its principles to be incontrovertible. No 
 expedient could be devised more artfully adapted to sustain a 
 favourite doctrine, than boldly to assume that it is self-evident, 
 and, therefore, not to be shaken or disputed. But I deny that 
 there exists so general an acquiescence in the truth of the dogmas 
 of the free-traders as they claim ; and no less that the arrange- 
 ments, already effected by the partial adoption of the system, are 
 inviolable. Taken at best, it is but an experiment ; and, believ- 
 ing that the result has utterly falsified the arrogant predictions of 
 those by whom the changes recently made in our commercial 
 system have been wrought, it was indispensable, for an impartial 
 consideration of the Navigation Laws, to show that no argument 
 could be deduced in favour of their repeal from the connection of 
 that measure with a system of policy which experience has 
 hitherto proved an undeniable failure. 
 
 Nor is there, in pursuing this course, the inconsistency you 
 allege, tested even by your own reasoning. It is with no inten- 
 tional disrespect that I address you in the language of Junius to 
 Sir William Draper : — “ I could wish that, in your future publi- 
 cations, you would pay a greater attention to the truth of your 
 premises, before you suffer your genius to hurry you to a conclu- 
 sion.” You assume it as “ clear to demonstration, that the more 
 we deal with customers of any sort beyond the seas, so much the 
 
11 
 
 better for the shipowners.” If by this it be merely intended to 
 assert that increased importations will require increased tonnage, 
 assuredly “there needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us 
 this.” But the important question to shipowners and to the 
 country is not, will shipping be required , but what shipping will 
 be employed , British or foreign ? This issue it is which will be 
 determined by the preservation or destruction of the Navigation 
 Laws. Repeal them, and though your imports were (from other 
 causes, for this could not extend them) to increase fourfold, it is 
 at least possible that your navigation might decline. I invite 
 your consideration of this possibility, and propose hereafter to try 
 this very issue, on which you have hurried to a conclusion at 
 least premature, and which, hereafter, I hope to prove erroneous. 
 
 Next, you charge me with advocating the exclusion of foreign 
 commerce, representing me as the champion of the absurdity of 
 “ making and growing everything at home.” I ask the reader, 
 in fairness, to refer to my letter for the disproof of this. What 
 I have there said can by no process of extension be strained so 
 far. To confine consumption to home production, would be an 
 odd way of supporting the interests of shipowners, whose business 
 is importation. Once for all let me say, I desire neither mono- 
 poly, prohibition, nor forced production. Yet I do not shrink, as 
 you suppose, from any legitimate conclusion deducible from the 
 doctrines I propound. I object only to extreme deductions, 
 which are rarely admissible, even from the soundest principles. 
 It is desirable to invigorate the frame and accustom it to physical 
 endurance by reasonable exposure ; but I have yet to learn that 
 it is effeminate to protect the person against the vicissitudes of 
 climate by warm clothing. Thus, too, though you justly ridi- 
 cule the idea of substituting domestic gooseberry-juice and sloe- 
 leaves for Spanish wines and Chinese teas, it by no means follows 
 that it would be inconsistent to encourage the growth of cotton 
 in India, as a means of destroying the American monopoly ; or 
 reasonably to protect the sugar of the West Indies, in order to 
 discourage the slave-trade of Cuba and Brazil. In short, neither 
 protection nor free-trade, as principles, will bear to be carried 
 out to their final results. To push either to extremes is not an 
 act of political wisdom, but of crotchetty rashness. 
 
 One other explanation, and I have done with your comments 
 
12 
 
 on my letter . To prolong the discussion would be unreasonable 
 and useless. You ask me to tell you why, in 1846, the British 
 tonnage employed in the Colonial trade amounted to 1,610,137 
 tons, and that employed in the foreign trade to 2,350,809 tons ; 
 the colonial having been strictly protected, and the foreign un- 
 protected.” First, let me correct your figures — I will then answer 
 your question. The Colonial trade of 1846 was not 1,610,137, 
 but 1,735,924 tons,* a difference not inconsiderable. But the 
 whole contrast (stated, as it is, ad invidiam), is but a repetition 
 of an exploded fallacy. The tonnage in the foreign trade is ridi- 
 culously exaggerated by the inclusion of repeated voyages of the 
 same ships, magnifying, as is shown by a Parliamentary return,f 
 a steamer of 146 tons into 24,215 tons; thus exhibiting 7,101 
 tons of steam-vessels, employed for the conveyance of passengers 
 between England and France, as no less than 228,183 tons of 
 British shipping engaged in the foreign commerce of the country ! 
 Nor is this shipping, as your question, and Porter’s table, on 
 which it is founded, would lead one to suppose, really engaged in 
 unprotected trade. On the contrary, it is protected, and in a 
 high degree, by the very Act which the return is framed to 
 impugn. By the Navigation Act, importations from foreign 
 countries are rigidly restricted either to British ships or ships 
 of the countries of which the imported goods are the produce, or, 
 in some cases, wherein they may be found. This regulation 
 constitutes an extensive, important, and efficacious protection. 
 But, after all, divested of technical reasoning, your question is 
 conclusively answered by the consideration, that, as it is not the 
 exclusion of importations from abroad that is sought, but simply 
 the encouragement of colonial imports, this could only have the 
 effect of displacing, to the extent of any increase, an equal 
 quantity of the produce of foreign countries, without in the 
 slightest degree affecting the amount of tonnage required for the 
 general importation. 
 
 But it is time I should proceed to establish my allegation — 
 that so far as the experiment of free trade has been tried, it has 
 signally falsified the predictions of those by whom it was recom- 
 mended. It were endless to recount the promises by which a 
 
 * Lords’ Report on Navigation Laws, page 901, table 4. 
 
 t Parliamentary Paper, No. 28, Session 1848. 
 
13 
 
 credulous people were stimulated to clamour for free- trade, with 
 a violence which, amounting almost to frenzy, could not with 
 safety be resisted. It is enough to say that people were assured 
 that peace, plenty, and universal prosperity, would promptly and 
 infallibly follow the abolition of that protection which was repre- 
 sented as the crowning injustice of aristocratic policy — the fertile 
 source of every popular suffering. Three remarkable assurances 
 were undeniably given. First, that with increased importation 
 of foreign commodities there would result a corresponding in- 
 crease in the export of British produce and manufactures. Se- 
 condly, that with diminished prices of articles of subsistence, 
 w ages would rise from the extended demand for manufactured 
 goods to be exported in payment for augmented imports ; and 
 thus, from increased employment, and increased command over 
 the necessaries of life consequent on cheapness, the condition of 
 the labouring classes would be greatly improved. And lastly, 
 that the example of liberality in commercial intercourse, once set 
 by Great Britain, every nation would speedily follow in the same 
 enlightened track, and that by the modification of foreign hostile 
 tariffs, boundless markets would be opened for the sale of British 
 manufactures. Let us see how far these splendid visions have 
 been realized. Take the first promise — that of increased exports. 
 For this, let us turn to the accounts published by the Board of 
 Trade, first glancing at the actual extension of imports. On 
 reference to the most recent returns, I find that during the first 
 ten months of the present year an enormous increase has taken 
 place in the import of the leading articles of foreign productions 
 over the corresponding period of 1846. Thus : — 
 
 Of wheat, barley, oats, rye, and 
 Indian corn, the importation 
 
 was, in 1846 ... 2,536,645 quarters. 
 
 184 8 ... 4,605,426 
 
 Increase 2,068,781 quarters. 
 
 Pork salted 1846 ... 43,565 cwts. 
 
 1848 ... 232,783 
 
 Increase 189,218 cwts. 
 
 — 
 
 Satin broad stuffs 1846 ... 111,418 lbs. 
 
 1848 ... 260,634 
 
 Increase 
 
 149,214 lbs. 
 
Foreign sugar 
 
 14 
 
 1846 ... 946,785 cvvts. 
 
 1848 ... 1,462,255 
 
 Increase 515,470 cwts. 
 
 Cotton wool 1846 ... 3,990,411 cwts. 
 
 1848 ... 5,598,675 
 
 Increase......... 1,608,264 cwts. 
 
 Leather gloves 1846 ... 2,029,622 pairs. 
 
 1848 ... 2,652,649 
 
 Increase 623,027 pairs. 
 
 Let us now return to the reverse of the picture, and there, in 
 the same return, we shall find that 
 
 The total value of the exports of British and Irish 
 produce and manufactures in the first ten months 
 
 of 1846 was £43,415,770 
 
 In the corresponding period of 1848 38,053,424 
 
 Decrease £4,667,656 
 
 So much for promise the first. I know that by the monthly 
 accounts in the same return it appears that 
 
 In November, 1846, the value of the exports was... £3,406,896 
 
 And that in November, 1848, it was 3,428,448 
 
 Showing an increase of £21,552 
 
 and that from this paltry increase it has been hastily inferred that 
 the crisis is past, that fresh outlets are opening for British manu- 
 factures, and that the promised prosperity is at length about to 
 be exhibited. As a check to overweening confidence in this 
 anticipation of disappointed political economists, I invite atten- 
 tion to the following extract from the Times of the 1st of the 
 present month : — 
 
 “ The commercial accounts from Rio give a very unfavourable 
 description of the market for manufactures. Already suffering 
 from large and accumulated stocks, recent shipments have greatly 
 embarrassed the merchants, and unless a change should speedily 
 take place, it was apprehended such sacrifices would have to be 
 made as would lead to prices being forced below the home cost 
 of production.” 
 
 And this from Rio de Janeiro, where there has been no panic, 
 no revolution, no famine, and whence our importations of sugar 
 
15 
 
 have been enormous ! Can further exports to this first-class port 
 for a while be subject of congratulation ? 
 
 Nor, unhappily, is this confined to South America. From the 
 West Indies the accounts are gloomy in the extreme. From 
 Ceylon, I observe in your own journal of the 20th instant, 
 that — 
 
 “ Manufactures and other imports from Europe can only be 
 disposed of at a loss, and at long credits.” 
 
 From Manilla they write — 
 
 “ In coloured goods, the stock of which is still very large, 
 there has been some trifling improvement, but sales are made 
 only to a limited extent. The quotations for drills and sheetings 
 are nominal.” 
 
 From China — 
 
 “ Cotton yarn — no buyers at this moment ; there is a large 
 supply in the market.” 
 
 And from the same country, pregnant with warning, “400 
 bales of English cotton yarn have been sold during the month, 
 and 700 American .” 
 
 And again — 
 
 “ Camlets — 1,300 pieces of English are reported as sold, and 
 800 pieces of Dutch.” 
 
 I hoped to have been able to dispose in this letter of the 
 preliminary argument, by completing the proof that the pro- 
 mised benefits from free-trade measures have at least not yet 
 been so far attained as to justify reliance on the assurances 
 of free-traders, or to warrant the further perilous experiment 
 they recommend. But I must not intrude further at this mo- 
 ment on your space. I have shown that increased export 
 of British manufactures has not resulted from the removal 
 of restriction on imports. I am prepared as conclusively to 
 prove that, though the experiment of free -trade has been 
 some time in progress, the condition of the mass of the po- 
 pulation has not improved, and that no foreign nation has 
 imitated the example of our liberal policy. And, when the autho 
 rity of free-traders, as prophets, shall thus have bee 
 negatived, I shall be ready, with your permission 
 most succinct form of which the argument 
 pensable necessity of naval power to B 
 
16 
 
 indissoluble connection existing between an extensive mercantile 
 marine and a powerful “ military navy ;” and to demonstrate the 
 impossibility of maintaining such a commercial marine without 
 protection. Thence will follow the conclusion, that under a 
 repeal of the Navigation-laws, British shipping would decline, 
 and the foreign advance — vast national interests would be wan- 
 tonly sacrificed— the naval power of the country would be weak- 
 ened. coincidently with increased necessity for its extension ; and 
 the safety of the state be rashly placed in certain and alarming 
 jeopardy „ — I am, sir, your obedient servant. 
 
 Geo. Frederick Young. 
 
 Limehouse, Dec. 28, 1848. 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 Sir, — In my letter of the 28th December, I proved, by official 
 statistics, the fallacy of the assurance given by the Free-traders, 
 that the adoption of their policy would, with certainty, lead to 
 increased exports of British produce and manufactures ; — show- 
 ing, by incontestable evidence, that concurrently with an enor- 
 mous augmentation of imports, consequent on the relaxations of 
 our tariff, a positive and large decrease in the export of British 
 productions had actually taken place. Their next promise may 
 be considered as embodied in the following extract from the 
 speech of Mr. Cobden, on the 27th February, 1846, upon the 
 discussion of Sir R. Peel’s motion for the repeal of the Corn-laws. 
 “ The working-classes,” said he, “ expect, by the repeal of the 
 Corn-laws, to get higher wages, and bread at half the price.” 
 These blessings were in effect promised them by the Anti- 
 Corn-law League, as an inevitable consequence of the adoption of 
 free-trade principles. Hopes more flattering or seductive could 
 scarcely have been held out to influence a people. Let us now 
 test, by actual results, the worth of this double promise, so far as 
 gone. And first, with regard to the point of wages, 
 f a newspaper must have had his attention con- 
 contests which have occurred, since the 
 in all the manufacturing districts, 
 
17 
 
 between the workmen and their employers ; the strikes in every 
 instance originating in attempts of the master manufacturers to 
 reduce wages, which naturally excites resistance on the part of 
 the operatives. From careful inquiries I can confidently assert 
 that, in the cotton mills of Lancashire, the wages of roovers, 
 slubbers, piecers, and others, which in 1836 were about 10s. per 
 week, are now 8s. 6d., whilst those of spinners (and indeed the 
 prices paid for all piece-work), have been reduced in about an equal 
 proportion. I have reason to believe that this proportion, or 
 fifteen per cent., may be taken as a moderate estimate of the 
 reduction that has been effected in manufacturing labour through- 
 out the country. We see, then, that facts conclusively refute 
 the assertion that higher wages would attend the operation of a 
 free-trade policy. Great, however, as this reduction has been, 
 and grievous as it has proved to the working-classes, their con- 
 dition might nevertheless have been improved, if the equally 
 confident promise of “ bread at half price” had been actually 
 realized. But this expectation, like the others, has been utterly 
 disappointed. In February, 1846, the date of Mr. Cobden’s 
 declaration, the average price of wheat was 59s. 4 d. per quarter ; 
 the price in February, 1845, having been 48s. 1 d. In February, 
 1847, it was 73s. lid. ; in February, 1848, 52 s. 4 d . ; in August, 
 53s. lOd. ; and in December, 51s. 4 d. Thus, after a lapse of 
 nearly three years, during which the price of bread corn has 
 actually oscillated between the extremes of 50 s. and 100s. per 
 quarter, through periods of scarcity on the one hand, and im- 
 portations beyond example on the other ; we find that, instead of 
 being reduced one half in price, the reduction is little more than 
 one eighth ; while it is still 3s. 3d. higher than it was under the 
 vilified system of protection, twelve months before the changes in 
 the tariff were made. If it should be urged that in February 
 next, when all duty shall have ceased, prices will further decline, 
 I answer this is but a fresh promise, on which our experience of 
 the worthlessness of the first forbids our placing reliance. 
 
 But, be the cause what it may, if the system of free-trade, 
 after three years’ trial, has not resulted in the blessings which it 
 was confidently predicted would follow its adoption, but, on the 
 contrary, has been fruitful of consequences at variance with the 
 theory, 1 contend that it would be against all reason and pru- 
 
 n 
 
18 
 
 dence, simply for the purpose of perfecting the “ complement of 
 free trade,” to set the seal upon its policy by a further important 
 step, which, if false, will be fatal, because it will be irrevocable. 
 No ! If the Navigation-laws be in practice injurious, and in prin- 
 ciple unsound, let them be amended or repealed as shall seem 
 most advisable. But let this issue be fairly tried — let them not 
 be abolished for no better reason than because they stand in the 
 way of a favourite system, until that system, now on its trial, 
 shall yield results more satisfactory and conclusive than those 
 which the last three years have afforded. Let us first see whether, 
 instead of finally abolishing all duty on the importation of corn, 
 it be not soon deemed necessary to reconsider the concessions 
 made to a clamorous faction, and amend the precipitate legisla- 
 tion by which so fair and productive a source of revenue w r as 
 abandoned. Every reflecting man now smiles at the folly which, 
 in an embarrassed condition of the public finances, led a popula- 
 rity-hunting House of Commons, at the bidding of an inconsistent 
 minister, to throw into the hands of speculators the vast revenue 
 which might, without increase of cost to the consumer, have been 
 readily derived from a moderate fixed duty on corn. Sensible 
 persons now ask, why the arguments in favour of a fixed duty on 
 corn, urged by the Whigs (by whom it was proposed), and by 
 their supporters, in 1841, are not equally valid in 1849, when 
 those by whom they were then opposed have adopted the policy 
 those arguments were designed to advance, and carried still fur- 
 ther the application of that policy. Enough, however, of this 
 digression. The promises of increased wages and cheapened 
 bread thus negatived, we come to the third prediction of the 
 Free-traders — that if the example of liberal commercial policy 
 were set by Great Britain, it would be promptly and generally 
 followed by other nations. In the debate in the House of Com- 
 mons, to which I have before alluded. Sir Robert Peel is reported 
 to have said — 
 
 “ France is desirous to follow the example we are setting. 
 Russia is shaken. Sardinia has set the example of a liberal tariff. 
 Naples will shortly follow. The United States will give encou- 
 ragement to that party which is favourable to a free commerce with 
 England .” 
 
 ******* 
 
19 
 
 Of Russia, I will only say, that if at that time, afflicted with 
 the ague of free-trade, she was burning in the hot fit of liberal 
 intentions, the cold fit of illiberal restriction soon supervened, 
 under which she has been shaking ever since. With the liberal 
 tariff of Sardinia I am myself unacquainted, nor have I been able 
 to meet with a commercial man who has the slightest consciousness 
 of the existence of such an anomaly. * * * * Naples may be dis- 
 missed with the statement that she has not followed our example. 
 But France and the United States deserve a little closer analysis. 
 Under the dynasty of Louis Philippe, two years were permitted 
 to elapse, after Sir Robert Peel’s declaration, without the slightest 
 overt indication of an intention to give practical effect to the 
 desire, we were assured, she entertained. At length, in February 
 last, the throne was overturned, and the triumph of liberty, 
 equality, and fraternity, might well have justified the expectation 
 that, under a Government which was the very type and symbol 
 of freedom, free-trade would be the motto of commercial policy. 
 This most reasonable hope was, indeed, a little damped when our 
 unfortunate countrymen were so inhospitably expelled from 
 France ; but when order was established, and the policy of the 
 State was submitted to the deliberate consideration of its supreme 
 authority, it was scarcely to have been expected that we should 
 find, in the proceedings of the National Assembly, such a record 
 as the following : — 
 
 " National Assembly of France, Thursday, Dec. 28. 
 
 “ The President next read the 3rd article, providing that, 
 after the 1st of July, 1849, foreign salt should be admitted 
 into France on the following conditions : — 
 
 [Here follow certain conditions, and then] 
 
 “ By sea and by the Mediterranean harbours, in French 
 vessels, 50 centimes per 100 kilogrammes ; in foreign vessels, 
 1 franc per 100 kilogrammes .” 
 
 It remains to be seen whether Lord Palmerston will have suffi- 
 cient courage to break a lance with Louis Napoleon on the com- 
 patibility of such a law with the provisions of the existing treaty 
 with France, which expressly stipulate for equality of privilege 
 for the vessels of both nations in all intercourse with each other. 
 But the fact of such a law having passed, affords the best illus- 
 
20 
 
 tration of the averseness of that country to follow our liberal 
 example, and its connection with maritime commerce (for it is the 
 first commercial law the French have enacted since the last Revo- 
 lution) renders it peculiarly applicable to the main object of my 
 present remarks. 
 
 But the case of the United States is even more striking, and 
 as the development of the commercial policy of that country now 
 in progress excites general interest, and the subject is much 
 misunderstood, I may be, perhaps, excused for giving a fuller 
 explanation of it than might strictly have sufficed for my present 
 purpose. The American tariff of 1842 was framed in a spirit of 
 jealous commercial rivalry with Great Britain, and a determination 
 to encourage, by high protective duties, the domestic manufac- 
 tures of the States. On some articles the rates were altogether 
 prohibitory ; and being, in most instances, imposed by quantity 
 or weight, their precise ad valorem per-centage cannot be accu- 
 rately ascertained. Mr. Macgregor, however, at page 1128 of 
 his elaborate work, estimates those charged on the principal 
 articles of export from Great Britain as follows, viz. — 
 
 On manufactures of cotton, average 50 per cent. 
 
 99 
 9 9 
 
 leather 
 
 ,, 
 
 ,, 35 
 
 99 
 
 99 
 
 9 9 
 
 silk 
 
 „ 40 
 
 99 
 
 99 
 
 wool 
 
 „ 40 
 
 99 
 
 9 9 
 
 iron 
 
 „ 40 
 
 9 9 
 
 99 
 
 brass 
 
 „ 40 
 
 99 
 
 But this tariff having occasioned great dissatisfaction in the 
 Southern States, and ultimately given rise to demonstrations 
 threatening the integrity of the Union, it was revised in 1846, 
 and, after long and stormy debates, modified as follows, the 
 charge by weight or quantity being abandoned, and every article 
 subjected to a direct ad valorem duty : — 
 
 On manufactures of cotton, 25 per cent. 
 
 „ linen, 25 „ 
 
 ,, leather, 25 „ 
 
 „ silks, 25 
 
 ,, wool, 30 „ 
 
 ,, iron, 30 „ 
 
 ,. brass, 25 „ 
 
21 
 
 That this amended tariff was somewhat less restrictive than 
 that which preceded it cannot be denied, but that it exhibited the 
 slightest commercial liberality, no one would for an instant pre- 
 tend. It is in fact obviously very highly protective and anti- 
 free-trade. As a step, however, in the direction of their princi- 
 ple, it was exultingly hailed by the free-traders, and Sir Robert 
 Peel may have been right in the opinion he expressed, that the 
 United States were favourable to a free commerce with England. 
 But three years have passed without the slightest indication 
 of a purpose to fulfil the expectations on which the British 
 tariff was relaxed in favour of foreign productions. At length, 
 as if to give the coup de grace to all such unfounded and visionary 
 anticipations, I read in the very last report from the United 
 States — 
 
 “ In Congress, business has scarcely commenced. A resolution 
 has been submitted, instructing the Committee on Ways and 
 Means to report a Bill based upon the principle of the tariff of 
 1842. The question, in its passage, was taken by yeas and nays, 
 and decided in the affirmative by a majority of 33 votes !” 
 
 A majority in the House of Representatives of that free nation, 
 whose liberal disposition constituted one of Sir Robert Peel’s 
 most cherished anticipations and most potent arguments, decides, 
 in 1848, not only not to advance in the course of liberal policy, 
 but absolutely to go back to the principle of the ignorant, hostile, 
 and suicidal policy of 1842 ! 
 
 Need I pursue this refutation further ? 
 
 And now, Sir, I think I may with some confidence ask whe- 
 ther I have not unanswerably proved that the three great promises 
 of the free-traders in 1846, relying upon which the Legislature, 
 at the demand of a deluded public, withdrew from domestic 
 interests the moderate and just protection to which they are 
 entitled, have been signally falsified ? Our exports, instead of 
 increasing, have diminished. Wages, instead of advancing, have 
 declined. Foreign nations, instead of following our example of 
 liberal policy, have drawn closer the links of exclusion. I dare 
 not trust myself to comment on the audacity which, in the face of 
 such overwhelming reasons for our distrusting their authority, 
 prompts the free-traders to demand the sacrifice of the Naviga- 
 tion Laws, as the “complement” of a system that thus far 
 
22 
 
 has proved an utter and unmitigated failure. I have such 
 confidence in the fairness and discernment of the public, as 
 to believe that, if these laws are repealed, it will be (to 
 borrow your own expressive term) on no such flimsy a “ pla- 
 titude.” If, indeed, they can be shewn to be injurious to 
 the public interests, — if they cannot even be proved to be, on the 
 contrary, beneficial, essential, indispensable, — I, at least, am 
 prepared at once to surrender them. I ask not, at present, that 
 we should pass sentence of condemnation, and retrace our steps 
 in free- trade ; I require only that we should pause in our career ; 
 and, disappointed thus far in results, that we should enlarge our 
 experience, by observing the effects of the alterations already 
 made, ere we consummate the system ; and, claiming that the 
 question of the Navigation Laws should be decided on its intrinsic 
 merits alone, I shall be ready, in my next letter, confining myself 
 strictly to that specific question, to pursue consecutively a course 
 of analysis and argument, from which I trust to lead your readers 
 to the conclusion that the maintenance of the principle on which 
 these laws are founded is inseparably interwoven with the great- 
 ness, the prosperity, and the safety of the British empire. 
 
 I am. Sir, yours obliged and faithfully, 
 
 George Frederick Young. 
 
 Limehouse, Jan. 8, 1849. 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 Sir, — Having in my preceding letters exposed by argument 
 the fallacy of free-trade doctrines, and proved by present results 
 their practical failure, the ground is clear for entering upon the 
 discussion of the Navigation-laws — a question which the Man- 
 chester school of politicians would have us insanely resolve in the 
 affirmative. Let us make a searching but dispassionate examin- 
 ation of the working of those laws ; for by this alone can w r e 
 determine whether they be, as my opponents assert, unwfise and 
 pernicious, or, as I maintain, accordant with sound principles, 
 and indispensably necessary to the safety of the country. 
 
 In undertaking this inquiry, and confining it within the limits 
 which delicacy suggests — your liberality and love of fair play 
 
23 
 
 prescribing none— I feel sensibly how much the argument must 
 lose, from an unavoidable exclusion of many details calculated to 
 illustrate and enforce my reasoning, but which could not be 
 introduced without a prolixity which, if permitted, would in my 
 position be scarcely justifiable. Passing by, therefore, or, at 
 most, but incidentally touching those points which have a more 
 especial bearing on economical considerations — such, for instance, 
 as the effect of the Navigation-laws on the production and accu- 
 mulation of wealth — I propose to consider the question before us 
 principally in that particular which is most largely fraught with 
 public interest, and of the highest importance — the dependence 
 of our national power, influence, and security, upon the Naviga- 
 tion-laws. 
 
 Presented, then, in a distributive and consecutive form, the 
 argument I have to sustain may be thus stated : — 
 
 1 . A royal navy sufficiently powerful to command supremacy 
 on the ocean is necessary to the glory and safety of the British 
 Empire. 
 
 2. A mercantile marine, not simply extensive in an absolute 
 sense, but relatively superior to that of every other maritime 
 power, is necessary to the maintenance, at all times and under 
 all circumstances, of such a royal navy. 
 
 3. That under the operation of the Navigation-laws such a 
 commercial marine has actually been maintained and now exists ; 
 and that, under a system which preserves the principle of those 
 laws, though altered to meet the varying circumstances of the 
 times, it may still, and ever, be sustained without material incon- 
 venience to commerce, or sensible pressure on the interests of 
 any class of the community ; while, under any system of free 
 navigation, an indefinite but considerable amount of British 
 shipping and seamen must inevitably be displaced by the com- 
 petition of foreigners ; thus diminishing the relative proportion 
 of British to foreign ships and sailors by a double operation, and 
 endangering the existence of a commercial marine sufficiently 
 extensive to supply the requirements of the belligerent navy. 
 
 4. That this repeal of the Navigation- laws would, therefore, 
 be an act diametrically opposed to every consideration of prudent 
 state policy, in short, an act of suicidal rashness, and that in any 
 amendment of their details the principles on which they are 
 founded ought ever to be maintained inviolate — Q.E.D. 
 
24 
 
 In proceeding consecutively to examine these several proposi- 
 tions, it may at first sight appear unnecessary that I should 
 waste reasoning in support of the first, which by many being 
 considered axiomatic, they will suppose to be universally ad- 
 mitted. 
 
 But although this proposition is almost self-evident, it would 
 neither be logical nor — with such opponents — safe, to assume 
 such an admission. On this point, especially, the versatility and 
 inconsistency of the free traders are remarkable. At one mo- 
 ment, addressing themselves as financial reformers to the narrow 
 and selfish feelings of mistaken economists, they deny the neces- 
 sity of expenditure for military and naval purposes, inculcate 
 exclusive reliance on commercial intercourse between nations as 
 affording the best security against the recurrence of war, and 
 hence deduce the conclusion, that naval power is unnecessary 
 either for the safety or the prosperity of the State. These doc- 
 trines, however, they present only to the visionary theorists of 
 their school, or the unthinking multitude they mislead, and with 
 whom they desire to be popular. Turning to, and next address- 
 ing, those who, favourable to what are termed liberal principles 
 of commerce, are nevertheless determined to maintain the power 
 and glory of their country, they endeavour to quiet apprehension 
 and neutralise opposition by assuring them, first, that an efficient 
 royal navy may be maintained without the aid of a commercial 
 marine ; and (if that promise be insufficient), secondly, that our 
 insular position, our local advantages, our extended commerce, 
 our unbounded capital, and the active genius of our people, must 
 always command the possession of a great amount of commercial 
 shipping. These declarations it will be presently my task to 
 examine and refute. 
 
 But it is, in the meantime, essential that the great truth 
 should be steadily kept in view, that it is not simply power, but 
 supremacy on the ocean that is essential to the preservation of 
 Great Britain in the position she holds in the great family of 
 nations ; that nothing short of remaining mistress of the seas can 
 afford security to her vast colonial possessions, keep open the 
 necessary communications with them, can give weight to her 
 authority in the diplomatic arrangements of the world, protect 
 her coasts from the degradation of insult, or even ensure to her 
 soil exemption from the humiliating consequences of invasion. 
 
Whether such benefits can be retained and such calamities 
 averted without the aid of Navigation Laws I shall hereafter in- 
 quire ; but at present, as the foundation of my whole argument, 
 I insist on naval ascendancy as the sole condition, and when I 
 shall have proved that merchant shipping is requisite to the 
 support of a powerful navy, your readers will, I trust, no longer 
 be lulled into false security by the promise that free trade will 
 prove an anodyne to allay international grievances, or be dazzled 
 by the array of exaggerated figures continually paraded by official 
 statists to exhibit the actual extent of British tonnage, but will 
 steadily fix their attention on that which is the turning point of 
 the whole question, the relative proportions of British and foreign 
 tonnage, and the tendencies of legislation as affecting the balance. 
 It cannot be too often repeated, that it is not the possession of 
 one, or two, or three millions of tonnage of shipping that insures 
 the national safety — it is the possession of the elements of a naval 
 force greater than that of rival powers, and sufficient to maintain 
 the sovereignty of the seas, on which alone reliance can be based. 
 The possibility of our still undisputed naval superiority slip- 
 ping from our grasp, and of some rival nation distancing us 
 in the race, is no idle or chimerical vision. This may be brought 
 sensibly home to conviction by an attentive consideration of the 
 following statements : — 
 
 The tonnage belonging to the “ United Kingdom and its de- 
 pendencies,” and the tonnage belonging to the “ United States 
 of America,” at the conclusion of the war in 1815, respectively 
 stood thus : — 
 
 British tonnage 2,681,276 
 
 American 1,368,127 
 
 Since that period the progressive increase of each has been as 
 follows : — 
 
 
 1815. 
 
 1825. 
 
 1835. 
 
 1845. 
 
 British 
 
 2,681,276 
 
 2,553,682 
 
 2,783,161 
 
 3,714,061 
 
 American ... 
 
 1,368,127 
 
 1,423,111 
 
 1,824,940 
 
 2,417,001 
 
 1847. 
 
 3,952,524 
 
 2,839,046 
 
 Thus, in thirty-two years, British tonnage has advanced from 
 2,681,27 6 to 3,952,524 tons, or about 47| per cent., while 
 American tonnage has increased from 1,368,127 to 2,839,046 
 tons, or 107 per cent. ; and American tonnage, which, at the 
 commencement of the period, was as nearly as possible five-tenths 
 
26 
 
 of the amount of the British, exhibits, at its conclusion, no less 
 a proportion than seven-tenths. Of the British tonnage, too, in 
 1847, 644,603 tons consisted of vessels registered in the colonies 
 and distant possessions of the empire, — a very doubtful element 
 of permanent naval power. Surely, if our navigation is to be 
 preserved, it is not in the face of facts like these that British 
 statesmen would be warranted in experiments involving even a 
 hazard of diminishing the extent of British shipping. 
 
 Anxious not to interrupt the consecutive course of my argu- 
 ment, I abstain from referring to many other facts, and importing 
 much additional reasoning, calculated strongly to confirm the 
 opinions I advance, but which will perhaps be more fitly intro- 
 duced in support of my succeedingposition. But it would be doing 
 injustice to the cause I advocate, were I to dismiss this portion 
 of the subject without strengthening the argument for supremacy 
 by authorities necessarily commanding far greater weight than any 
 reasoning I could hope to employ. Truth never changes ; it is, and 
 must remain, in all ages the same. “ Qui mare teneat, eum necesse 
 est rerum potiri” says Cicero. Lord Bacon enumerates, among 
 the genuine signs of greatness in a commonwealth, “ a numerous 
 population, a martial spirit in that population, and the supremacy 
 of the seas ” That profound thinker. Sir Walter Raleigh, has left 
 on record this aphorism : — “ Whosoever commands the seas, 
 commands the trade ; whosoever commands the trade, commands 
 the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.” And 
 reverting to our own times, with sound and statesmanlike saga- 
 city, Mr. Huskisson, even in the very act of proposing changes 
 in our navigation system, in his speech in the House of Commons 
 on the 26th May, 1826, thus expresses himself : — 
 
 “ Our Navigation Laws, Sir, have a twofold object : first, to 
 create and maintain a great commercial marine ; and secondly (an 
 object not less important in the eyes of statesmen), to prevent any 
 one other nation from engrossing too large a portion of the navi- 
 gation of the rest of the world ” 
 
 And then, explaining the specific manner in which the Navi- 
 gation Laws provide for the attainment of these objects, and 
 admitting that the regulations for those purposes in some degree 
 restrain the perfect freedom of commercial pursuits, he con- 
 tinues : — 
 
27 
 
 “ I am, however, bound to say, that these regulations are 
 founded on the first and paramount law of every state, the highest 
 ground of political necessity — the necessity of providing for our 
 own safety and defence — the necessity of being prepared to afford 
 security to our numerous colonial possessions — the necessity of 
 protecting the different branches of our widely-spread com- 
 merce ; ” and lastly, “ the necessity of preserving our ascendancy 
 on the ocean, and thereby sustaining the high station in the rank 
 of nations which that ascendancy , more than any other circum - 
 stance, has given to this country .” It may be well here at once 
 to disavow, in the use of the terms “ supremacy ” and “sove- 
 reignty,” all idea of reviving those haughty and offensive preten- 
 sions which, though long exercised by Great Britain, were always 
 submitted to by foreign nations with natural impatience, and 
 would not now be tolerated by any independent state. I have no 
 desire that the topsail should be lowered and the flag struck to 
 every British pennant. I contend only for such a predominance 
 on the ocean as should practically afford the protection and 
 defence which, with Mr. Huskisson, I consider requisite to the 
 maintenance of our position in the rank of nations, and even to 
 our existence as an independent power. 
 
 And here, having, as I trust, established my first position, I 
 will, for the present, conclude. In my next I propose to examine 
 how far a commercial marine, superior in extent to that of every 
 other nation, is indispensable to the maintenance of such a royal 
 navy as has been proved to be an object of paramount state 
 necessity. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful and obedient servant, 
 
 George Frederick Young. 
 
 Limehouse, Jan. 19, 1849. 
 
 At this stage of the controversy the Editor of the Morning 
 Chronicle resumed his argument in the following “ leader — 
 
 “ After what has taken place since November, 1847, in reference 
 to the Navigation Laws, it may be difficult to conceive how the 
 question of their repeal can be dropped, evaded, or even pro- 
 crastinated by the Government. It ought, most assuredly, to 
 
28 
 
 figure in the Queen’s speech at the opening of the session, if they 
 attach the slightest value to their character for principle or con- 
 sistency. But on this point they may probably agree with 
 Ratcliffe (in the * Heart of Mid-Lothian’), who declares that he 
 does not particularly care about his character, and, * to say the 
 truth, has very little character worth caring about.’ They were, 
 but the other day, on the very verge of proposing a fixed duty 
 on corn, in direct defiance of Lord John Russell’s last * recorded 
 opinions and, could they be made to believe that public opinion 
 is undecided as to the Navigation Laws, they would find some 
 excuse or other for leaving former pledges unfulfilled — were it 
 only for the sake of prolonging the quarrel between the two great 
 sections of the Conservative party. Since, therefore, the advo- 
 cates of the shipping interest are actively bestirring themselves 
 — apparently in the hope of suggesting a retrograde movement 
 to the Whigs — we are tempted to enter the lists at once with 
 the most forward of their champions, without waiting for the 
 grand melee, in which, nolentes volentes, we shall be summoned 
 to take part in February. We are the more anxious to do so, 
 on account of the very unfair mode in which the question has 
 been generally stated by the Protectionists — with the obvious 
 view of leading Britannia to believe that a body of her most 
 faithful sons have conspired to deprive her of her boasted empire 
 of the seas. 
 
 “ Suppose that two adventurers, about to start for California, 
 were engaged in argument as to the best mode of getting there ; 
 that the one were to give detailed reasons for preferring the 
 overland journey, and that the other, instead of refuting them, 
 were to commence a tirade against his friend for an alleged want 
 of spirit, courage, and imagination, in undervaluing so glorious 
 a country and discountenancing the contemplated expedition of 
 the pair. Suppose that when Prince Louis Napoleon requested 
 M. Mole and M. Thiers to point out the best mode of discharg- 
 ing his duty, one of them had responded by a long harangue 
 about the glory of France, and the sin of wilfully tarnishing it. 
 Suppose anything else, equally irrational and preposterous ; and 
 it cannot be more so than the assumption of Mr. G. F. Young 
 and his party, that the chief opponents of the Navigation Laws 
 are indifferent to the naval greatness of their country, or enter- 
 tain some wicked notion of undermining it. Our deliberate 
 conviction is, as our argument throughout has been, that we shall 
 have more commerce, more ships, and more sailors, after the 
 abolition of the Navigation Laws, and of the various harassing 
 regulations and iniquitous practices (such as the apprentice laws 
 and the impressment system) popularly, if not logically, associated 
 with them. Mr. G. F. Young, however, contends, in his last 
 letter, that Free- trade prophets are unworthy of credit, and that 
 
29 
 
 the Protectionists alone are permitted to dive into futurity. Mr. 
 Cobden had said, in 1846, * the working- classes expect, by the 
 repeal of the corn-laws, to get higher wages, and bread at half 
 the price/ If they did expect this, every true Conservative must 
 rejoice that they were undeceived in the only safe and effectual 
 manner, prior to the late Continental convulsions. Mr. G. F. 
 Young coolly charges the expectation on Mr. Cobden himself, and, 
 after recapitulating the average prices of corn, proceeds : — ‘ Thus, 
 after a lapse of nearly three years, we find that, instead of being 
 reduced one-half in price, the reduction is little more than one- 
 eighth ; while it is still 3s. 3d. higher than it was under the 
 vilified system of protection, twelve months before the changes in 
 the tariff were made/ Now, the whole of the Protectionists, 
 with Lord Stanley at their head, declared that a very great 
 reduction of price was inevitable, and would bring about the 
 * ruin’ of the agriculturists ; and these are the selfsame persons 
 who now assert, with equal confidence, that the shipping inte- 
 rest will be ‘ ruined’ by the repeal of the Navigation Laws. 
 
 “We decidedly object, however, to all theories founded on acci- 
 dental circumstances, or on averages confined to short periods of 
 time ; and the Protectionists, also, must have discovered, by this 
 time, the deceptive and ephemeral character of all arguments 
 constructed of such materials. The primd facie inference from 
 Mr. G. F. Young’s comparison of prices is, that * the vilified 
 system of protection’ renders bread cheap ; but this gentleman 
 never attacks his opponents without exposing his own weak side, 
 and we have no doubt he has been (unconsciously) telling a 
 diametrically opposite story within the week. For ourselves, 
 our constant object is to rest all our arguments upon some gene- 
 ral observation, law of nature, or principle, which no one can 
 deny or dispute ; and it seems to us abundantly plain that our 
 maritime superiority must have some better, sounder, and firmer 
 foundation than the restrictive system. Else, what has prevented 
 us from being rivalled by France and other continental countries, 
 where that system has been still more rigidly pursued than by 
 ourselves ? National habits and pursuits are formed by circum- 
 stances — by peculiarities of situation or of climate. A Swiss is 
 at home on a mountain, and an Englishman on a deck. The 
 seaboard of the British empire, composed of islands and inter- 
 sected by creeks, is larger than that of any other empire in the 
 world ; and everything that she requires from foreigners, or 
 desires to dispose of to them, must be conveyed in ships. 
 
 “ The United States have, in like manner, become an extensive 
 maritime power, because their richest and most important towns 
 are on the coast ; and because Europe affords them the most pro- 
 fitable market for their commodities, and supplies them, in return, 
 with all that adds most to refinement and civilization. But, when 
 
30 
 
 Central North America shall be fully peopled, and when the New 
 World shall consist, like the Old, of an aggregation of independent 
 states, it seems by no means probable that the whole of these 
 will be pre-eminently maritime, or that the most maritime will 
 attempt to rival us, in our peculiar walk, on this side of the 
 Atlantic. The English and Americans have been placed, for 
 more than twenty years, on the most perfect footing of equality, 
 as regards the direct trade, under the Reciprocity Treaties ; and 
 British tonnage has more than quadrupled. Surely, this ought 
 to quiet the alarms which the shipowners are so anxious to excite. 
 Let it be observed, moreover, that they cannot set up the United 
 States as their bugbear without relinquishing their pet argument 
 touching the inability of a country where labour is dear to com- 
 pete with countries in which labour is cheap, for shipwrights’ 
 wages are higher in the United States than even in England, 
 where they are kept up by a combination which it is the impera- 
 tive duty of the Legislature to put down or neutralize without 
 delay. The essential fallacy of this argument has been repeat- 
 edly exposed. It would prove, if it were worth anything, that 
 no London tradesman (a carriage-maker or upholsterer, for ex- 
 ample) could possibly compete with a provincial, — for house-rent 
 and provisions, as well as wages, are higher in the metropolis ; 
 yet country families come to town to buy furniture, and London- 
 built carriages are almost invariably preferred. 
 
 “ If Mr. G. F. Young will take the trouble to think this matter 
 over, he will admit that one of his cheap fir vessels, from Norway or 
 Finland, would cut about the same figure in the Pool as a drotsky 
 from the same districts in the Park. Moreover, if we can buy 
 good ships cheaper than we can build them, why should we not ? 
 Or, how does this affect the question of naval supremacy ? We 
 get many of the chief materials used in ship-building from foreign 
 countries already ; and many of the naval exploits on which we 
 pride ourselves were performed in ships captured from the French. 
 Perhaps Mr. Young will say, ‘ So much the worse; they ought 
 to have been broken up at once, and then English shipwrights 
 would have been employed in building all that were wanted 
 for the grand difference between your ‘practical man’ and scien- 
 tific economists is, that he aims at making, and they at saving, 
 labour, on all occasions. But we must take another opportunity 
 of discussing this matter with Mr. Young ; and the only indul- 
 gence we will ever ask of him is, not to misstate our views, or 
 represent us as deficient in the same noble ardour which fires his 
 breast and animates his pen. We have as good a right to mount 
 the Nelson column, or to intrench ourselves behind the wooden 
 walls of Old England, as himself or Lord Hardwicke. W T e shall 
 henceforth join in the chorus whenever they strike up ‘ Rule 
 Britannia;’ and we are quite ready to send the Ojibbeway 
 Indians, or the Ethiopian singers, or the gentlemen who fill up 
 
31 
 
 the background at the Surrey Theatre during the singing of 
 ‘ Black-eyed Susan,’ properly equipped as our contingent, the 
 next time that they think it necessary to assert the honour of the 
 British flag by a procession of blue-jackets,” 
 
 Three days after the appearance of the above leading article, 
 the discussion was pursued as follows : — 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Sir, — If a disclaimer of motives never imputed, or intended to 
 be imputed, and the repetition of a few general “ platitudes,” 
 seasoned with harmless wit, be deemed a reply to an argument 
 based on incontrovertible facts, and strengthened by logical 
 reasoning, then may my former letters be regarded as having 
 received an answer, in your leader of last Friday, upon the 
 Navigation Laws. It would, however, be equally ungracious and 
 inconvenient were I at this time, and in these columns, to offer 
 comment upon that article. I accept it as the intended refuta- 
 tion of my case, so far as it has hitherto been developed, and am 
 more than satisfied in submitting the controversy, as at present it 
 stands, to the arbitrament of the public. 
 
 With no further preface, I resume my argument on the Naviga- 
 tion Laws. It will be remembered that my last letter established 
 the position that a royal navy, superior to the military navy of any 
 rival maritime power, if not to the united force of any probable 
 combination of hostile nations, is indispensable to the greatness, 
 the prosperity, and the safety of these kingdoms. The next 
 link in our chain of reasoning will be the proof that, in order to 
 create and maintain such a navy, at any time, and under every 
 emergency, it is indispensable that the merchant shipping of the 
 country should be kept in a condition of similar comparative 
 superiority ; and for this reason, — that the mercantile marine con- 
 stitutes the only source whence a sure, a ready, and an adequate 
 supply of seamen can be derived, for manning efficiently the 
 royal navy. 
 
 Until a very recent period, the consentaneous sanction of every 
 authority would have rendered argument in proof of this position 
 superfluous. But this is the age of " sophists, economists, and 
 
3:2 
 
 calculators and their influence is so widely spread as to have 
 extended even to the quarterdeck. Unsatisfied with the limited 
 fame to be acquired in these “ piping times of peace,” by the 
 command of a line-of-battle ship, a gallant officer of her 
 Majesty’s navy has sought to establish for himself a more pro- 
 minent reputation, by founding, on a very confused and limited 
 acquaintance with the Protean doctrines of political economy, an 
 entirely new school of naval practice. During the inquiry in 
 1847, by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, “ into 
 the policy and operation of the Navigation Laws,” for some un- 
 explained reason (known, perhaps, only to the hon. chairman, 
 Mr. Milner Gibson), one naval officer, and one only, was sum- 
 moned to give evidence on the vital question of the connection 
 between the royal navy and the merchant service. That officer 
 was Captain Sir James Stirling, then about to proceed (in 
 command of her Majesty’s ship Howe ) with Queen Adelaide to 
 Madeira. Sir James gave, before the Committee, the astounding 
 evidence I am about to analyse. After this he hastened back to 
 Portsmouth, to resume his command, leaving his testimony in 
 chief to be placed on record, unqualified by the cross examination 
 which had been prepared for and was awaiting him. To the un- 
 blemished character of Sir James I am enabled, from personal 
 knowledge, to testify, and in freely commenting upon his pub- 
 licly stated opinions he will, I am sure, acquit me of intending 
 him the slightest personal disrespect. But of his competence to 
 judge of those important questions, on which he did not hesitate 
 to pronounce dogmatically, mischievously, and erroneously, I 
 have never concealed my opinion. On this point I leave the 
 public to decide from the following instances. 
 
 In his answer to question 4,577, Sir James claims a familiar 
 acquaintance with the navigation system and its legal enactments, 
 and, with reference to one portion of those legislative provisions 
 (from which he unhesitatingly deduces the most extravagant 
 inferences) he says : — 
 
 “ In the whale-fishery, which is a branch of maritime industry 
 open alike to foreigners with ourselves, the Navigation Act can 
 confer no benefit upon British ships.” 
 
 Now the fact is, that by the Regulation Act, 8 and 9 Vic., 
 eap. 86 (which is strictly one of the Navigation Laws), blubber. 
 
33 
 
 train-oil, spermaceti-oil, and whale-fins, are expressly excluded 
 from entry, except on the declaration of the master, that they 
 are “ taken by British vessels owned and navigated according to 
 law,” and no foreign ship is on any terms admissible to entry in 
 any port of Great Britain direct from the whale-fisheries ! This 
 is wholly irrespective of duties on importation. 
 
 Such and so veritable is the authority on which Mr. Ricardo 
 relies, when, in page 106 of his “ Anatomy,” he says, “ The 
 evidence of Sir James Stirling is of itself enough to put an end 
 to the Navigation Laws.” 
 
 Returning to that portion of the evidence of this officer which 
 especially bears on the subject under consideration, I find in his 
 answer to question 4,593 — 
 
 “ Commanding a ship of the line, three years ago (the Indus), 
 
 I endeavoured to ascertain the number of men in the ship who 
 had been trained in the merchant service, and I did not find the 
 number exceed five per cent, of the whole crew.” And then, 
 “ as matter of fact, I am prepared to say that the merchant 
 service is not a nursery for seamen for the service of the State.” 
 
 Again, to question 4,597 — 
 
 ** I believe, that at present there are not more than 1,000 men 
 in the royal navy who have been brought up in the merchant 
 service.” 
 
 And to question 4,602, he replies — 
 
 “ Neither at present, nor prospectively, can the merchant ser- 
 vice be looked to as a source of supply for the navy.” 
 
 Sir James subsequently refers, in vague and general terms, to 
 a plan by which he would propose to keep up the navy on a 
 cheap and self-adjusting independent principle. 
 
 The astonishment excited by these extraordinary statements 
 was only equalled by the enthusiastic exultation with which they 
 were hailed by the Navigation-law repealers. They were cited 
 with easy confidence by parliamentary debaters, quoted as the 
 text of free-trade pamphleteers, reviewers, and journalists, and 
 appealed to as indisputable authority by reasoners of every de- 
 scription opposed to the British navigation system. The star of 
 Sir James Stirling was for some months in the ascendant. He 
 had indeed achieved a reputation. 
 
 At length came the session of 1848. A select committee to 
 
 F 
 
34 
 
 inquire into the Navigation Laws was appointed in the House of 
 Lords. Before these committees all witnesses are examined on 
 oath. Sir James Stirling having returned to England was again 
 summoned. In corroboration of his statement respecting the 
 Indus , he handed in an “ exact and trustworthy return*’ of the 
 Howe, the ship he then commanded, from which, as he informs 
 the committee, “ the proportion of merchant seamen of five per 
 cent, is fully established!” — ( Vide infra, Evidence of Lieutenant 
 Brown.) That list is now before me. It contains the names of 
 178 petty officers and seamen, opposite each of which is an entry 
 whether the party had or had not “ served in the merchant ser- 
 vice.” The relative numbers stand thus : — 
 
 Served in the merchant service 99 
 
 Never in the merchant service 71 
 
 Occasionally in merchant service and navy 3 
 
 In revenue cutters, Danish navy, Spanish and American ser- 
 vice, and East- India Company’s navy 5 
 
 Total 178 
 
 The list is accompanied by a “ state of ratings,” analyzing the 
 different classes of which the whole crew of the ship were com- 
 posed. This, possibly, is intended in some manner to explain 
 the contradiction of which Sir James, with infinite naivete, con- 
 victs himself. This analysis, termed by Lieutenant Brown, R.N. 
 (the Registrar of Seamen), a “ dissection,” the lieutenant de- 
 clares he “ cannot understand ;” and, as it is equally unintelligible 
 to me, I assure Sir James Stirling that it is neither from unfair- 
 ness nor disrespect that I refrain from further remark upon it. 
 
 One other proof of the gallant officer’s inconsistency, and I 
 shall pass to the refutation of his strange opinions, given by other 
 and higher authorities. He has distinctly assured us that a mer- 
 chant service is no fit nursery for a navy. Yet, at question 4,577, 
 referring to the prosperous condition of the American whale- 
 fishery, he says : — 
 
 “ The political consequences of that condition, I conceive, are 
 serious ; the Americans have a standing naval army of 10,000 
 men employed in their whaling- ships, ready for war.” 
 
 Pass we now to other testimony. 
 
35 
 
 Sir Thomas Byam Martin, G.C.B., Vice-Admiral of the United 
 Kingdom, was examined, who having, after long professional 
 service in all parts of the world, filled for sixteen years the re- 
 sponsible office of Comptroller of the Navy, was eminently 
 qualified to form a sound judgment on this subject. That gallant 
 and distinguished officer says : " I confidently assert that the 
 mercantile marine is everything to the navy , and that the navy could 
 not exist without it. The great battle of the 1st June, 1794 
 (Lord Howe’s), was fought, and that important victory gained, 
 chiefly by the merchant seamen of the kingdom. We had not 
 20,000 seamen, and those scattered over the globe, when the war 
 broke out in 1793; it was, therefore, the merchant service that 
 enabled us rapidly to man some sixty sail of the line, and 
 double the number of frigates and smaller vessels. It was by 
 promptly bringing together about 35,000 or 40,000 seamen of the 
 mercantile marine, that Admiral Gardner could speedily proceed 
 to the West Indies, with seven sail of the line ; that Lord Hood 
 could have twenty-two sail of the line in the Mediterranean, 
 while other squadrons were sent to America and the East Indies, 
 to protect our interests in those quarters ; and Lord Howe was 
 enabled to protect the Channel with twenty-seven sail of the line ; 
 thus giving security to our own homes, and protection to our colonies 
 and commerce all over the world” 
 
 It was impossible to abridge this quotation without impairing 
 it ; but though greatly to be wished, I must not add more from 
 this indisputable authority. The next evidence here available is 
 that of Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, K.C.B., recently 
 Commander-in-Chief on the East-India and China station : — 
 
 “ It is my opinion that the supply of seamen for the navy de- 
 pends in a very great measure upon the mercantile marine, parti- 
 cularly in time of war.” 
 
 Captain Berkeley, C.B., M.P., and one of the Lords of the 
 Admiralty, deposes : — 
 
 “ In peace time we prefer those seamen who have been brought 
 up in the navy ; we generally get better seamen from the mer- 
 chant service, as regards every branch of their profession ; they 
 are more inured to rigours, and to depend on their own re- 
 sources. It takes some time to teach them gunnery.” 
 
36 
 
 Again : — 
 
 *• I think you ought not to give up having your ships manned 
 by a certain number of British seamen.” 
 
 Then, for confutation of Sir James Stirling : — 
 
 “ I was chairman of the commission appointed to inquire into 
 the proportion of seamen serving in the royal navy, and we 
 made out that a proportion of about two-fifths of the number that 
 we had in the navy had been brought up in the merchant service .” 
 And next : — 
 
 “ I have seen Sir James Stirling’s plan for manning the navy, 
 but I do not agree with him, because he meant it to be totally inde- 
 pendent of the merchant service ; and I thought that it was not 
 only expensive, but that it was impossible to be independent of 
 the merchant service. It was wholly out of the question .” 
 
 One further witness, and I have done with the evidence from 
 the Lords’ Report, — Lieutenant J. H. Brown, R.N., Registrar of 
 Seamen, whose character and the nature of whose duties attach 
 to his opinions unqualified weight : — 
 
 “ The merchant service is the source and foundation of our 
 naval power, and the element of a large navy.” 
 
 “ I would derive all my seamen from the merchant service. I 
 would have very few boys, if I could help it.” 
 
 “ The system of making the navy exclusive, and rearing up 
 your own men in it, is a system any nation may pursue ; whereas 
 the great element of our power, and which we possess exclusively 
 to such a great extent, is our commercial marine, which should 
 never be disregarded.” 
 
 “ I would eschew everything calculated to widen the distinc- 
 tion between the navy and merchant service.” 
 
 “ I think half the men at this moment serving in the navy are 
 from the merchant service.” 
 
 " I found, by dissecting the Howe's books, that there were 24 
 petty officers, 59 able seamen, and 91 ordinary seamen, derived 
 from the royal navy ; and 23 petty officers, 87 able seamen, and 
 132 ordinary seamen, derived from the merchant service; leaving 
 sixty-eight in favour of the merchant service .” 
 
 But I have still a witness in reserve, whose testimony, though 
 not given before a parliamentary committee, but escaping invo- 
 
37 
 
 luntarily, ought of itself to supersede all necessity for other 
 proof, — the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere, President of the 
 Board of Trade, the proposer, and it is presumed the framer, of 
 the Bill brought into Parliament last session for the repeal of the 
 Navigation Laws. The Bill sets out by repealing entirely the 
 Navigation Act, the Registry Act, and other Acts constituting 
 what are termed the Navigation Laws ; and then, by section 6, 
 it re-enacts the present obligation upon the owners of British 
 registered ships to man their ships with British seamen. I stop 
 not to remark, at present , on the gross unfairness of this pro- 
 posed enactment to the British shipowner (introduced, too, in the 
 very Act that is to annihilate the protection which the wisdom 
 of former times afforded him), because I hope hereafter to expose 
 the legion of inconsistencies that abound in this legislative mon- 
 strosity. But, I ask, on what principle short of State necessity, 
 requiring that British sailors should be reared and trained in 
 merchant ships for the public service, can Mr. Labouchere defend 
 this gross interference with the employment of labour ? Are Mr. 
 Cobden and Mr. Bright restricted by law to domestic labourers in 
 their cotton -mills — Lord Fitz william in his fields — or President 
 Gladstone in his warehouses ? No ! Why, then, this excep- 
 tion ? Because Mr. Labouchere well knows that means must 
 always be at hand for manning a powerful navy for the nation’s 
 defence ; that such means are only to be secured by an extensive 
 mercantile marine, manned by British sailors ; and, therefore, he 
 scruples not to sacrifice every principle of consistency and jus- 
 tice in the impossible endeavour to reconcile the free- trade mea- 
 sure of repeal of the Navigation Laws with the tyrannical obli- 
 gation to man our merchant shipping with native seamen. The 
 tale of bricks is exacted, but the supply of straw denied. This 
 is Mr. Labouchere’s testimony to the necessity and value of a 
 national commercial marine ; and with it I conclude my chain of 
 British authorities. 
 
 The anxious desire of Napoleon for ships, colonies, and com- 
 merce — the admitted naval strength of the United States, with 
 only 11 line-of-battle ships, but possessing 2,839,044 tons of 
 merchant shipping ; and the equally admitted naval weakness of 
 Russia, with 47 line-of-battle ships, but an insignificant commer- 
 
38 
 
 cial fleet, — all attest the great truth, which I hope will now be 
 considered as established, that a powerful royal navy indis- 
 pensably requires the co-existence and aid of a proportionally 
 extensive mercantile marine. 
 
 In my next I propose to consider whether a sufficient merchant 
 navy can be maintained if the Navigation Laws be repealed. 
 
 I am. Sir, &c. 
 
 George Frederick Young. 
 
 Limehouse, Jan. 29, 1849. 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 Sir, — The vital necessity to Great Britain of a royal navy, 
 sufficiently powerful to command supremacy on the ocean, esta- 
 blished ; and next, a mercantile marine, of commensurate extent, 
 proved indispensable for the maintenance of such a navy, it will 
 at once be apparent that the inquiry into the efficacy of the Navi- 
 gation Laws for encouraging and extending British maritime 
 commerce, assumes an importance which immeasurably exceeds 
 that of any investigation affecting mere class interests ; that it 
 involves considerations of the highest state policy, and that on 
 the solution of this problem depends no less an issue than that 
 of the national safety itself. That issue at this moment trembles 
 in the balance. I enter upon the inquiry in a spirit far removed, 
 I hope, from that which characterizes the flimsy levities of Mr. 
 Ricardo, and the misplaced sneers of Mr.Cobden ; and I would ear- 
 nestly invoke that dispassionate attention to the merits of this ques- 
 tion which the gravity of the consequences imperatively demands. 
 
 I must here repeat, that the maintenance of the principles on 
 which the Navigation Laws are based is indispensable to the 
 prosperity of British maritime commerce, and that, consequently, 
 with their existence, the greatness, the prosperity, and the secu- 
 rity of the country are inseparably interwoven. What, then, 
 are those principles ? 
 
 First. The restriction to British shins of the coasting trade 
 and the fisheries. 
 
 Secondly. A similar restriction of the direct colonial and the 
 inter- colonial trades. 
 
39 
 
 Thirdly. The restriction of importation of bulky articles of 
 foreign production to British ships, or ships of the country of 
 which such articles are the produce, or in which they may be 
 found. 
 
 And fourthly. The limitation of the importation of bulky arti- 
 cles, the produce of Asia, Africa, and America, to direct import 
 from those distant quarters of the world. 
 
 To these regulations for the encouragement of British naviga- 
 tion should be added, as part of the navigation system, the fol- 
 lowing restrictions, imposed for the purpose of rendering it 
 available to the great object of maintenance of naval power. 
 
 First. The compulsion imposed by the Registry Act on the 
 British shipowner to man his ships with British seamen. 
 
 Secondly. The limitation to the exclusive employment of Bri- 
 tish-built ships. 
 
 On each of these regulations I should have been glad to have 
 offered some remarks as introductory to the main argument, but 
 I must not make so large an intrusion on your columns. I pro- 
 ceed, therefore, briefly to trace the effects actually produced by 
 those regulations on maritime commerce. 
 
 It is stated by Dr. Davenant, that in 28 years from the Restora- 
 tion (that is just 27 years after the passing of the Navigation Act), 
 “ the shipping of England had doubled.” I cannot find any authen- 
 tic record of the actual tonnage of the kingdom at that period ; but 
 M'Culloch states that, at the commencement of the last century', 
 that of England and Wales was estimated at 261,222 tons ; and 
 he adds, “ commerce and navigation have steadily advanced from 
 that period to the present day.” It appears from official docu- 
 ments that in 1787 the tonnage of England and Scotland was 
 432,292 tons. In 1803, the tonnage of the empire, including 
 the colonies, had advanced to 2,167,863 tons. In 1815, at the 
 conclusion of the last war, it had reached 2,681,274 tons ; and 
 on the 31st of December, 1846, it amounted to no less than 
 3,817,112 tons. It may here be objected that post hoc is not 
 always propter hoc. I have not lost sight of this. But I say 
 that, after incontestable evidence that under the navigation 
 system shipping has increased to an enormous extent, the obli- 
 gation is thrown on those who deny that this increase has re- 
 sulted from the Navigation Laws to give satisfactory reasons for 
 
40 
 
 an assumption so opposed to probability. It cannot be denied, 
 that if colonies and colonial intercourse increase — if foreign 
 commerce be extended — the natural tendency of regulations 
 restricting that intercourse and commerce to British ships must 
 be to increase the quantity of the shipping to which the carrying 
 trade is thus exclusively confined, in a greater degree than it 
 could be increased if that trade were open to the shipping of the 
 whole world. But so far as I am aware, no such proof has ever 
 been attempted ; therefore, as the case stands, I am justified in 
 requiring assent, not only to the proposition that under the 
 Navigation Laws British shipping has greatly increased, but 
 that, at least, strong primd facie ground is shown for the con- 
 clusion that those laws have produced the increase. This 
 assumption I shall presently strengthen by the antithetical evi- 
 dence of the decline of our shipping where the Navigation Laws 
 have been relaxed. 
 
 If space permitted, I could prove, on irrefragable testimony, 
 that these beneficial effects on navigation have been secured with 
 little or no inconvenience to commerce, or to the general inte- 
 rests of the community. For these proofs, however, I must 
 refer your readers to the evidence taken by the select committees 
 of both Houses of Parliament on “ the policy and operation of 
 the Navigation Laws,” and particularly to that given before the 
 committee of the Lords. From this it will be abundantly evident 
 that no merchants of any eminence (though many such in every 
 department of commerce were examined) could depose to any 
 serious practical evils resulting from those laws, also that no 
 sensible effect on prices would follow their repeal; while the 
 paucity of petitions against them has testified unequivocally 
 that no hardship has by those laws been occasioned to the public. 
 In fact, it is not to be denied that the attempt to establish a 
 grievance utterly failed. The only complaint was that of the 
 school of theoretic free-traders, to whose empirical doctrines the 
 actual state of British navigation, under a protective policy, 
 presents a standing refutation ; and who, regardless of conse- 
 quences, would now complete the dismal catalogue of their 
 changes by the prostration even of our national defences. How- 
 ever, before dismissing this part of the question, let me say that 
 I am by no means opposed to any alteration in the Navigation 
 
41 
 
 Laws calculated to adapt them to the present condition of com- 
 merce and the necessities of society ; but I assert that every 
 proved inconvenience may be easily and effectually remedied 
 without any infraction of the principle of those laws ; and to any 
 amendment framed in such a spirit, I know the great body of 
 shipowners would not only cheerfully submit, but cordially lend 
 their aid. 
 
 I return to the argument, that the repeal of the Navigation 
 Laws must certainly and rapidly lead to a large displacement of 
 British tonnage, and the substitution of foreign shipping in our 
 carrying trade ; thus perilously altering those relations between 
 our mercantile marine and royal navy, on which, as I have 
 already shown, the safety of the state depends. 
 
 That such a transfer is indeed contemplated as the result of 
 the proposed repeal, and must follow it, would appear self-evident. 
 Against those who contend for the admission of foreign ships 
 into the several branches of our carrying trade from which they 
 are now by law excluded, and who at the same time assert that by 
 such a change British shipping will not be displaced from em- 
 ployment, I confess I am not prepared to argue. The co- 
 existence of the two conditions is impossible. It is not even 
 alleged, that from such a change increased importations would 
 result; and, the quantity of articles imported remaining the same, 
 either the measure must prove wholly inoperative, or, to the ex- 
 tent of its working it must palpably cause a diminution of British 
 ships. But it is with the amount of this transfer that we have at 
 present to deal ; and although this is, from the very nature of 
 the investigation, in some degree matter of conjecture, data are 
 not wanting from which an approximation to the truth may be 
 made. The total quantity of shipping entered inwards, from 
 foreign countries and British possessions, in 1846, was 6,101,015 
 tons, of which 4,294,733 were British, and 1,806,282 foreign. 
 Of the British, there entered from our colonies and posses- 
 sions (from which foreign ships are, by the Navigation Laws, 
 excluded) 1,770,193 tons; and from countries (such as China) 
 whose trade is, by law, open equally to their own or to British 
 ships, but to no others, and which devolves, in consequence of 
 their not possessing ships, on British tonnage alone, 233,429 
 tons, making an aggregate of tonnage, actually protected from 
 
 G 
 
42 
 
 all competition by the Navigation Laws, of 2,003,622 tons. 
 
 During the same year the inward entries from 
 foreign countries (whose ships are in compe- 
 tition with British ships, in the direct trade 
 from those countries, but are excluded, by 
 the Navigation Laws, from entry from other 
 countries, the protection being, in this case, 
 only partial) amounted to 2,291,111 
 
 Exhibiting the total of British tonnage, wholly 
 
 or partially protected, of 4,294,733 tons. 
 
 It thus appears, that in those trades in which British ships 
 are exposed even to a partial competition with foreign ships, the 
 returns show a proportion of 2,291,111, or 56-100ths of the 
 whole as British, and 1,806,282, or 44-100ths, as foreign. But 
 I must here remark that the superiority of the British in these 
 returns is most unfairly exaggerated, from the introduction of 
 repeated voyages, and the inclusion of steam -vessels, which 
 latter circumstance has led to 7,101 tons of vessels, engaged in 
 the trade with France alone, being stated as no less than 228,189 
 tons of the entire amount above given. I am, however, content 
 to take the return with all its unfavourable exaggerations, as 
 abundantly sufficient for my argument. No reason can be 
 assigned against the presumption that if foreign ships were ad- 
 mitted into the British colonial trade, from which by law they 
 are positively excluded, and into the trade with those countries 
 from which, as I have shown, they are now practically shut out, 
 they would obtain a like proportion of the navigation to that they 
 possess in the trades to which they are now admitted ; and this, 
 applied to the actual tonnage, would at once transfer 44-100ths 
 of 2,003,622, or about 880,000 tons, from the British to the 
 foreign side of the account. 
 
 Turning next to the foreign trade : it is certain that, by grant- 
 ing permission to foreign shipping to trade without limitation 
 from any country to Great Britain, a strong impulse would be 
 given to the navigation of those countries which, from position, 
 cheapness of material and labour, or other circumstances, are 
 best adapted, or most anxious, for the extension of their mari- 
 time commerce. Of the 4,097,393 tons at present engaged in 
 
43 
 
 these trades, it has been shown that, with her existing advan- 
 tages, Great Britain has about 56-100ths, and foreign nations the 
 remaining 44-100ths. It would be within the limits of reason- 
 able probability, and would exhibit on the part of England a 
 capacity for maintaining competition infinitely greater than has 
 yet been shown by any maritime state where the experiment has 
 hitherto been tried, if, under such a change, the relative position 
 should not be reversed. Great Britain retaining the 44th, and 
 foreign nations together obtaining the 56-100ths of the aggre- 
 gate trade. On this very moderate computation a further dimi- 
 nution of British and increase of foreign tonnage would arise, 
 amounting to upwards of 480,000 tons. 
 
 Let us now see how the account would stand under these 
 
 alterations — 
 
 Tons. 
 
 The present British tonnage is 4,294,733 
 
 And the foreign 1,806,282 
 
 Showing an excess of British over foreign of 2,488,451 
 
 The British being diminished in colonial trade, 
 
 and the foreign increased as shown 880,000 
 
 And in the foreign trade 480,000 
 
 Together 1,360,000 
 
 The British would become 4,294,733—1,360,000=2,934,733 
 
 And the foreign 1,806,282+1,360,000=3,166,282 
 
 Showing an excess of foreign over British of 231,549 
 
 But this mode of reasoning may present even a more serious 
 aspect if applied to our most enterprising and formidable mari- 
 time rival — the United States. In your comments on my pre- 
 ceding letters, you informed the public, that, under the Recipro- 
 city Treaty with America, British tonnage in the trade with that 
 country “ had quadrupled/' But you omitted to notice the pre- 
 sent relative position of British and American shipping in that 
 
 trade. Permit me, Sir, to supply the omission. 
 
 The British tonnage entered inwards from the United Tons. 
 
 States in the year 1846, was 205,123 
 
 The American 435,399 
 
 Showing an excess of American over British of 230,276 
 
 Thus, under the system of free competition in the direct trade, 
 which the repeal of the Navigation Laws would introduce into all 
 
44 
 
 trade, our active competitors engross 68-100ths of the whole, 
 leaving us in our own importations the remaining 32-100ths. 
 
 Again, let us apply a similar test to the next in importance of 
 our maritime rivals — the Baltic powers. 
 
 By the Reciprocity Treaties of 1824, British ships in the direct 
 trades with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia, were placed 
 in the same position of unprotected competition as that in 
 which they would he placed in all trades by the repeal of the 
 Navigation Laws. 
 
 The tonnage entered inwards from these countries in Tons. 
 
 the year 1846 was : — British 88,894 
 
 Foreign 571,161 
 
 Showing an excess of foreign over British of 482,267 
 
 And it is most remarkable that, during the twenty-two years of 
 this competition, which, it has been alleged that British shipping 
 can successfully sustain, it actually declined in those trades 
 41,001 tons, while foreign tonnage advanced 220,487 tons ! 
 
 Still it remains that I should complete the startling contrast of 
 our own boasted maritime strength and capabilities with that of 
 our despised rivals ; that I should expose the absurdity and injus- 
 tice of Mr. Labouchere’s Bill; and sum up the argument (by 
 which I am not without hope of convincing you and the reflecting 
 and truth-loving portion of your readers), that the unwarlike and 
 effeminate game of the men of the loom and shuttle cannot be 
 played against our wooden walls and our hardy seamen without a 
 hazard to all that is best worth preserving in this glorious nation, 
 which no lover of his country would permit, no prudent man 
 endure, and no real statesman would venture to encounter. But 
 this I must, with permission, reserve for one more letter, with 
 which I will conclude this appeal to the public on the subject of 
 Free Trade and the Navigation Laws. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 George Frederick Young. 
 
 Limehouse, Feb. 8, 1849. 
 
45 
 
 An extension of the arguments of the Repealers was hereupon 
 made by the Editor of the Morning Chronicle in a third leader , as 
 given below. 
 
 “ The question of the Navigation Laws is about to be brought 
 before the House of Commons, by the President of the Board of 
 Trade. The Protectionists assert that the opponents of these 
 laws are acting recklessly and mischievously, inasmuch as they 
 produce no evils of much importance, and our naval superiority 
 depends upon them. Let us, then, endeavour to form a rude 
 estimate of the alleged evils, and consider how naval superiority, 
 or superiority of any kind, can ever be produced by protection. 
 
 “A book, entitled ‘ Mr. Ricardo’s Anatomy of the Navigation 
 Laws Dissected, by a Barrister,’ is understood to contain the 
 case, and embody the main arguments, of the shipping interest. 
 The author estimates the freight annually earned by British ship- 
 owners at twenty-eight millions sterling in round numbers, which 
 he takes to be about 7/. 10s. a ton. ‘ Supposing freights to be 
 reduced, by the repeal, the 25 per cent. I have already mentioned, 
 the merchants will save 11. 17 s. 6d. a ton, which, on the whole 
 tonnage, amounts to seven millions ; and undoubtedly this sum, 
 standing by itself, is something of an imposing one ; but it 
 dwindles rather, and may even seem insignificant, when com- 
 pared with the vast commercial capital of the country.’ The 
 whole of our imports and exports in 1846 are stated by him at 
 1 50 millions, so that an ad valorem duty of nearly five per cent, 
 is, in the opinion of these monopolists, a trifle not worth talking 
 about. We cite this estimate, to put our readers on their guard, 
 when they next hear of the small savings anticipated from the 
 repeal. For our own parts, we lay little stress upon such calcu- 
 lations, in comparison with the specific and authentic evidence 
 already before the public, as to the ruinous effects of these laws 
 on entire branches of our colonial industry, and as to the checks 
 they impose on British commerce in every quarter of the globe. 
 
 “ It may serve the present purpose of the West-Indian or other 
 colonial interests, to conciliate the Protectionists by keeping in 
 the background that very portion of their alleged grievances 
 which, not quite two years ago, they declared to be intolerable ; 
 but they cannot expect us to forget that the Jamaica House of 
 Assembly, in a memorial to the Queen, dated April, 1847, stated 
 that ‘ the benefit to Jamaica from such relaxation of the Navi- 
 gation Laws would be infinite ; it is the most desirable boon that 
 her inhabitants could solicit, or receive, from your Majesty’s 
 Government.’ The same point was earnestly pressed upon Earl 
 Grey by Lord Harris, as Governor of Trinidad, about the same 
 time ; and in the course of the last three years strong memorials 
 against the restrictive system have been presented from Ceylon, 
 
46 
 
 Australia, and the Canadas. The remonstrances from Montreal 
 and Toronto, in particular, are of a nature which it is utterly 
 impossible to disregard. The merchants state distinctly, that 
 ‘ unless they are left free to employ the cheapest vessels they 
 can procure, whether British or foreign, they despair of being 
 able to maintain a successful competition with their neighbours 
 of the United States, for the extensive and growing trade of the 
 western regions of America/ Their exact position is succinctly 
 explained by Mr. Mackay (in * The Western World ’), who, 
 after showing that the Canadian route is the best line of transit 
 between the north-western lakes and the tidewater, adds, ‘just 
 at the point where the Canadian’s triumph over his greatest 
 obstacles is complete, he finds his farther progress impeded, not 
 by natural obstructions, but by Act of Parliament.’ 
 
 “ The British shipowner has the monopoly of the St. Lawrence ; 
 and, knowing full well that the unlucky Canadians have no alter- 
 native, he often keeps them waiting for weeks, and then exacts 
 exorbitant sums for freight. Mr. Mackay says he has known 
 7s. 6d. asked for the freight of a barrel of flour to Liverpool from 
 Montreal, when Is. 8 d. was the standing price from New York. 
 ‘ It is of this monopoly, and its ruinous consequences, that the 
 Canadian so loudly and so bitterly complains. The stake for 
 which he is playing is one of immense magnitude. The trade of 
 the lakes, for which he wishes to be the great carrier to the 
 ocean, has already attained the value of £30,000,000 sterling ; 
 what it will be in half a century, it is impossible to foretel. He 
 has laid himself out, at no little cost, for the transit trade, and 
 will lose his game if the St. Lawrence below tidewater remains 
 much longer clogged as it is at present. By losing it, the ex- 
 pensive works which he has constructed to secure it will be 
 thrown, comparatively unproductive, upon his hands.’ Will any 
 protectionist or reciprocity member get up and say that these are 
 complaints to be slighted ? 
 
 “ The effect of the restrictive system on general commerce cannot 
 be fully shown without following it into a great variety of details 
 and ramifications ; but, after reading the evidence laid before the 
 committees of both Houses, it is impossible to help arriving at 
 the same conclusion as Mr. Berger, a South-American merchant, 
 that ‘there is at the present moment a considerable amount of busi- 
 ness positively annihilated, which cannot be carried on on account 
 of the Navigation Laws.’ For example, with the view of encou- 
 raging what is called the long voyage, it is enacted that goods of 
 Asia, Africa, and America shall not be brought from any port of 
 the continent of Europe to Great Britain at all, not even in Bri- 
 tish bottoms. But there may be a glut of such goods on the 
 continent; we may be particularly in want of them, and there 
 may be ships waiting for a cargo in the port. All this matters 
 
47 
 
 nothing : the goods must spoil, and the ships must come away 
 with half-cargoes or none. To complete the absurdity, any pro- 
 duce of Asia, Africa, or America, converted into a manufactured 
 commodity in a continental country, may be imported from it. 
 Thus, we take from France, in the shape of a chair or table, the 
 mahogany or rosewood we left upon her hands in block ; and we 
 take sugar from Rotterdam or Hamburg, when it has gone through 
 the process of refining, which we refused in its raw state. This 
 is what the Protectionists call encouraging British industry. One 
 more illustration of this precious system, and we have done. 
 Foreign ships are at full liberty to bring goods to England, pro- 
 vided these are sold or warehoused for exportation ; and it is a 
 known fact, that our merchants and manufacturers have fre- 
 quently been obliged to submit to heavy losses, for want of a 
 commodity which could not be sold to them for home use, al- 
 though abundant in London or Liverpool at the time. A hun- 
 dred times over has it happened that a British trader has been 
 obliged to cross the Indian Ocean or the Pacific for an article 
 which he could have purchased cheaper (without reckoning the 
 journey) at Havre, Bordeaux, or Hamburg. 
 
 “ Now, it may be very easy to ask, what is the mighty grievance 
 of one gentleman’s missing a freight for his copper, a second a 
 market for his cochineal, or a third a profitable investment in 
 spices ; but when almost every merchant engaged in the foreign 
 trade has a story of the same kind to tell, it is time to consider 
 why we should persevere in upholding such a system, for the 
 supposed advantage of a class, who admit that even they them- 
 selves never throve under it. And for the best of reasons. The 
 monopolists are invariably the worst sufferers in the long run 
 from the monopoly, which kills enterprise, paralyzes exertion, 
 forces more capital into the trade than would naturally flow into 
 it, fosters negligence, and sanctions extortion. If English ships 
 are dear, this is in no slight degree owing to combinations among 
 the shipwrights, who have actually formed a fund, exceeding 
 £6,000, for the avowed purpose of keeping up wages. If a 
 foreign captain occasionally gets a freight where a British captain 
 fails, this is commonly by reason of some inferiority in the ship, 
 training, crew, or equipment of the latter, which would not have 
 existed had he been taught to expect competition. It is our full 
 conviction, that if the British shipowners and seamen are simply 
 compelled to trust to their own energies, there is not the re- 
 motest risk of our losing the empire of the seas ; but to contend 
 that we shall strengthen our commercial relations by cramping 
 them, or obtain supremacy by narrowing the field of competition, 
 is preposterous. 
 
 “ The whole theory (for it is a pure theory) of Mr. G. F. Young 
 and his sect is based upon a series of errors. They seem to 
 
48 
 
 think that the mantime power, which is the greatest at any 
 given time, must necessarily swallow up the rest. If so, how 
 did the United States struggle on after the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, when its navy was incalculably inferior to ours ? or 
 how do any of the minor states hold on ? — the little state of 
 Bremen, for example, which has literally no protection whatever ? 
 But he actually expects us to have a positive preponderance of ton- 
 nage in every one port, without exception, to which our ships are 
 admitted ; and when it is found that the North Americans beat us 
 in the South American port of Janeiro, and the Austrians actually 
 run us hard in the Austrian port of Trieste, he infers that the 
 days of our maritime empire are numbered, and our naval glory 
 on the wane. It might as well be said that a great London firm 
 was losing ground because it had given up its connection with 
 Glasgow, and had never thought fit to establish one in Liverpool. 
 British capital is enormous, but it is not boundless ; and Mr. 
 G. F. Young can hardly expect the whole of it to be invested in 
 ships. The result of the even-handed race with the United States, 
 in the direct trade, ought surely to satisfy him, the British ton- 
 nage employed in it having quadrupled since 1824. But Ame- 
 rican tonnage, he replies, has increased still faster ; utterly for- 
 getting that he is comparing an old country with a new one, and 
 that the increase of shipping is, of course, influenced by the 
 increase of population. But it is a remarkable fact, which has 
 been passed unnoticed by Mr. G. F. Young, that the increase of 
 shipping, in proportion to population, has been nearly one-third 
 greater, during the last thirty-two years, in Great Britain than in 
 the United States. There cannot be a more decisive proof of the 
 maritime genius of the British people, which w r ould have led to 
 still prouder results had it been left free, and been allowed an 
 unrestricted field to range over. 
 
 “We cannoc close this article without reminding Mr. Disraeli, 
 and the rest of the Reciprocity school, that, if they are in earnest 
 in their new faith, they must vote for the abolition of the Navi- 
 gation Laws. It is notorious that the leading commercial states 
 of the Continent will be materially influenced, as regards their 
 tariffs, by the line adopted by Great Britain on this occasion ; 
 and Mr. Bancroft has formally announced that the United States 
 are prepared to meet concession by concussion, and go along with 
 us, step by step, in erasing every trace of maritime jealousy from 
 the laws of the two countries.” 
 
 The discussion urns brought to a close by the following letter : — 
 
4.9 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 Sir, — It is so easy, in controversial writing, for an ingenious 
 dialectician to invest a sophistry with all the semblance of truth, 
 that no conclusion deduced from a train of subtle reasoning con- 
 veys conviction to the mind with a force equal to that resulting 
 from plain facts simply stated. Hence the importance, in all 
 such arguments, of closely scrutinizing the correctness of the 
 statements on which they are based. In the comments made in 
 your journal of Monday last on the Navigation Laws, and on the 
 opinions which I have ventured to express with respect to them, 
 you have deduced inferences from an assumption so entirely erro- 
 neous, that, as I believe your intention in favouring me with the 
 use of your columns springs from a desire to elicit the truth, I 
 cannot think you will refuse me an opportunity of correcting you . 
 In the statement to which 1 refer, you say that the relative in- 
 crease of tonnage, as compared with population, in Great Britain 
 over America has escaped my notice. Truly it did escape my 
 notice ; and why ? Because, in discussing a grave national 
 question like this, those points only have my attention which are 
 obviously fact and truth. The refutation I have to offer is brief ; 
 and I am glad that by calling for it you have unwittingly afforded 
 me another occasion for strengthening my position before the 
 public in this controversy. It is best to follow your own words. 
 You say, “ It is a remarkable fact, which has been unnoticed by 
 Mr. G. F. Young, that the increase of shipping in proportion to 
 population has been nearly one-third greater in the last thirty-two 
 years in Great Britain than in the United States' ’ Had the fact 
 really been as you describe, I admit that I should have been 
 negligent had I not ascertained it ; disingenuous if, knowing, I 
 had suppressed it because it would militate against my argument. 
 But if this “ remarkable fact” should turn out to be no fact at 
 all, what will then become of the “ decisive proof ” you allege it 
 affords of “ the maritime genius of the British people,” and all 
 the fabric of reasoning built on the assumption ? Let us see. 
 
 ii 
 
50 
 
 The population cf the United Kingdom, calculated 
 at the average ratio of one and a-half per cent, 
 per annum increase, from that of the census of 
 
 1811, was in the year 1815 17,956,303 
 
 In the year 1847, calculated at the same ratio of 
 increase from the census of 1841 27,636.587 
 
 Showing an increase in tlie 32 years of 9,680,284 
 
 or nearly 54 per cent. 
 
 The tonnage of the United Kingdom was, in 1815... 2,477,831 
 „ „ 1847... 3,307,921 
 
 Showing an increase, in the 32 years, of 830,090 tons, 
 
 or nearly 33| per cent. 
 
 The population of the United States, taken at the 
 mean between the census of 1810 and that of 
 1820, was in the year 1815 8,438,972 
 
 In the year 1847, calculated at the average ratio of 
 3 per cent, increase from that of 1840..... 20,646,657 
 
 Showing an increase in the 32 years of 12,207,685 
 
 or about 144* per cent. 
 
 The tonnage of the United States was, in 1815 1,368,127 
 
 „ „ 1847 2,839,044 
 
 Showing an increase in the 32 years of 1,470,917 tons, 
 
 or nearly 108 per cent. 
 
 From these figures, it results that, shipping in Great Britain 
 having increased in proportion to population as 33 to 54, Ameri- 
 can shipping ought, in order to have exhibited the same propor- 
 tionate increase, to have advanced as 88 to 144 ; whereas its 
 actual increase is shown to have been as 108 to 144 ; thus 
 proving that, instead of “ the increase of shipping to population 
 in Great Britain during the last thirty-two years” having been, 
 as you assert, “ one-third greater than in the United States,” it 
 has been nearly one fourth greater in the United States than in 
 Great Britain, and this notwithstanding the rapid and enormous 
 advance of the American population ! I have reason. Sir, to 
 thank you for having called my attention to this really “ remark- 
 able fact and having placed it thus in its true light, I leave it, 
 and resume the general consideration of my subject. 
 
 In my last letter, I observed that it remained for me “ to com- 
 plete the startling contrast of our own boasted maritime strength 
 and capabilities with that of our despised rivals.” In the remarks 
 
51 
 
 just made, I have been led in part to anticipate this purpose, by 
 the statement of the relative increase of tonnage of Great Britain 
 and the United States during the period that has elapsed since 
 peace was last concluded between the two countries, and of the 
 comparative amount of each at the present period. Of this for- 
 midable naval rival, Mr. Huskisson, in 1826, thus spoke 
 
 ** Towards that power, God knows, I entertain no feeling of 
 hostility — far from it; but when I am speaking in a British 
 House of Commons, it is not improper to say that, in matters of 
 navigation and naval power, there exists towards us a spirit of 
 rivalry in the United States — a spirit of which I do not complain 
 • — but which should incline every Englishman to doubt the wisdom 
 of any measures tending to encourage the growth of the commercial 
 marine of America” 
 
 To this sound and statesmanlike view, I, Sir, adhere ; and I 
 entreat your readers to follow its application. I shall presently 
 have occasion to test the accordance of the sweeping measure I 
 am opposing by Mr. Huskisson’s authority. But, meantime, 
 mark these facts — America possessed, in 1815, 1,308,127 tons 
 of merchant shipping ; Great Britain, 2,477,831 tons, or nearly 
 double the quantity. In 1847, we find America in possession of 
 2,839,044 ; and Great Britain, of 3,307,921 tons, an excess of 
 about one-sixth only beyond a competition rapidly overtaking us. 
 Mr. Labouchere says this is under and owing to the British 
 navigation system. I deny it. It is under the relaxation of that 
 system by reciprocity treaties, and produced by it. The prin- 
 ciple of these treaties was conceded to America in 1815. Since 
 that period, the direct intercourse between the two countries 
 has been precisely such as it would be with all the world if the 
 Navigation Laws were repealed. I have already shown that in 
 that intercourse American navigation has so far outstripped our 
 own, that America now employs in it 435,399 tons of her ship- 
 ping, while we employ but 205,123 tons of our own, or less than 
 one-third of the whole. Thus the virtual abrogation of the 
 Navigation Laws in the direct trade with America has greatly 
 increased American tonnage. But this increa.se is by no means 
 the exponent of the decrease of our own. I have further shown 
 that, in the Baltic direct trade, under the reciprocity system, 
 British shipping has actually decreased 41,000 tons, and now 
 
52 
 
 only comprises an aggregate of 88,894 tons ; while foreign has 
 advanced 229,487 tons, and finds employment to the extent of 
 571,161 tons. It is, therefore, the departure from the principle 
 of the Navigation Laws, and not the working of that principle 
 (as is most unfairly, indeed I may say falsely, asserted), that has 
 thus far caused, or at least accelerated, the progress of foreign, 
 and retarded the advance of British, navigation, and thus led to 
 the startling comparison in the case of America. 
 
 But let us pursue the inquiry a little farther. If the capabi- 
 lities of the Americans have enabled them to outrun us in the 
 only British trade to which we have yet admitted them, has any 
 reason been, or can any be, advanced, why, if admitted into our 
 colonial and indirect trades, their extension should not be equal ? 
 And as the total carrying trade will not be increased, how can 
 they advance, unless we decline in equal proportion ? Again, if 
 we admit them to the trade of our colonies, they possess not a 
 single colony to furnish the equivalent of a reciprocal admission. 
 If they are allowed to import the produce of India or China to 
 Great Britain, is there an imagination wild enough to conceive 
 that we shall convey tea from Canton, or sugar from Calcutta, to 
 New York or Boston ? How, then, can the result be other than 
 I have foreshadowed it ? And how long will it be before, under 
 this accelerating impulse, the nation that in 1847 added to her 
 shipping 276,961 tons, while Great Britain increased but 108,136, 
 will overpass the trifling difference of 470,877 tons, which is all 
 that now separates us ? The very first year succeeding the 
 repeal of the Navigation Laws may suffice to effect it. Let the 
 British public well understand that America will assuredly, in no 
 longer period than is necessary for building the ships, possess a 
 larger mercantile marine than Great Britain ! Are we prepared 
 for this ? 
 
 I need not further pursue this reasoning. I have proved, 
 during the course of this controversy, that supremacy on the 
 ocean is indispensable to the national safety ; that a powerful 
 military navy can only be maintained by means of a merchant 
 navy of commensurate extent ; that, under the operation of 
 the Navigation Laws, our maritime commerce has flourished 
 and greatly increased ; and, on the contrary, that under every 
 relaxation of the great principles of those laws British navi- 
 
53 
 
 gation has declined, while foreign has proportionately advanced. 
 Now, what are the deductions that every impartial mind must 
 draw from these premises ? Surely these — that, if the Navigation 
 Laws be repealed, British shipping will be diminished and foreign 
 increased; a stimulus be given to other nations to extend their 
 naval forces, for the protection of the maritime commerce thus 
 called into existence ; an insuperable impediment be created to 
 the maintenance of an efficient British royal navy, coincidently 
 with an increased necessity for augmented naval power ; and 
 thus, by a sequence irresistible and incontrovertible, that every 
 interest in the nation, nay, Great Britain herself — her power — 
 her glory — her independence — her proud position among the 
 nations of the earth — will be placed in imminent and irremediable 
 peril. 
 
 I might, certainly, have exhibited all this by other means — by 
 proving the impossibility that the British shipowner can compete 
 successfully with his foreign rivals, as was clearly established by a 
 host of witnesses before the Select Committees of both Houses of 
 Parliament — including that most respectable and intelligent Ame- 
 rican gentleman, Mr. Minturn, of New York, who was called to 
 establish the converse of the proposition, but whose candour con- 
 firmed the case he was summoned by Lord Auckland to disprove. 
 I might have contrasted this testimony with that of Mr. Brooks, 
 the cotton-spinner, and the foreign interested witnesses who 
 maintained the capability of British competition. But that line 
 of controversy has been pursued ad nauseam ; and I have pre- 
 ferred showing in what manner, and to what a ruinous degree, 
 British navigation must suffer from the contemplated repeal. I 
 might further have proved how insignificant would be the gain (if 
 there would be any) to the British community, from the transfer 
 of the carriage of imported commodities from British to foreign 
 shipping, by establishing that the change of ships alone would be 
 the probable result, the rate of freight remaining ultimately un- 
 altered. I might have shown that the whole amount of freight 
 paid to foreigners is an abstraction from the general national 
 stock, while that received by the British shipowner constitutes in 
 his hands only a fund to be re-distributed, in many forms, to 
 various classes of his industrious fellow-subjects. I might have 
 held up the trumpery saving, so clamorously insisted on by the 
 
54 
 
 repealers, to deserved contempt, by showing that the gross freight 
 paid on cotton, our great imported staple, little exceeds \d. per lb. ; 
 on wool, lrf. ; on silk (worth 10s. per lb.). Id. ; on tea, Id. ; on 
 sugar, from \d. to Jd. ; and that the reduction they expect from 
 their mischievous transfer of conveyance to foreign shipowners 
 never could reach the consumer. Lastly, I might have shown 
 that the proposed change would involve in certain ruin large 
 masses of capitalists, artisans, and labourers, engaged in the 
 various pursuits connected with the construction, equipment, and 
 navigation of British ships, thus diffusing widely-spread distress, 
 discontent, and disaffection. But the illustrations would have 
 been endless ; and, after all, I should have been met by the stale, 
 but unhappily popular, “ platitude,” that these all are but class in- 
 terests, and therefore not to be placed in competition with great 
 general principles. I have preferred, therefore, staking the issue 
 on the national defences and the national safety. 1 have main- 
 tained the argument to the best of my ability ; my facts remain 
 uncontradicted, my reasoning unshaken ; with the public rests 
 the tremendous responsibility of the decision. 
 
 Repeating my acknowledgments for the liberal use you have 
 accorded me of your columns, I here close this correspondence. 
 The ministerial measure did not come within the scope of my 
 design in this controversy ; but I hope, •whether here or elsewhere, 
 hereafter to show the monstrous character of that measure, and to 
 prove that, introduced under false pretences, it is (tested even by 
 the avowed intentions of its promoters) the most alarming, incon- 
 sistent, unjust, and mischievous piece of bungling legislation 
 ever submitted to a British House of Commons. 
 
 I am. Sir, your obliged servant, 
 
 George Frederick Young. 
 
 Limehouse, Feb. 17, 1849. 
 
An Answer 
 
 TO THE 
 
 PRESIDENTS MESSAGE 
 
 Fiftieth Congress 
 
 BY THE 
 
 IVIanufacturers’ Glut* of Philadelphia. 
 

AN ANSWER 
 
 TO THE 
 
 President’s Message 
 
 TO THE 
 
 Fiftieth Congress, 
 
 by THE 
 
 Manufacturers’ Club 
 
 Of Philadelphia. 
 
AN ANSWER 
 
 TO THB 
 
 President’s First Message to the Fiftieth Congress, 
 
 BY THB 
 
 Manufacturers’ Club of Philad’a. 
 
 The Manufacturers’ Club of Phila., Pa., 
 
 1319 Walnut Street. 
 
 To the People of the United States : 
 
 In his first message to the Fiftieth Congress, the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, while presenting a scheme 
 which he conceives will reduce the surplus revenues, for- 
 mulates a series of accusations of a grave character against 
 the manufacturers of the country, and against that policy 
 of protection for domestic industry under which they have 
 operated. These accusations, briefly stated, are that 1 1 a 
 tax is laid upon every consumer in the land, for the benefit 
 ~ of our manufacturers, quite beyond a reasonable demand 
 , that these taxes are “wrung” from the people ; that there 
 ^ is justification for the suspicion that an organized combina- 
 
 4 tion exists among the manufacturers to maintain this advan- 
 tage ; that the tariff increases 1 1 the prices to consumers of 
 all articles imported and subject to duty, by precisely the 
 ^ sum paid for such duties that similar articles made at 
 .5 home always bring similar prices ; that the 2,623,089 per- 
 sons who work in factories are those alone of the working 
 
 ( 3 ) 
 
4 
 
 people who ‘ ‘ are claimed to be benefited by high tariff ’ 
 that the duty on wool and woolens “constitutes a tax 
 which, with relentless grasp, is fastened upon the clothing 
 of every man, woman and child in the land ;” that Ameri- 
 can farmers deceive themselves when they suppose this 
 tax to be of any advantage to them ; that an “ abused” 
 people are so “irritated” by these taxes that, unless 
 timely and reasonable relief be given, they will proceed to 
 “sweeping ” measures ; that the surplus revenues must be 
 cut off only by reducing custom duties, because none of 
 the things subject to internal taxation are “necessaries ; ” 
 that this should not involve reduction of wages, because 
 the manufacturers ought to be willing, for the public good, 
 to maintain wages at existing figures out of their “im- 
 mense profits ’ ’ ; and the further suggestion is made that they 
 may partially compensate themselves by obtaining freedom 
 for raw materials, which they are assured will enable 
 them, not only to avoid glutted markets and depression at 
 home, but to push their wares out into the markets of 
 the world. 
 
 The gravest of the assertions thus made by the Presi- 
 dent is that those of his countrymen who ‘are engaged in 
 the manufacturing industries of the land are probably par- 
 ties to a conspiracy to rob and oppress their fellow-citizens, 
 and that the latter have endured these outrages until they 
 have reached such a pitch of irritation as to make them 
 ready for almost revolutionary proceedings. Such a charge, 
 from such a source, imperatively requires an answer. If it 
 have foundation in fact, it forms an indictment which in- 
 vites condemnation and demands redress. But if it has 
 no such foundation — if it be absolutely without warrant, 
 and if, besides, all the allegations made with respect to the 
 unfair and offensive operation of the tariff law be beyond 
 possibility of proof, then not even the high office of the 
 individual who has given utterance to such statements, nor 
 even a strong suspicion of his complete ignorance of the 
 
5 
 
 subject, should avail to shield him from the reprobation 
 which is deserved by wanton calumny. 
 
 THIS IS AN INDICTMENT OF MORE THAN HALF OF THE 
 AMERICAN PEOPLE. 
 
 It is to be observed, at the outset, that the reproach 
 directed against manufacturers as a class, obviously also 
 includes every man in the nation who has given his sup- 
 port to the protective system. Thus it is to be presumed 
 that considerably more than half of the adult male popu- 
 lation of the United States are co-conspirators with the 
 manufacturers in their scheme for robbing the public, if, 
 indeed, such a scheme exists. This is indisputable, for the 
 reason that the American people are not serfs, but free men. 
 The policy approved by a majority of them is inevitably the 
 policy that prevails ; because their power to condemn and 
 sweep away an unpopular policy is absolute. The circum- 
 stance that the protective system has endured, almost with- 
 out interruption, since the foundation of the government, 
 and that the principal features of the existing tariff have 
 remained for more than twenty-five years, indicates that the 
 majority have given, and do now give, to that system and 
 that policy their approval. If, then, the American people 
 are in a condition of “ irritation” because of the u abuses” 
 inflicted upon them by the system, they are in the singular 
 position of suffering irritation because of wrongs 'which 
 they have inflicted upon themselves. If they have the 
 power, as unquestionably they have, to rise ill their might 
 against the despotic and cruel manufacturers when the 
 manufacturers refuse to heed warning counsel from the 
 White House, why have they not risen heretofore? Why 
 did they last year remove to private life Messrs. Morrison 
 and Hurd, two representatives who strove most eagerly to 
 give them the desired relief? Why did they subject to 
 narrow escape from defeat the Speaker who had packed the 
 
6 
 
 Ways and Means Committee to promote a relief scheme ? 
 Why did they not return to the present Congress a larger 
 number, rather than a smaller number, of free-traders? 
 Why, in short, did they not declare, at the polls, that they 
 wanted so-called tariff reform, instead of making precisely 
 a contrary declaration ? 
 
 The reason* is perhaps not difficult to discern. They 
 are well aware that the existing tariff laws inflict upon 
 them no such evils as are alleged. They perceive that this 
 very surplus of revenue, which has provoked such an out- 
 burst from the Chief Magistrate, is in the nature of evi- 
 dence that the nation, under the protective system, has 
 acquired enormous and unprecedented prosperity. They 
 know that wages now are higher than ever before in the 
 present century, and that the prices of all kinds of commo- 
 dities are lower ; and they know that the protective tariff 
 system which has produced, and is now producing, these 
 results, is a part of the history of this government. And 
 they know also that the system of internal taxation is an 
 excrescence which imposes the only taxes which they alone 
 really pay. 
 
 WHERE IRRITATION MAY POSSIBLY BE FEET. 
 
 Who, then, are the Americans who are irritated, because 
 they think themselves to have been abused ? If such per- 
 sons exist at all, inevitably they must be looked for in 
 the minority, because the minority alone have limited 
 power to right their real or imagined wrongs. Irritation 
 is probably an inevitable condition of being in the minority. 
 No man who is out-voted is ever completely happy. It is 
 impossible that he should escape the feeling of the twelfth 
 juryman that the rest of the folks are both stupid and 
 stubborn. And it is not unusual for him to make up in 
 noise what he lacks in power. 
 
 But, clearly, even if we transformed our methods of 
 
7 
 
 government so far as to yield the protective tariff system, 
 we cannot be expected to go so far as to yield to the sway 
 of the minority. That, however, appears to be the latent 
 purpose of the remarkable public document to which we 
 are now addressing attention. The political party, in 
 behalf of which the message affects to speak, has had con- 
 trol of several successive Houses of Representatives. In three 
 of them a faction has employed party discipline in an effort 
 to reduce the revenues, and to bring what is claimed to be 
 relief to a suffering people, by attacking the tariff. In 
 every case this effort was defeated, and now there is pro- 
 mise of still another attempt of the same kind. The 
 people have showed, as clearly as was possible by the 
 action of their representatives, that they do not wish the 
 duties upon imports disturbed. If, then, the great end to 
 be reached is reduction of the surplus, there is but one 
 alternative, and that is abolition of the internal taxes. 
 But this alternative has persistently been avoided and 
 declined ; and now the President, elected on a platform 
 which declared that “the system of direct taxation known 
 as the internal revenue, is a war tax,” announces to the 
 country that if the majority will not have reduction of 
 taxation through the instrumentality of changes in the 
 tariff, he, for his part, will make a strenuous use of his 
 authority and influence to prevent them from getting it at 
 all. In other words, the majority of the people are in- 
 structed that they do not know their best interests, arid 
 that a benevolent Chief Magistrate, who has their welfare 
 distinctly in view, will obstruct their wish, just as an 
 amiable and far-seeing parent thwarts the unholy propen- 
 sities of his wayward and foolish son. The Czar governs 
 his faithful people upon just this theory. 
 
 But, however benign the impulse which excites this 
 undertaking, the practice the American people have of 
 examining public matters for themselves, and of asserting 
 their own views, will probably not be restrained. Inevita- 
 
8 
 
 bly the statements with which the President attempts to 
 justify his remarkable propositions will be tested in the 
 light of facts ; and in that light we propose to test some of 
 them now. 
 
 THE PRICE OE COMMODITIES IS NOT THE ORDINARY 
 PRICE PLUS THE DUTY. 
 
 The assertion, for example, that the price of an im- 
 ported commodity is always the seller’s price plus the duty, 
 will hardly endure such a te^t. In truth, it is positively 
 contradicted by facts and figures within reach of even so 
 careless and indifferent an inquirer as the President of the 
 United States. The truth is that the price of a foreign 
 commodity which is also made here, is usually fixed by the 
 price produced by home competition. That is to say, 
 whatever price is made by the free attempts of American 
 manufacturers to undersell one another, is the price the 
 European manufacturer meets at any sacrifice, often 
 even at the sacrifice of the truth when he swears to his 
 invoice. The result of this is that the prices of all European 
 wares competing in this market are even lower than they 
 would be if there were no competition here. Many of 
 them have fallen two, three, and four hundred per cent, 
 since such competition began ; and to-day we have, not 
 only the advantage of the diversification of our home in- 
 dustry and the retention here of the profits on such indus- 
 try, but our people actually pay lower prices for most of 
 the w^ares they consume, because the tariff puts a tax on 
 foreign goods. 
 
 There are abundant illustrations of this truth. That 
 supplied by the tremendous decline in the price of steel 
 rails is one. That indicated by the reduction of the price 
 of Russian sheet iron, by 50 per cent., is another. Still 
 another is found in the fact that the tax on wool demonstra- 
 bly operates to keep down the price of wool; and a further 
 
9 
 
 illustration lies in the circumstance that the reduced price 
 of animal food to the people in consequence of the success- 
 ful pursuit here of the sheep industry, would much more 
 than compensate for the tax laid upon wool at the ports, 
 even if that tax were added to the price of wool, which, 
 with equal certainty it is not. 
 
 Here are the figures showing the effect upon the prices 
 of wool of putting on and taking off the duty, and of 
 making the duty small or large : 
 
 PRICES ON WOOL IN JANUARY. 
 
 (Duty on.) 
 
 Fine. 
 
 Medium. 
 
 Coarse. 
 
 1855 
 
 
 35 
 
 32 
 
 •1856 
 
 (Dfity off.) 
 
 
 38 
 
 35 
 
 1859 
 
 
 52 
 
 45 
 
 i860 
 
 
 60 
 
 42 
 
 (Small duty.) 
 
 1866 
 
 
 65 
 
 50 
 
 1867 
 
 (Heavy duty.) 
 
 
 53 
 
 50 
 
 1868 
 
 48 
 
 43 
 
 38 
 
 1869 
 
 
 50 
 
 48 
 
 1870 
 
 48 
 
 46 
 
 44 
 
 1871 
 
 
 46 
 
 43 
 
 The President’s 
 
 precise language is this : “ 
 
 The amount 
 
 of duty measures the tax paid by those who purchase for 
 use the imported article.” 
 
 He gives no specific examples to prove that this state- 
 ment is true. We, however, shall give some to demon- 
 strate that it is positively incorrect. Such examples are 
 abundant. We shall take two that are both familiar and 
 striking. 
 
 The present price of steel rails in this country is 
 $33.00 a ton. The duty is $17.00, and the freight $2.50, 
 together making $19.50, the tax on imported rails. This 
 
IO 
 
 deducted from $33.00 leaves $13.50, which should be the 
 British price of steel rails, if the President’s theory is 
 correct. But the British price is, in fact, $20.00, instead 
 of #13.50. 
 
 Further, the steel rail industry in this country was 
 built up under a duty of $28.00 a ton. In 1885 steel rails 
 were sold here for $27.00, just one dollar less than the 
 original duty. 
 
 Take another illustration. The price of cut nails in 
 Philadelphia is $2.00 for a keg of 100 pounds. The duty 
 on cut nails is $1.25. If the President’s proposition be 
 correct, cut nails should be bought in Europe for 75 cents 
 a keg. In fact, they cannot be bought anywhere on earth 
 for less than $1.50 a keg. 
 
 Again, cut nails have been sold in this country as low 
 as $1.85 a keg of 100 pounds, while the duty was $1.50 a 
 keg. Thus, according to the President, cut nails must 
 then have been purchasable in Europe for 35 cents a keg. 
 
 An example even more remarkable is found in the fact 
 that while chloroform is subject to a duty of 50 cents a 
 pound,. the domestic article is selling in this country for 35 
 cents a pound, or actually for 15 cents a pound less than 
 the duty ! 
 
 These facts are beyond reach of controversy. 
 
 We recur now to the matter of wool. If the statements 
 made above with respect to the effect of the duties upon 
 wool and woolens are correct, as beyond all doubt they 
 are, they completely overthrow another of the positions 
 assumed by the author of the message. At the very worst, 
 the tightening of the ‘ ‘ relentless grasp ’ ’ of the manufac- 
 turer on a forty-dollar suit of clothes, could not involve a 
 larger sum than about two dollars, an amount of money 
 which can hardly be regarded as indicative of a ferocious 
 and inhuman lust for wealth. But the figures conclusively 
 demonstrate that the tax on wool and woolens operates to 
 make low prices for both. This circumstance, however. 
 
appears to lend a faint color of plausibility to the Presi- 
 dent’s assertion that the unhappy farmer has no profit of any 
 kind in the transactions with the wool he has procured from 
 his own sheep. If the duty puts down the price of wool, 
 why should the farmer want the duty? That he does 
 want it, is unquestionable. There are no more aggressive 
 organizations in the country than the wool-growers’ asso- 
 ciations ; and the one thing they cry for is retention of the 
 duties on wool. Actually, just at present they want the duties 
 raised. The National Association of Wool-Growers, in 
 session at Washington, issued a vigorous protest against the 
 President’s message upon the very next day succeeding 
 its appearance. They indignantly repudiated the plea 
 made in their behalf by the President, and rejected the 
 philanthropic counsel with which he has endeavored to 
 enlighten their minds. Why ? Because every farmer 
 knows that when the duty shall be taken off of 
 wool, prices will at first fall, and ninety-five out of 
 every one hundred men in the business of wool-growing, 
 will kill their sheep and quit. When this has happened, 
 then the price will advance. The simple agriculturist 
 cannot see how he is going to get any profit out of an 
 advance in the price of wool after he has parted with his 
 sheep. It is as if there were ten grocerymen in a certain 
 town. If something should happen to put nine of them 
 into bankruptcy, the one remaining would do an active 
 and profitable trade. But, not unnaturally, the unfortunate 
 nine cannot regard with enthusiastic admiration that par- 
 ticular method of stimulating the grocery business. An 
 American farmer would rather take low prices for wool, 
 and have both wool and mutton, than to have neither wool 
 nor mutton and to pay high prices for his clothing. In 
 regarding, from this point of view, his attitude respecting 
 the wool duties, it is impossible to suppress a suspicion 
 that he is capable of taking care of himself, without the 
 assistance of intellectual illumination from theWhite House. 
 
12 
 
 FIGURES WHICH INFLUENCE THE WOOL-GROWER. 
 
 In 1880 there were 1,020,728 owners of flocks of sheep 
 in this country. Their flocks were valued at $119,902,706, 
 and their other investments in property required in their 
 industry at $408,291,200. The Hon. Thomas Lawrence, 
 of Ohio, in a paper upon this subject, shows that the 
 change in the tariff laws made in 1883, has reduced by 
 5,867,312 the number of sheep; whereas, on the basis of 
 increase under the tariff of 1867, there should have been 
 an increase of 6,000,000. This, then, makes a loss to the 
 country of about 12,000,000 sheep, and a loss of wool of 
 48,000,000 pounds, worth $14,000,000. In 1882, the year 
 before the existing tariff went into effect, the imports of 
 wool were $67,861,744. In 1887 they were $114,038,030, 
 an increase of $46,176,286, when under fair protection 
 there would have been a decrease of $40,000,000. And 
 yet, the President thinks American farmers ought to agree, 
 for their own advantage, to admit wool free ! 
 
 TILE ATTEMPT TO MISLEAD THE WORKINGMEN. 
 
 With a far-sightedness which proves him to be much 
 more sagacious as a politician than he is as an economist, 
 the President devotes much space in his message to argu- 
 ments and assurances addressed to workingmen. In his 
 remarks to them, there is a notable relaxation of the se- 
 verity of manner with which he refers to the manufacturers. 
 He exhibits intense solicitude that they should believe 
 that his plan for completely reforming the protective sys- 
 tem will inflict no injury upon them. He instructs them 
 that, as their interests are dear to him, he is animated in 
 his warfare upon the duties by a benignant purpose to 
 contribute to their welfare. He returns to this portion of 
 
T 3 
 
 the subject with such frequency of iteration that the reader 
 can hardly suppress a feeling of suspicion that he realizes 
 how naturally the workingman will leap to precisely a 
 contrary conclusion. He places especial stress upon the 
 proposition that, as, according to his theory, the duty is 
 always added to the price of the commodity, any increase 
 of wages obtained by the operation of such duty is 
 simply extinguished to the purchaser. That is to say, 
 he holds that, as the duty puts up both price and wages, 
 the advance in one case exactly balances that in the 
 other, so that there is really no gain at all to the wage- 
 earner. Virtually he says to the workman, “The tariff 
 gives you $2.00 a day instead of $1.50 ; but as the tariff 
 increases the cost of commodities in precisely the same 
 proportion, you will be just as well off when my scheme of 
 reform reduces your wages to $1.50, if it cuts down in equal 
 degree the prices of things you need.” This argument is 
 by no means new. But he supplements it with a genuine 
 novelty. He turns to the manufacturer and says to him, 
 u You are making such huge profits that when the inevit- 
 able decline in wages is seen approaching you should head 
 it off ; you should keep wages just where they are by yield- 
 ing a part of your profits to the workingmen.” Lest we 
 should be suspected of misrepresenting the President we 
 quote his own language : 
 
 To the Workingman : 
 
 “ Nor can the worker in manufactories fail to understand that, 
 while a high tariff is claimed to be necessary to allow the pay- 
 ment of remunerative wages, it certainly results in a very large 
 increase in the price of nearly all sorts of manufactures, which, 
 in almost countless forms, he needs for the use of himself and 
 his family. He receives at the desk of his employer his wages, 
 and, perhaps, before he reaches his home, is obliged, in a pur- 
 chase for family use of an article which embraces his own labor, 
 to return in the payment of the increase of price which the tariff 
 permits, the hard-earned compensation of many days of toil.” 
 
14 
 
 To the Manufacturer : 
 
 “But the reduction of taxation demanded should be so meas- 
 ured as not to necessitate or justify either the loss of employment 
 by the working man nor the lessening of his wages, and the 
 profits still remaining to the manufacturer, after a necessary re- 
 adjustment, should furnish no excuse for the sacrifice of the 
 interests of his employes either in their opportunity to work 
 or in the diminution of their compensation.” 
 
 Let us consider for a moment this extraordinary proposi- 
 tion. The President first assures the workingman that to 
 destroy protection cannot really put down wages. Then he 
 tells the manufacturer that he must prevent wages from 
 going down by giving the workman a further share of the 
 manufacturers’ profits. But, if there is to be no loss, why is 
 the manufacturer called on to repair a loss ? If the work- 
 man, under free trade, is going to have the exact equiva- 
 lent of his present wages, what reason is there for inviting 
 the manufacturer to give him more ? If these propositions 
 are not wholly absurd, they mean that the manufacturer, 
 who is to be hurt by the fall of prices of his products, is 
 still expected to keep the cost of his labor at the old figures 
 when prices of other things have gone down. 
 
 This scheme, it will be observed, is not of a very 
 comforting character for the manufacturer. The free 
 trader is arranging that the government shall cuff him on 
 one cheek, while encouraging the workingman to cuff him 
 on the other. He is invited, in fact, to sell his goods 
 cheaper and to buy his labor dearer. It is unfortunate 
 that the President did not give a few examples of the 
 successful achievement of this kind of a feat, or a few 
 figures to demonstrate how it can be performed. In the 
 latter case the country would have been called upon to 
 witness a mathematical pastime absolutely without prece- 
 dent, we believe, in history. If a manufacturer exists who 
 can conduct business on such a basis, the nation would 
 
15 
 
 welcome a chance to look at him and to examine him. 
 As an industrial phenomenon he will occupy the very 
 first rank. 
 
 The American workingman, however, is not likely to 
 permit such assertions as this to blind him to his own 
 interests. He has had long experience in separating the 
 cajolery of the professional politician from the conclu- 
 sions of fact. He knows that he lives better than any 
 other workingman on the face of the earth. He occupies 
 a better house, he eats better food, he wears better clothes, 
 and his physical condition is better in every way. This 
 fact seems to him to have some connection with the cir- 
 cumstance that he obtains better wages ; for the reason 
 that he cannot perceive how any other cause could produce 
 such a result. But, if the President speaks truly, when 
 he says that the whole increase of wages is consumed by 
 the increase of price, then the high wages certainly do not 
 account for the superiority of the workingman’s condition. 
 How otherwise it can be accounted for the President does 
 not condescend to inform us ; and, until he shall do so, we 
 venture the opinion that much greater intellectual force, 
 and much more persuasive eloquence, than appear in his 
 Message will be required to win the American laborer to 
 his views. 
 
 The prevalent impression among American workmen 
 is that they have a larger share of interest in this tariff 
 question than any other class. Were it not for the exist- 
 ence of this belief, the protective policy could not have 
 endured. The workingman knows that British manufact- 
 urers make good profits, while their workmen obtain low 
 wages. He knows that if the tariff shall be removed and 
 his wages shall fall, American manufacturers can continue 
 to do business successfully if they can operate upon the 
 same basis as the British manufacturer. He knows that 
 the price in a free market is regulated by competition, and 
 that when there appears as a free competitor in his market 
 
i6 
 
 a manufacturer who pays small wages, his wages must 
 either go down or stop. He knows that the cost of labor 
 is the one important element in the cost of every commod- 
 ity. He knows that under free trade the buyer will go 
 where he can buy cheapest, and that is to the country 
 where labor is cheapest. He is aware that the once 
 splendid silk industry of England lies in ruins, because Eng- 
 lish consumers, with free markets before them, preferred 
 to buy the cheaper silks of France. He knows that the 
 great sugar industry of England has declined until but few 
 refineries are at work in the islands, because English con- 
 sumers can buy French and German sugar cheaper than it 
 can be made at home. He has learned how* railroad 
 companies in England have given their bridge and rail 
 contracts to Belgium and to Germany, while British 
 furnaces and mills need orders, and British coal and ore lie 
 beneath the feet of unemployed workmen. He cannot 
 perceive how hungry weavers and refiners, and puddlers, 
 can find much to rejoice at in the fact that other English- 
 men get their sugar, their silk, and their iron a little 
 cheaper than the British products can be made. 
 
 Says the Pall Mall Gazette , Eondon, Eng., Nov. 24th: 
 
 “ The ever-increasing importation of refined sugar has had 
 a disastrous effect upon the home industry. At one time there 
 were from thirty-two to thirty-five refineries in London, and now 
 there are only five. A number of these carried on until three or 
 four years ago, when they could do so no longer. Bristol, Liver- 
 pool, and Greenock have had similar experiences in a less degree. 
 Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been sunk in buildings 
 and machinery, and when the proprietors were cleaned out they 
 had to shut their doors. The home trade has been cut into, and 
 our hold upon foreign markets is being gradually contracted, 
 even India being encroached upon.” 
 
 The American workingman has heard much mournful 
 complaint of late from Eancasliire. And why ? Ten 
 years ago there were 47 cotton mills in India ; now there 
 are 103. The Indian exports of cotton yarn to the Eastern 
 markets have grown to 10 million pounds a month, and 
 
I? 
 
 are still growing ; and every pound condemns a spindle in 
 Lancashire to cessation of its revolutions. 
 
 A writer in the Manchester (Eng.) Guardian says : 
 
 “The cotton industry, as is well known, has played a potent 
 part in the history of the past, with its silent, civilizing powers ; 
 but with that industry impaired, no matter from what cause, 
 the commercial glory of our dear old land will fade fast away. 
 
 Mr. J. C. Fielden, quoting from the Economist , says that the 
 exports of yarn to the far East, the production of the Indian 
 mills, are 10,000,000 pounds per month. This is sad to contem- 
 plate, and must awaken serious thought throughout Lancashire, 
 especially among the operative classes. The ‘ working hours of 
 the Bombay mills are eighty per week all the year round.’ Is 
 there any slavery equal to this in any other part of the world, 
 and in the Queen’s dominions especially ? This inhuman, de- 
 moralizing, and infamously cruel slavery must be checked ; 
 otherwise, and before many years have passed away, the hours 
 of labor and the low rate of wages ruling in the Bombay mills 
 will form the basis for the labor market of England in the 
 cotton industry. The rate of wages in India averages from is. 
 
 6. to 7s. per week, paid monthly, and the turn-ofl per spindle is 
 greater than in England. In fact, they have production on the 
 brain.” 
 
 The Bombay Gazette , in speaking of the Indian cotton 
 industry, says : — 
 
 “There are people who think that Bombay will in a not 
 very distant future find in China a very receptive market for 
 local piece goods, as well as local yarns. Seven years ago the 
 exports consisted of little over 20,000 yards. Last year imports 
 had increased to 3,250,000 yards.” 
 
 The St. James' s (Eondon) Budget of November 19th : 
 
 “ There have been fewer spindles running this year in Man- 
 chester than at any time since the cotton famine, and the pub- 
 lished balance-sheets of the joint stock spinning companies 
 show scarcely a margin of a profit where they do not show a loss. 
 
 It can hardly be said that private firms have shared any better.” 
 
 The American workingman is not ignorant of the rea- 
 son why semi-savage India, in such a contest, can seri- 
 ously menace civilized England, with her power, her wealth, 
 her coal, her iron, her machinery, her skill. It is because 
 
i8 
 
 the Indian cotton-spinner works 80 hours a week and earns 
 from 8 to 20 cents a day. Because his entire family lives 
 on material with which one American workman would risk 
 starving to death. This is free trade, not in fancy, but in 
 fact. If it be well that England should buy cheap at any 
 sacrifice of her interests, then it is well that Germany and 
 France and Belgium and India are drying up her industries. 
 It is well that the destructive process goes on. It will be 
 better when it reaches a conclusion ; when every mill in 
 the British Islands shall be stopped and every field shall 
 lie fallow, while the people sit idly twirling their thumbs 
 and rejoicing that America feeds them, France clothes 
 them, and India takes their cotton trade. 
 
 “free trade” is the right name for free trade. 
 
 In the latter part of his message, the President depre- 
 cates the application to him and to his friends of the term 
 “free-traders.” He actually goes so far as to declare that 
 the question of free trade is ‘ ‘ irrelevant ’ ’ to the discussion 
 of the subject. We quote his own words: 
 
 “Our progress toward a wise conclusion will not be im- 
 proved by dwelling upon the theories of protection and free 
 trade. This savors too much of bandying epithets. It is a con- 
 dition which confronts us, not a theory. Relief from this 
 condition may involve a slight reduction of the advantages 
 which we award our home productions, but the entire with- 
 drawal of such advantages should not be contemplated. The 
 question of free trade is absolutely irrelevant, and the persistent 
 claim made in certain quarters that all efforts to relieve the 
 people from unjust and unnecessary taxation are schemes of so- 
 called free-traders, is mischievous and far removed from any 
 considerations for the public good.” 
 
 This desire to escape the odium which, in American 
 minds, is associated with the name “free-trader,” is one 
 of the most remarkable of the many odd things in the 
 message. I v et us see if escape from it is deserved: 
 
 The declared purpose of this message is to urge upon 
 Congress the necessity of such legislation as will reduce 
 
19 
 
 the surplus revenues. Now, there are but three possible 
 methods of making such reduction. 
 
 First. By repealing the internal revenue taxes; and 
 against this the President declares absolutely. 
 
 Second. By repealing a part of the internal taxes and 
 the whole of the duty upon sugar. But the President, 
 possibly because we are approaching a period when the 
 electoral vote of Louisiana will be cast, does not allude to 
 the sugar-duty once in his message. 
 
 Third. By absolutely, or virtually, repealing the duties 
 upon a large number of articles of a kind manufactured 
 in this country. 
 
 The last named is the plan which he prefers and which 
 he recommends. He does not use the word ‘ ‘ repeal ’ ’ in 
 referring to these duties, but necessarily, that is what he 
 means. For the end aimed at (removal of the surplus 
 revenue) cannot possibly be attained by mere reduction, 
 unless that process be carried, in the case of important com- 
 modities, clear to the point of repeal. It is obvious to the 
 most careless observer, that, with all the world eager to sell 
 here, the slightest reduction of duties must so stimulate 
 importations as to increase the revenue ; and the larger 
 the reduction to a certain point, the greater will be the 
 increase. That this theory does actually work out in prac- 
 tice can be proved by many examples ; but a striking one 
 is found within very recent experience. 
 
 In a paper prepared for the Philadelphia Wool Associa- 
 tion by Mr. Charles M. Hill, it is shown that in the three 
 years before the present tariff went into operation, namely, 
 in 1881-2 and 3, the duties upon worsted yarns and cloths 
 brought into this country produced a gross revenue of 
 $3,558,366,42. The tariff of 1883 reduced the duties upon 
 woolens and an unfair interpretation of the worsted clause 
 made a further reduction than Congress intended. At once 
 British worsteds began to pour into the country, and the 
 gross revenue from worsted yarns and cloths for the three 
 succeeding years rose to $10, 126,793.54, making an increase 
 
20 
 
 of #6,568,427,12, or nearly 200 per cent. Not only has this 
 reduction of duty on these articles added to the embarrass- 
 ment offered by the surplus, but it has struck a deadly 
 blow at an important home industry. 
 
 This inevitable result of reduced customs duties being 
 demonstrated, it follows either that the President is igno- 
 rant of a notorious fact, or that he means something more 
 than reduction when he uses that word. That he does 
 mean more, is the confident belief, not only of the free- 
 traders, who regard his utterances with exultation, but 
 of every intelligent man who has read his message. In 
 such a case there can be no sound objection to the applica- 
 tion of the phrase to the thing. A free-trader is a man who 
 wants free-trade, and that is what the President wants if 
 his utterances are to be accepted as an indicaion of his 
 purposes. 
 
 Now, the President has studiously avoided specific des- 
 ignation of articles from which he would remove the 
 duties, and it is to be feared that this avoidance re- 
 sulted from a very natural aversion to squarely facing the 
 certain conclusion of his argument. If he had under- 
 taken to show by facts and figures how the surplus can be 
 removed, as he wants it removed, solely through the instru- 
 mentality of the tariff, he would have startled the country. 
 For it is a fact, that if Congress should remove the whole of 
 the duties upon manufactures of wool, silk, iron and steel, 
 cotton, chemicals, flax, jute, earthenware, glass, leather, 
 paper, and tobacco, and then, in addition, should strike off 
 all duties upon raw materials, there would still not be a 
 sufficient reduction of revenue to extinguish the surplus. 
 Here is the proof that this startling assertion is correct. 
 
 REVENUES (1886) FROM CUSTOMS DUTIES ON CER- 
 TAIN MANUFACTURED ARTICLES: 
 
 All woolen manufactures #27,278,523 
 
 All silk manufactures 13,000,000 
 
 All iron and steel manufactures 14,631,876 
 
 All cotton manufactures 11,752,207 
 
21 
 
 All chemical manufactures $4,347,626 
 
 All jute, hemp, and sisal-grass manufactures 9,247 816 
 
 Earthenware and china 2,829,540 
 
 Glass and glassware 3,694,924 
 
 Leather manufactures 3,262,233 
 
 Paper 392469 
 
 Tobacco manufactures 8.311,114 
 
 Total revenue from the above manufactures $98,748,328 
 
 Add. revenue from all raw materials 12.419.699 
 
 Total revenue from sources named above $111,168,027 
 
 Surplus revenue for this year 113,000,000 
 
 Surplus still remaining after repealing all the 
 
 above-named duties $2,831,973 
 
 Thus it is manifest that to obtain, as the President 
 urges, complete removal of the surplus through changes 
 in the tariff, would require that the knife should be thrust 
 even deeper into that instrument and that other deadly 
 stabs should be given to other industries in which the 
 American people are happily engaged. It is not wonderful 
 that even so daring an experimenter with economics should 
 shrink from contemplation of the unavoidable conclusion 
 towards which he has permitted himself to be led, and 
 from explicit presentation of it to the people. It is not 
 strange that he strove to temper the indignation which 
 this proposed scheme would surely excite, by professing 
 an aversion to the phrase which precisely designates the 
 policy of which he has made himself the strenuous advo- 
 cate, a scheme which urges the nation to freedom of trade 
 almost greater than that to which England has committed 
 herself. The American people however, will not be slow 
 to perceive for themselves the nature of the movement for 
 which he asks their approval ; and we venture the assertion 
 that, so long as their instinct of self-preservation retains 
 any particle of its force, they will continue to submit to 
 be guided by it in a direction precisely opposite to that 
 to which they are invited. 
 
22 
 
 THE BENEFITS OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY ARE DISTRIBUTED 
 TO ABE THE PEOPLE. 
 
 In conformity with his purpose to demonstrate to the 
 workingman that the greedy manufacturer gets all the 
 benefit supplied by protection, the President explored the 
 census report. He discovered there the statement that but 
 3,837,112 persons were, in 1880, engaged in mining and 
 manufacturing. He then subjects these figures to a pro- 
 •cess akin to that of a person making a chemical analysis. 
 He rids himself of those individuals who are not workers 
 in what he regards as protected industries. He culls out 
 and throws aside the carpenters, the tailors, the brick- 
 layers, the plasterers, the butchers, the bakers, the 
 candlestick-makers. Thus he obtains a residuum of only 
 2,623,089 persons employed, he says, “in such manufac- 
 turing industries as are claimed to be benefited by a high 
 tariff.” This method of whittling down the figures is by 
 no means unfamiliar to men generally ; but clearly it has 
 presented itself with the refreshing force of novelty to the 
 President. 
 
 Had the President begun his economical investigations 
 earlier, and pushed them deeper and further, we should, 
 probably, have been deprived of the opportunity to study 
 his process of ruling out of consideration in this matter, 
 the bakers, the butchers, and the blacksmiths. It is 
 still, however, a matter of curious speculation what his 
 theory may be of the uses to which the dollars earned by 
 the workers in factories are put. He can hardly presume 
 that none of these persons have wives or children ; nor can 
 he regard them as a little band of supernatural people, who 
 do not eat the bread of the baker or the beef of the 
 butcher, who never employ a plasterer or a tailor, but who 
 live in a state of nudity, hunger and houselessness, while 
 they exist merely for the purpose of using the protective 
 
23 
 
 tariff to enable them to prey, in some mysterious manner, 
 upon an “irritated” community. If he should try to 
 follow, the wages paid to these factory workers, he would 
 certainly discover that they pass directly into the hands of 
 the butcher and the baker. He would pursue them into 
 the tailor shop and the grocery store. He would find them 
 expended upon the bricklayer, the mason, and the plasterer. 
 He would trace them from hand to hand, from one industry 
 to another, from one man to another, while they perform 
 their natural function of enabling every workman to 
 exchange the products of his labor with the fruit of the 
 toil of every other workman. 
 
 The most obvious of all social facts is the mutual 
 dependence of the members of every civilized commn- 
 nity. The clearest of truths, with respect to society, is 
 that the welfare of a part is the welfare of the whole. The 
 butcher is a more successful butcher because there are some 
 who buy beef which they do not slaughter. The brick- 
 layer finds remunerative labor because there are other wage- 
 earners who want homes which they will not build. The 
 farmer finds a larger profit in his tasks because there are 
 food-consumers who are not food-producers, but who are 
 producers of materials for which he can exchange the food 
 he cannot consume. These are elementary matters ; but 
 their presentation and consideration are not to be disdained 
 in a country whose Chief Magistrate is capable of declar- 
 ing, in a grave state paper, that whatever benefits accrue 
 to a nation of 60,000,000 people from the protective system, 
 are enjoyed by only 2,000,000 of the entire number. 
 
 AN ARGUMENT THAT WORKS BOTH WAYS. 
 
 There is, in recent use, among the advocates of free 
 trade, an ingenious and remarkable method of arguing, of 
 which the President does not neglect to avail himself. 
 
24 
 
 The free-trader (when addressing the general public) dwells 
 upon the so-called tax upon clothing, and urges the advan- 
 tages that will result to the consumer from removal of the 
 duty on wool, the raw material of clothing. But when he 
 desires to touch the sensibilities of the honest old farmer, 
 he turns the argument completely around. He shows the 
 farmer that removal of the duty has always put up the 
 price of wool, and he asks him if he does not wish to have 
 the price of his wool advanced. In the same manner, the 
 President first accuses the manufacturer of making ‘ ‘ im- 
 mense profits” because of his “relentless grasp” upon 
 the people, and demands that he shall surrender part of 
 these vast sums through the instrumentality of tariff 
 reduction, and part by direct payments to the workmen, 
 whose wages would naturally be lowered by free trade. 
 But when the President comes to speak of raw materials, 
 he reverses the argument. He shows the manufacturer 
 that he is suffering from depression of trade, from con- 
 gestion of the home market, from ruinous competition; 
 and he assures him that what he needs is freedom of raw 
 material, so that he may obtain access to those mysterious 
 “markets of the world,” of which we hear so much, and 
 of which the geographies tell us so little, which are 
 always hungry for American commodities. This reasoning 
 may be designated The Patent Reversible Double Back- 
 acting Argument, warranted to work in any direction. It 
 is a novelty in logic. You can employ it to prove that 
 white is white, or that white is black, as you choose. It 
 enables you to blow hot or to blow cold with the same 
 bellows at the same moment. It is, however, open to the 
 objection that few persons who observe its rather tortuous 
 operation, are inclined to regard it as conclusive. Either 
 the manufacturers are not staggering under the weight of 
 enormous profits, or they are not selling to a congested 
 market. If the market is congested, f hen it is absurd to 
 ask them to put on to workmen’s wages, out of their pock- 
 
25 
 
 ets, what the President is trying to take off. If their 
 profits are exorbitant, then this market is so nearly good 
 enough for them that it is folly to bother about other mar- 
 kets. In any case, a President of the United States who 
 is aiming to effect revolution of the fiscal policy of the 
 government, ought to be able to make up his mind which 
 condition exists before he precipitates his opinions upon 
 the community. And particularly is this necessary when 
 he ventures to propose a course of action which will cer- 
 tainly reduce wages: and then, shrinking from contempla- 
 tion of such a result, endeavors to shift the burden of 
 responsibility upon the shoulders of other people. 
 
 DUTIES UPON RAW MATERIALS DO NOT OBSTRUCT EXPORT 
 
 TRADE. 
 
 The President’s argument for freedom of raw materials 
 is threefold. He says that (i) such freedom would “largely 
 reduce the revenues”; that (2) it would reduce the 
 prices of commodities ; and that (3) it would give Ameri- 
 can manufacturers “ a better chance in foreign markets. ” 
 Each of these assertions can be demonstrated to be wholly 
 incorrect. 
 
 1 . If every kind of raw material not now upon the free 
 list should be admitted without payment of duty, the 
 total reduction of revenue from such alteration of the 
 tariff would amount to no more than $12,000,000. Here 
 are the figures : 
 
 DUTIABLE RAW MATERIALS AND THE REVENUE 
 OBTAINED FROM THEM (1886) : 
 
 Coal-tar-dyes 
 
 Potash 
 
 Soda. 
 
 $ 522,686 
 , 104,716 
 
 1,448,263 
 
26 
 
 Coal. - $ 
 
 Copper ore 
 
 Hemp 
 
 Manilla 
 
 Jute 
 
 Sisal-grass 
 
 Hay 
 
 Hops 
 
 Iron ore 
 
 Marble 
 
 Salt 
 
 Lumber 
 
 Zinc 
 
 Wool 
 
 581,000 
 
 108,096 
 
 194,136 
 
 626,895 
 
 393,788 
 
 493,751 
 
 184,351 
 
 217,917 
 
 525,193 
 
 229,672 
 
 706,324 
 
 867,849 
 
 88,900 
 
 5,126,108 
 
 Total revenue $12,419,699 
 
 These facts are indisputable, and they are conclusive. 
 
 2. We have already shown that removal of the duty 
 upon raw wool operates to advance the price of wool, and, 
 therefore, to increase the cost of materials into which wool 
 enters. This is merely an illustration of the operation of 
 a general principle. Any policy which tends to discourage 
 American producers of raw materials, and to force them 
 out of business, also tends to advance prices . Every Ameri- 
 can so engaged pays more for his labor than his foreign 
 competitors pay. Labor is the chief element of cost in 
 making ready for the market every kind of raw material. 
 If cheap foreign labor comes into unobstructed rivalry with 
 dear home labor, the latter, as we have already said, must 
 decline in cost, or the domestic producer must quit the 
 business. The latter result is the usual one. Free admis- 
 sion of European pig-iron will probably blow out every fur- 
 nace in the United States. 
 
 3. The notion that duties upon raw materials obstruct 
 the entrance of American fabrics to foreign markets is a 
 delusion. If it is not, why do not our cotton fabrics have 
 
2 7 
 
 supremacy in those markets ? Why does England beat us 
 a hundred to one in her cotton exports ? Why do we fail, 
 with untaxed raw silk, to export twenty thousand dollars’ 
 worth a month of manufactured silks? Why do we not, 
 with our vast supplies of iron ore and coal’, at least rival 
 England as an exporter of iron? Further, England has free 
 sugar ; but, as we have shown, the continental sugar-jnen 
 have nearly killed her export, and have almost captured her 
 domestic, sugar trade. England is rich in coal and iron 
 deposits, but we have to recognize the stubborn fact that 
 Belgian iron-masters build her bridges and lay her rails. 
 Germany is a protective tariff country and England is free ; 
 but Germany is deluging the British home market with 
 her wares. England gets her cotton free, and fuel is 
 cheaper to her than it is to India ; but we have learned 
 that Lancashire is filled with dread as she perceives India 
 crowding her out of the Asian markets for cottons. What 
 is the explanation of all these movements ? Why can we 
 not undersell England in manufactures of our own cottons ? 
 Why cannot England outbid Belgium for the iron in 
 British bridges ? Why need England fear the rivalry of 
 her half-starved Indian peasants ? The answer is the same 
 in all cases : the cost of labor rules the situation . The 
 
 cheapest labor takes the market. We are beaten abroad 
 by England, because we pay the highest wages paid in the 
 world. Belgium beats England because the Belgian work- 
 ingman works longer and gets less than the British work- 
 ingman. India threatens to sweep British cottons out of 
 Asia, because the Indian workingman never had, and pro- 
 bably never will have, enough return for his labor to buy 
 him a suit of clothes; and, in his most ambitious moments, 
 the thought never occurred to him that a beneficent fate 
 might one day supply him with a chance to eat a square 
 meal. 
 
 These are the competitors we must meet when we 
 propose to contend for entrance to the “ markets of the 
 
28 
 
 world.” Does it appear that any of them are just now 
 neglecting those markets? What foreign market is there 
 into which these rivals, with their fierce lust for trade, 
 have not already penetrated ? Where on the surface of the 
 rolling earth is that mysterious region where the inhabi- 
 tants sit in lack of fabricated material, while they yearn 
 and sigh for the blessed time when American manufac- 
 turers, uncrippled by duties on raw materials, will have a 
 fair chance to supply their wants ? The markets of the 
 world, in fact, wait only for the merchants who can under- 
 sell the merchants that already supply the demand of the 
 people. 
 
 From pole to pole there is no realm of bliss into which 
 the Englishman has not pushed with his wares, with a 
 German close at his heels, carrying samples of superior 
 bargains. When we pursue these persons, we shall get the 
 trade — if we can beat their prices. Meantime, in order 
 that we may participate in this mad scramble for poor 
 markets, we are asked to surrender our complete control of 
 this market. We are required to open to the Englishman 
 and the German, and to all the eager traders of Europe, a 
 market which is the greatest and the richest on earth, 
 which wants more, consumes more, and pays more than 
 any other that has existed since Adam began in Eden to 
 hide his nakedness ; and a market which, while it is the 
 richest, has the distinction that it has always been the best 
 protected. 
 
 DO COMBINATIONS OF PROTECTED MANUFACTURERS ROB 
 THE PEOPLE? 
 
 One of the most serious of the accusations made by the 
 President against American manufacturers is that they 
 deprive the people of the benefit of free competition, by 
 combinations to keep up prices. That such combinations 
 have sometimes been attempted in some industries, is 
 
29 
 
 admitted, and in this case the accuser has the singular ad- 
 vantage of fact to give an appearance of strength to his 
 argument. But he himself (in demanding freedom of raw 
 materials) confesses, as we have pointed out, that manufac- 
 turers often suffer from a glutted market, and from produc- 
 tion beyond the demands of home consumption. Such 
 combinations, therefore, have whatever justification he 
 finds for his demand that raw materials shall be freed, to the 
 injury of American producers of such materials. It is 
 simply a question whether a combination to check surplus 
 production is any more hurtful to the people at large than 
 legislation which will strike a deadly blow at every wool- 
 grower and other producer of raw material in the land. 
 
 But the actual truth is, that no combination of men 
 manufacturing a protected article in this country has ever 
 been largely successful, or has ever long endured. We ex- 
 press the belief that such movements have invariably 
 ended in failure, and, for the very reason that competition 
 is, and always must remain, absolutely free in this free 
 land. Combination for restriction of production and 
 maintenance of prices is practically impossible in any 
 great industry, such as the manufacture of cotton and 
 woolens. Whenever it has been attempted in the smaller 
 industries, the elevation of the price has tempted new men 
 to embark in such manufacture, and to sell their wares 
 below the combination price. The effect of this inevitably 
 is to destroy the combination, and often to put prices lower 
 than they were before. 
 
 Thus it is clearly apparent that the general public can 
 find no continuous grievance from this source ; and that 
 the people do, in truth, because of the operation of natural 
 causes, get the full benefit of free domestic competition. 
 This fact, which will not be questioned by any well- 
 informed person, supplies a conclusive answer to the 
 President’s assertion that competition is strangled by 
 combination. But the fact cannot be permitted to escape 
 
30 
 
 notice that the President’s own admission that such compe- 
 tition, operating behind tariff barriers, does tend to put 
 prices down, is also a conclusive answer to his other asser- 
 tion that the customs tax is always added to the price 
 of imported articles, and “ wrung” from the people. 
 
 But it is to be noted, as of very great importance in 
 this connection, that combinations of American manufac- 
 turers are not the only possible combinations. European 
 manufacturers and dealers can and do combine to put up 
 prices; thus proving, so far at least as British combinations 
 are concerned, that freedom of trade presents no obstacle 
 to such proceedings. It is clear that if these persons can 
 combine to control European markets, they could combine 
 to control American markets if they had no rivalry here. 
 It is clear, also, that the most effective method of protecting 
 the American people from such European conspiracies, is 
 to encourage, by tariffs or by any other means, liberal pro- 
 duction here of the commodities affected by these schemes. 
 In cases where there is no American competition, of course 
 the European syndicates — or whatever they may be called — 
 can rob our people at their pleasure. 
 
 INTERNAL TAXES ARE THE ONLY TAXES POSITIVELY 
 PAID BY THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The President, as we have said, brushes aside, with 
 something like disdain , the proposition that the surplus 
 should be removed by repealing the internal taxes. He 
 says “ it must be conceded” that the things thus taxed are 
 not, “strictly speaking, necessaries.” “ Must be con- 
 ceded. ’ ’ Why must ? In fact such concession will not and 
 cannot be made by any person who has the most ordi- 
 nary acquaintance with the subject. We affirm that the 
 material manufactured by the distillers of spirits is, in the 
 largest and fullest sense, an actual necessity of civilized life. 
 
3i 
 
 Not for use as a beverage. To condemn all spirits because 
 men drink some spirits, is as reasonable as if a mother 
 should scowl at the paregoric prescribed for her baby, 
 because Thomas De Quincey was an opium-eater. The 
 abuse of a good thing is not an argument against produc- 
 tion of that thing. Much good paper has been spoiled 
 within the precincts of the White House, and much is 
 spoiled elsewhere, but mankind must still have paper. One 
 half the spirits distilled in this country is used in the arts. 
 The varnish on the table whereon the President penned his 
 message was made with whiskey. The hat beneath which 
 he conceived his plan of campaign against American in- 
 dustries probably employed alcohol as it approached com- 
 pletion. Every kind of toilet preparation, every drop of 
 cologne water, every flavoring essence, every liquid drug, 
 every pharmaceutical preparation, with few exceptions, 
 has alcohol for its basis. 
 
 The tax upon this alcohol is paid by American con- 
 sumers. The customs tax may be shifted to other shoul- 
 ders, it can sometimes be divided, often it may be wholly 
 escaped, but the tax on American alcohol falls inevitably 
 and without possibility of diversion, upon American citi- 
 zens. And what kind of a tax is it? Not a tax which 
 calls for a small percentage of the whole value of the 
 article; not a tax that may be regarded lightly or paid 
 easily. It is a tax that amounts to three hundred per cent, 
 of the intrinsic value of the article upon which it is laid. 
 That is to say, the American citizen who wants $1.00 
 worth of alcohol pays $4.00 for it. 
 
 The cost of a 46 gallon barrel of alcohol to a chemist 
 would be $18.28 without the tax, while with the tax it is 
 $95.68. That is to say, the tax levied on a barrel of com- 
 mercial alcohol is $77.40, or more than four times its 
 intrinsic value ! 
 
 And what is this tax paid for ? The government does 
 not want it. The mass of the people do not want it. The 
 
32 
 
 advocates of temperance and prohibition repudiate it and 
 demand its repeal. It stands there to satisfy distillers of 
 whiskey, politicians who want control of the Bureau offices, 
 and men like the President of the United States, who, in 
 proposing to remove taxes, prefer to take off duties which 
 the American people partly pay or pay not at all, rather 
 than to repeal taxes which burden them alone. More than 
 this, such a proposition requires that the country shall re- 
 tain and pay for a wholly unnecessary internal revenue 
 bureau, at a cost of four million dollars a year ; which 
 cost, also, comes out of the pockets of a long-suffering 
 people. 
 
 Those who favor repeal of these taxes, first appeal to the 
 fact that it is required in the interests of economy; then 
 they point to the circumstance that such repeal favors 
 home industry as against foreign industry; and, finally, they 
 are able conclusively to prove that all the precedents of 
 American history support this policy. The President does 
 not venture to discuss the history of American internal 
 taxation, even if he be acquainted with it; nor does he 
 make any allusion to the cost of maintaining two systems 
 of collecting revenue where one would suffice. But we 
 venture to invite the attention of the American people to 
 these important considerations, and to challenge to dis- 
 cussion of them the individuals who find nothing to con- 
 demn in the President’s assault upon the industries of his 
 country. We invite the people, further, to consider the 
 following facts and figures: 
 
 THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE REPUDIATES THE 
 PRESIDENT’S PLATFORM. 
 
 The platform upon which the President was elected in 
 1884, contained the following declaration: 
 
 “From the foundation of the government, taxes collected 
 at the Custom House have been the chief source of Federal 
 revenue, and such they must continue to be.” 
 
33 
 
 The President, of course, accepted this sound theory 
 when he accepted the nomination, and he was elected by 
 the party which propounded it. He now positively repu- 
 diates the theory, as we shall show. 
 
 The revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1888, 
 are thus estimated, by the Secretary of the Treasury in his 
 report, upon the basis of existing laws : 
 
 From customs $ 228.000,000 
 
 From internal revenue 120,000,000 
 
 From sales of public lands 10,000,000 
 
 From tax on national banks 2,000,000 
 
 From interest and sinking fund, Pacific railways. . . . 2,000,000 
 
 From customs fees, fines, penalties, etc 1,150,000 
 
 From fees — consular, letters patent and lands 3,500,000 
 
 From sales of government property 300,000 
 
 From profits on coinage, assays, etc 9,000,000 
 
 From deposits for surveying public lands 150,000 
 
 From revenues of the District of Columbia 2,400,000 
 
 From miscellaneous sources 4,500,000' 
 
 Total estimated ordinary receipts $383,000,000 
 
 Now, if from $228,000,000, which figures represent the 
 estimated receipts from customs, we deduct the total 
 surplus of $113,000,000, which is to be saved by the 
 President’s plan, wholly from the customs receipts, we 
 shall have a remainder of $115,000,000, which we may 
 still expect to obtain from customs. This is just $5,000,000 
 less than the proposed receipts from internal revenue, and 
 thus the ‘ ‘chief source of federal revenue ’ ’ will be, not the 
 receipts from customs, but the receipts from internal revenue 
 
 taxes . 
 
 Estimated receipts from customs $228,000,000 
 
 Deduct estimated surplus 113,000,000 
 
 Total receipts from customs under President’s plan, $1 15,000,000. 
 Estimated receipts from internal revenue, $120,000,000 
 
 The people of the United States-are not unaccustomed 
 to observe the neglect, by successful politicians, of the 
 
34 
 
 pledges contained in the platforms upon which they were 
 elected ; but they have rarely had to encounter such 
 audacious repudiation as this now proposed by the Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 A PROTEST. 
 
 And now, having, as we believe, showed the unsound- 
 ness of the President’s arguments, having demonstrated 
 his conclusions to be erroneous, his policy to be adverse to 
 the best interests of the people, his acquaintance with eco- 
 nomical facts to be of the most limited description, and his 
 charges against American manufacturers to be beyond 
 reach of substantiation, we desire to enter a strong protest, 
 in detail and at large, against this official utterance. We 
 protest against the insinuation that the manufacturers of 
 this country are conspirators against their fellow-citizens, 
 and that they employ the protective tariff system to rob 
 them, to tax them, or in any other manner to inflict injury 
 upon the many for the advantage of the few. We protest that 
 the protective system in the United States long antedates 
 the entrance of any living manufacturer to business life ; 
 and that it continues to exist and can continue, only 
 because the vast majority of the free American people 
 maintain it by their action at the polls. We protest 
 against the insult offered to the people when their Chief 
 Magistrate intimates that they are too ignorant to com- 
 prehend their own interests, and too stupid to know when 
 they are robbed. We protest that the only combination 
 that exists to maintain the protective system, is a union 
 of free men wielding a free ballot. We protest against 
 the use by the President of the United States of his official 
 position for the promotion of the designs of a British club 
 which has made a practice of flooding this country with 
 free-trade literature, which has put into operation a scheme 
 for corrupting young men in American colleges, and which 
 would welcome as^ the highest possible fruition of its 
 intrigues that prostration of American industry towards 
 
35 
 
 which the proposed policy of the President would thrust 
 the American people. 
 
 We protest against persistence in a scheme for obtain- 
 ing such reduction- of the revenues as is imperatively de- 
 manded, by fastening permanently upon the people two sys- 
 tems of taxation, one of which has never been called into 
 use under this government excepting in the emergency of 
 war, and which operates at a useless expense of four mil- 
 lion dollars a year. 
 
 We protest that the American market properly belongs 
 to Americans; that to hold it for Americans is to give to 
 the whole body of the people, not only mere advantage in 
 the matter of prices, but all the wider and larger and 
 more splendid advantages which follow the extended diver- 
 sification of home industry, the development of the re- 
 sources of the country and of its inhabitants, and the re- 
 tention hereof the profits upon the interchange of commod- 
 ities. We claim for American manufacturers that in the 
 pursuance of their occupations they exhibit as little self- 
 ishness, and just as much devotion to the general welfare of 
 the nation, as any other class of citizens ; and we protest 
 against the policy which would sacrifice them and their 
 workmen and the interests of the people, for the sole ad- 
 vantage of the manufacturers, the workmen and people of 
 other countries. 
 
 We make this protest with a profound conviction of 
 the righteousness of our position in the issue forced upon 
 the country by the President ; with a strong assurance 
 that fact and theory alike sustain us, and with a confident 
 willingness to have the question thus lifted into promi- 
 nence thoroughly discussed by the people during the 
 coming year, and emphatically answered by them at the 
 polls in the approaching election. 
 
 CHARLES HEBER CLARK, 
 
 Published bv order of the Club. 
 
 Secretary . 
 
OFFICERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Manufacturers’ Club of Philadelphia 
 
 President, 
 
 THOMAS DOLAN. 
 
 Vice- Presidents, 
 
 Hon. EDWIN H. FITLER, 
 CHARLES J. HARRAH. 
 
 Treasurer , 
 
 ROBERT DORNAN. 
 Secretary, 
 
 CHARLES HEBER CLARK. 
 
 James Dobson, 
 Samuel H. Cramp, 
 Charles N. Thorpe, 
 James Butterworth, 
 Benjamin Allen, 
 John T. Bailey, 
 George D. Bromley, 
 James Pollock, 
 Robert K. McNeely, 
 James Gillinder, 
 
 William Wood, 
 Horace C. Disston, 
 John W. Pepper, 
 Theodore C. Search, 
 James Doak, Jr., 
 George Bullock, 
 Joseph P. Truitt, 
 Frank H. Welsh, 
 John Y. Huber, 
 Charles Thackara. 
 
 W. S. STOCKTON, Assistant Secretary, 
 
 1319 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. 
 
 
 
PROTECTION 
 
 FREE TRADE, 
 
 COMPARED, 
 
 IN THEIR INFLUENCE 
 
 NATIONAL INDUSTRY 
 
 AND THE BALANCE OF 
 
 WEALTH AND POWER. 
 
 SALEM : 
 
 PRINTED AT THE GAZETTE OFFICE. 
 
% 
 
The following pages were intended to give a concise view of 
 Protection and Free Trade, and to urge the policy of protecting 
 American industry against too great foreign competition. Some 
 considerations are presented here, as to the tendency of the Protec- 
 tive system to preserve the balance of power between independent 
 nations, and to prevent any one from acquiring a dangerous pre- 
 ponderance. This view of the question, though not so common in 
 discussions of this kind, is not without its importance, and should 
 not be lost sight of in estimating the comparative merits of the two 
 systems. 
 
 If other nations can be persuaded to adopt the Free Trade sys- 
 tem, the English expect, by their greater wealth and skill, to under- 
 sell, and consequently to overthrow the foreign manufacturer, and to 
 extend and secure their own manufacturing superiority. This may 
 be good policy for England, but it is contrary to the interest of oth- 
 er nations. Their interest is to prevent the undue ascendency of 
 any one state, and to preserve some degree of equality among na- 
 tions in the elements of wealth, security, and power. To accom- 
 plish this object, it is necessary to protect the industry of their own 
 people against the superior capital and skill of their English rivals. 
 
 Much the greater part of this essay was published a few months 
 since, in a series of numbers in the Salem Gazette. In a revision, 
 a few alterations and additions have been made, and at the close is 
 a view of the operation of the New Tariff, or Secretary Walker’s 
 Sliding Scale. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 ■ 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PROTECTION vs. FREE TRADE. 
 
 ENGLAND AND FRANCE. 
 
 The question as to the comparative merits of the two opposite 
 systems of Free Trade and Protection, seems to be brought home 
 to our community. Or, as the question may be stated, Whether it 
 is ivise in a nation, in its financial system and foreign trade, to give a 
 preference to the industry of its own citizens over that of foreigners ? 
 
 Upon this subject, there is a singular opposition, between the 
 doctrines of books and the measures of governments, between the 
 words of philosophers and the acts of statesmen. Though free trade 
 opinions have been advocated by a majority of writers on political 
 economy, they have been adopted only by a very small minority of 
 governments* 
 
 The Edinburgh Review, a journal well known for forty years as 
 the advocate of free trade, laments, in a recent number, that no 
 foreign states except Turkey and Holland, have yet admitted these 
 principles. In these two nations, Turkey and Holland, are includ- 
 ed neither of the five great powers of Europe, nor would either of 
 these two be now classed among prosperous nations. 
 
 England has lately adopted the free trade system to a much great- 
 er extent than formerly, though she is still far from carrying out the 
 principle universally, 
 
 The statesmen have been contented to act without writing books. 
 Instead of undertaking to refute the free trade opinions of the 
 philosophers, they have generally been satisfied to adopt opposite 
 measures themselves. Perhaps they had no objection that foreign- 
 ers should be influenced by fallacies which did not affect them; as 
 the powerful nations of Europe used to tolerate the Barbary cor- 
 sairs, as long as they confined their depredations to their weaker 
 commercial rivals. 
 
 The statesmen deal with men and things, the writers with abstract 
 ideas. The parties stand in the same relation to each other as 
 architects and mathematicians. 
 
 What nation in the world most desires the removal of all restric- 
 tions upon commerce? Is it the richest, or the poorest? The most 
 powerful, or the weakest ? It is the nation which is unquestionably 
 the most wealthy and powerful upon the globe, — England. What 
 
6 
 
 state of things do the English expect to be brought about by free 
 trade ? 
 
 With their greater capital, skill, and experience, they expect to 
 undersell and overthrow the manufactures of all other nations. 
 
 But do they expect their own agriculture to suffer under the same 
 system, from the competition of foreign farmers? By no means- 
 Hear the language of one of their own writers, as to the effects of a 
 repeal of the Corn laws. “The landlords and farmers may take 
 courage. Their prosperity does not rest upon the basis of an odious 
 restriction, but it is the effect of the fertility of the soil which be- 
 longs to them, and of the number and wealth of the consumers of 
 their produce.” 
 
 Thus free trade is advocated in England, upon the ground that it 
 will cause their manufactures to prosper at the expense of rival na- 
 tions, without essentially injuring their own agriculture. Their 
 manufacturers and operatives, it is urged, will grow richer, while 
 their land-owners and farmers will become no poorer. Their manu- 
 facturers are to thrive to the injury of those of France, Germany, 
 and the United States. But there is to be no reciprocity; foreign 
 agriculturists are by no means to become prosperous at the expense 
 of the English farmer. 
 
 So that the English advocates of free trade do not expect other 
 nations to derive any real recompense for the destruction of their 
 manufactures, by the admission of their agricultural produce into 
 the market of Great Britain. And why? There is a great differ- 
 ence between the expense of transporting manufactured goods, 
 which include a great value in a small bulk, and the products of 
 agriculture, which include a small value in a great bulk. The 
 farmer of Illinois, or the interior of Poland, can never grow rich by 
 selling his wheat in Manchester, in England, for the expense of 
 freight will absorb more than half the price. The protection which 
 proximity gives to the English farmer, can never be destroyed by 
 any alteration of tariffs. But the manufacturer of Manchester can, 
 for a mere trifle, convey his calicoes to Illinois dr Poland. The 
 American or Polish manufacturer is as much exposed to be ruined by 
 this competition, as to be killed by a rifle bullet fired at him from a 
 distance of a hundred yards. The English farmer, on the other 
 hand, is no more in danger of being crushed by the bulky barrels of 
 flour from the valley of the Mississippi, than by a paving stone aim- 
 ed at him a hundred yards off. 
 
 It is natural, therefore, that the English should almost unani- 
 mously be opposed to the protective system. They see its effect on 
 
7 
 
 all sides is, to limit their wealth and narrow their power. The 
 Whig and Radical opposition in Parliament is continually denounc- 
 ing it. And the Tory Administration, even while supporting some 
 exception by which the interests of Great Britain are to be promot- 
 ed, always cordially assents to the general rule. 
 
 But it is only since the commerce, manufactures, and wealth of 
 Great Britain have far surpassed those of any other country, that 
 free trade opinions have prevailed there. A hundred years ago, 
 when the Dutch rivalled her in commerce, and the French in manu- 
 factures, such doctrines were never so much as whispered. Then, 
 the measures of the British government, and the language of British 
 writers, alike favored the protective system. 
 
 And when Plolland was first in the world in trade and wealth, it 
 was there alone that free trade found its supporters. 
 
 In France, the less wealthy and less powerful rival of England, 
 we find equal unanimity in favor of the protective system, and 
 against free trade. There is here no disagreement, no debate, on 
 this subject, — we never see it mentioned as one of the questions dis- 
 cussed in the Chamber of Deputies. And protection in France 
 means more than it does in the United States. It does not stop 
 short at a tariff for revenue, with discrimination for the sake of pro- 
 tection, but excludes altogether such kinds of goods as come into 
 competition with domestic industry. The list of the articles which 
 it prohibits, is too long to be given here. But it includes all cotton, 
 woollen, and worsted goods, boots and shoes, saddlery, glass ware, 
 carriages, manufactures of copper and brass, and most kinds of hard 
 ware, and in its minuteness descends to prohibiting the importation 
 of sugar candy. 
 
 The French are not ashamed of the protective system; they mean 
 to exclude such foreign manufactures as come into competition with 
 their own, and care not if all the world knows it. England, on the 
 other hand, who has a vital interest in the adoption of the principles 
 of free trade, by other nations, wherever she finds it expedient to 
 protect her own industry, does it as quietly and unostentatiously as 
 possible. She takes good care never to risk her reputation for libe- 
 rality, by imposing a duty of 25 per cent., where 20 would answer 
 the same purpose. Great Britain, about 20 years ago, when she 
 had learnt to manufacture cotton and woollen goods cheaper than 
 any other nation, reduced the previous high duties upon their im- 
 portation to 10 and 15 per cent. The only object of this change 
 was, to induce other nations, under different circumstances, to go 
 and do likewise. The measure was defended in Parliament on the 
 
8 
 
 ground that the new duties would answer the same purpose, and 
 protect the English manufacturer just as well as the old. The 
 scheme reminds us of a way in which monkeys are caught in the 
 East Indies. The hunter goes into the woods provided with two 
 basins; the one he fills with clay and water, mixed into a paste, and 
 places where the monkeys can have convenient access to it. The 
 other he fills with water only, and carrying it to a little distance, be- 
 gins to wash his face in it. The monkeys, as soon as they see this, 
 imitate him with the other basin, but the clay gets into their eyes 
 and blinds them, so that they may be taken without any further 
 trouble. .4 
 
 You would never find a prohibition of sugar candy in the Tariff of 
 England. She would not risk her character for liberality upon a 
 matter of such small consequence. She is more careful of her repu- 
 tation for humanity than to fire cannon balls at sparrows, when small 
 shot would answer the same purpose. 
 
 BALANCE OF POWER, 
 
 It has long been considered, throughout the civilized world, that 
 the balance of power was to be maintained at all hazards. Now the 
 principle of the balance of power is, that no nation shall be suffered 
 to become so strong as to endanger the security and independence 
 of others. Upon the maintenance of this equilibrium depends the 
 existence of different independent nations, instead of one universal 
 monarchy like ancient Rome. But the balance of power depends 
 very much upon the balance of wealth. If the wealth of the world 
 be concentrated in one nation, the power is likely to follow it. 
 
 At the beginning of the American Revolution, as w r e know, the 
 power of England far exceeded that of any other nation. Her 
 manufactures and commerce were in the highest state of prosperity; 
 she had just conquered the best part oT*Tndia, and had not yet lost 
 the United States. Russia was still in the back ground, and France 
 had just been humbled by the unsuccessful war in which she lost 
 Canada. The power of England then seemed so alarming, that a 
 jealous and hostile feeling towards her pervaded the whole Conti- 
 nent, and in spite of the natural antipathy which monarchies must 
 have to rebellious subjects, and to republicans, the feeling, not only 
 of the people, but the governments of all the rest of Europe, was 
 favorable to us. Not only did France, Spain, and Holland, actual- 
 
9 
 
 1 y join us in the war, but it was plain that the good wishes of the 
 other states were with us, and not with Great Britain. 
 
 The balance of power was next threatened by the military force 
 of France, excited by the revolution, and directed by the genius of 
 Bonaparte. The contest was conducted by England and France 
 upon the most opposite principles. France did every thing by force. 
 Men were compelled by the conscription, to serve in her armies, 
 and their pay and subsistence were extorted from the conquered 
 countries. This was a very easy method of supporting armies, in 
 the beginning, but in the end it waked that storm of hatred by which 
 the power of Bonaparte was swept away. The British armies, on 
 the other hand, were paid and subsisted at the expense of their own 
 government, and so were never a burden to the country which was 
 the seat of war. It was the sun and the wind, contending for the 
 traveller’s cloak, and the sun, of course, prevailed. Then Eng- 
 land attained again that pre-eminence in the world from which her 
 ill success in the war of our revolution had displaced her. 
 
 Thus it was the gold of Britain that overthrew the armies of 
 France. And yet the island contained no mines of gold or silver. 
 Her wealth was derived from the sale of her broadcloths and cali- 
 coes. So that it was English broadcloths and calicoes that conquer- 
 ed Bonaparte. But armies and navies cannot be paid with calicoes. 
 The goods must first be converted into money, and their value de- 
 pends upon their finding customers. That is, their value depends 
 very much upon the prevalence of free trade in the world. And 
 therefore, as we are endeavoring to show, the power of Great Britain 
 depends, in a great degree, upon free trade. 
 
 Now it was very well that Bonaparte should be put down, but the 
 wealth that conquered him would have been equally efficacious in 
 the most unjust war. No nation has been more ready to maintain 
 the balance of power, even at the expense of war, than Great 
 Britain. So that she certainly has no reason to complain, if inci- 
 dentally, in the protection of their own industry, other nations should 
 aim at limiting her power by restricting the consumption of her 
 manufactures. The protective tariffs of the United States, and of 
 every considerable nation of Europe, have already, to a consider- 
 able extent, had this effect. Listen to the language of an English 
 writer on this subject. “ The entrance duties af France, the com- 
 mercial union of Germany, the hostile system of Russia, these and 
 other circumstances, have already diminished, and threaten finally 
 to annihilate the commercial superiority of Great Britain.” Now 
 to annihilate the commercial superiority of Great Britain, is exactly 
 
10 
 
 what other nations wish and intend. Their interest is commercial 
 equality. 
 
 It is not natural or politic, for writers to dwell much upon the 
 weak or vulnerable points of their own country; but when we find 
 those of England alluding to such topics, it is not so much the ar- 
 mies of Russia, or the navies of France and the United States, that 
 excite their apprehensions, as the protective tariffs and manufactur- 
 ing success of other nations. Hear the arguments, by which a re- 
 cent English writer opposes a philanthropic scheme for granting to 
 the Christian inhabitants of the Turkish empire equal rights with 
 the Mahometans. They are in substance as follows : “ The Turks 
 are a sluggish and unenterprising people, who have no manufac- 
 tures or commerce, and can therefore never be dangerous rivals to 
 us. They adhere to the principles of free trade, and offer a valu- 
 able market for our manufactures. But the present government is 
 founded upon the subjection of the conquered races to that of the 
 Turks, and to grant equal rights to all would endanger its stability. 
 And such are the natural advantages of Turkey, that under any 
 other government than the present, it would become a great com- 
 mercial and manufacturing country, and a protective tariff* would 
 be established there. Thus the interests of England would suffer 
 by any change in the present system.” 
 
 Here are his own w'ords : 
 
 “ Whoever possesses the Bosphorus, Propontis, and Archipelago, 
 must become a maritime nation. Whoever possesses Constanti- 
 nople, must become a great manufacturing and exporting nation, in 
 defiance of competition. In less than half a century, the romantic 
 villas and tapering cypresses that now fringe the blue Bosphorus, 
 would be replaced by factories and steam-chimnies, every one of 
 which would be a deadly rival to a similar establishment in Great 
 Britain. I argue as an Englishman whose duty it is to consider the 
 material interests of his own country, and not to occupy himself 
 with the theories of political philanthropists. # * # 
 
 With the increasing embarrassments to commerce and industry, 
 which continental states are raising against Britain, it is essential 
 that we should not allow a false cry of philanthropy to throw us off* 
 our guard in the Levant.” Thus far the English writer. 
 
 So that the whole Christian population of Turkey are to remain 
 in a state approaching to slavery for fear that their emancipation 
 should lead to the establishment of a protective tariff* there, and to 
 making Constantinople a great manufacturing and commercial city. 
 
 And upon this subject we have not merely the words of an indi- 
 
11 
 
 vidual Englishman, but the acts of his government to the same point. 
 Only five years ago, the British government engaged in a war mere- 
 ly to sustain and strengthen the present free trade government o^ 
 Turkey. Mahomet Ali then had possession of Syria, where he had 
 established equal rights for all, and placed the Christians and Jews 
 upon the same footing as the Mahometans. But the British navy, 
 as we all remember, attacked and destroyed the seaports of Syria, 
 and restored the Turkish government. Then the Christian popular 
 tion was immediately reduced to its old state of degradation, and 
 punished by a general pillage and massacre, for the short lived 
 equality it had enjoyed. 
 
 The Protective System tends to prevent the wealth, and therefore 
 the power of the world, from being concentrated in one nation, in 
 the same manner that natural obstacles, mountains, seas, deserts, 
 and morasses, have ever checked the progress of conquerors. The 
 power of Bonaparte, which had ever been victorious in the fields of 
 Italy and of Germany, was shattered upon the vast frozen plains of 
 Russia, and the rugged mountains of Spain. The French now ex- 
 perience, in the crags of Mount Atlas and the scorching sands of 
 the desert, the same difficulties in conquering Algiers, that the Ro- 
 mans encountered there two thousand years ago. And against 
 these natural fortifications, all the arts of modern warfare seem even 
 less efficient than the shield and spear of the ancients. 
 
 The obvious tendency of the protective system being, then, to 
 preserve the balance of power in the world by putting some limits to 
 the wealth and strength of Great Britain, this circumstance alone 
 ought to gain for it the favor of those politicians, with whom patriot a 
 ism means eagerness for ^n offensive war with that nation. 
 
 PROTECTIVE SYSTEM COMPETITION. 
 
 Competition in trade has some resemblance to war, and the Fou- 
 rierites only carry out farther the principles of the Quakers, when 
 they exclude it from their system. But it is the operations of defen- 
 sive, and not of offensive war, that protective tariffs resemble. 
 They only preserve the home market to the native producer, and 
 leave the foreigner to enjoy that of his own country undisturbed. 
 They are the forts which defend our own harbors, and not the ships 
 which attack those of our neighbors. 
 
 Free trade is not necessarily fair competition. As the race is not 
 
12 
 
 a fair one, where one jockey is heavier than the other, unless the 
 lighter man carry weight; so a pitched battle in the open field is 
 not necessarily an equal contest. One army may be more experi- 
 enced, or better armed, or more numerous than the other, and the 
 battle thus become unequal. When the disciplined troops of Bona- 
 parte met the raw levies of Spain in the vast open plains, they gain- 
 ed an easy victory; but when the French, scattered in small de- 
 tachments and unacquainted with the country, were waylaid in the 
 intricate ravines and difficult mountain passes, they were destroyed 
 by an invisible enemy. In which of these two cases did the French 
 and Spaniards fight on equal terms — in both, or neither? 
 
 At Bunker Hill and New Orleans our men had the advantage of 
 being protected by breastworks, while the enemy fought in the open 
 field ; but the British were experienced soldiers, while the Ameri- 
 cans were farmers and mechanics fresh from the plough and work- 
 shop. Now the tariff merely answers the same purpose in the strife 
 of industry, that the rail fences stuffed with hay and the piles of cot- 
 ton bags did in the strife of war. It renders the competition be- 
 tween an old and new country, which would otherwise have been 
 unequal, a fair one. 
 
 There is also another analogy between the competition of trade., 
 and a battle : that in both cases the strength and skill of the weaker 
 party count for nothing. Merit is not encouraged by a first prize 
 and a second prize ; there is only one great prize and a blank. The 
 French at the battle of Waterloo were not few or cowardly, but be- 
 ing surpassed somewhat in numbers and in valor, their bravery did 
 but render their defeat more complete and ruinous. In like man- 
 ner, if free trade prevailed, and the French manufacturer could not 
 afford cheaper than ten cents a yard, the goods which his English 
 competitor sells for nine, it would be no security for him that his 
 article was good and the price intrinsically moderate. The result 
 will be, not that he will make nine-tenths as much profit as the 
 Englishman, but that his business will be broken up, his workmen 
 thrown out of employ, and he ruined. But this result will be as dis- 
 astrous to France, as if her army had been defeated in battle by 
 that of England. The French consumer will gain but one cent a 
 yard, and that will not last long after the British manufacturer has 
 the control of the market; while the French manufacturer and the 
 operative will lose the whole ten cents, deducting the cost of the 
 raw material. 
 
 The protective system, by setting the wits of different nations to 
 work upon the same business, tends very much to advance the cause 
 
13 
 
 of invention and improvement. This may be shown by a variety of 
 examples. The progress made in the cotton manufacture, within a 
 hundred years past, is perhaps the most striking. The manufacture 
 of cotton in India can be traced back as far as historical records ex- 
 tend. The oldest historian, who wrote 400 years before the Chris- 
 tian era, speaks of its existing in his time. In a work written in 
 the second century, about 1700 years ago, it appears that the same 
 descriptions of cotton goods were then exported from the same ports 
 in India as in modern times. After the discovery of the passage 
 round the Cape of Good Hope, India cotton began to be imported 
 into Europe in considerable quantities. Though the material was 
 carded, spun, and woven, entirely by hand, without any help from 
 machinery, the Hindoos were so dexterous and their wages so low, 
 i that no goods of any material, of a similar quality and fit for the 
 same uses, could be made so cheap in Europe. Such large quanti- 
 ties of India cottons were imported into England towards the close 
 of the 17th century, that the use of them interfered very seriously 
 with the sale of their own goods. In order to protect their own 
 manufactures, not only of cotton, but of woollen, silk, and linen, 
 from this- competition, Parliament, in the year 1700, passed an act 
 prohibiting entirely the use of India cottons. It is somewhat inter- 
 esting to see the manner in which Defoe, the author of Robinson 
 Crusoe, and one of the ablest political writers of the age, who sup- 
 ported this prohibition, treats the matter. Speaking of India cotton, 
 he says : 
 
 “It crept into our houses, closets, and bed chambers; curtains, 
 cushions, chairs, and at last beds themselves, were nothing but cali- 
 coes or India stuffs, and in short almost every thing which used to 
 be made of wool or silk, relating either to the dress of the women, 
 or the furniture of our houses, was supplied by the India trade. 
 What remained then for our people to do, but to stand still and look 
 on, and to see the bread taken out of their mouths, and the East In- 
 dia trade carry away the whole employment of the people? What 
 had the masters to do but to dismiss their journeymen, and take no 
 more apprentices? Wliat had the journeymen to do but to sit still, 
 grow poor, run away, and starve? 
 
 “ The several goods brought from India, are made five parts in 
 six under our price, and being imported and sold at an extravagant 
 profit, were yet capable of underselling the cheapest thing we could 
 set about. Let no man wonder that Parliament, as soon as they 
 were made sensible of this, came readily into the prohibition.” 
 
 Such was the superior cheapness of India calicoes over any simi- 
 
14 
 
 lar goods that could be made in Europe one hundred and fifty years 
 ago. But Eastern nations never improve. The Hindoos make cot- 
 ton cloth in precisely the same manner now, that they did then, and 
 as we have reason to suppose, they did thousands of years before. 
 The prohibition caused the manufacture to be carried on in Eng- 
 land, though at a disadvantage at first. A day’s labor of an Eng- 
 lishman, though it cost several times as much money, produced no 
 more cloth than that of a Hindoo. But the attention of an ingeni- 
 ous nation was directed to the business. The genius of Hargraves, 
 Arkwright and Compton, added one invention to another. Labor 
 saving machinery gained step by step upon cheap labor, until the 
 cotton goods of India are nearly driven out of the market of their 
 own country, by the now cheaper fabrics of England. 
 
 Shall we blame England for this prohibition of India cotton goods ? 
 Without it we should still be using the rotten shirtings and sheet- 
 ings, and the coarse, homely, yet high priced calicoes of India, well 
 remembered by our mothers. The British took the lead which we 
 have but followed, and in machinery have added many improvements 
 of our own. 
 
 And these inventions can be clearly traced to the protection, un- 
 der the most discouraging circumstances, of the cotton manufactures 
 of Great Britain against the competition of India goods. A high 
 duty was deemed insufficient, and a complete prohibition was resort- 
 ed to. Now if India cottons had been admitted into England, Ark-. 
 wright could never have invented the spinning frame ; for the spin-*- 
 ning of cotton would not have been an occupation carried on in 
 England at all, during his time. He never could have seen the 
 process, and therefore he never could have improved it. The only 
 shape in which he would have been likely to see cotton at all, would 
 have been in the shape of finished goods from India. We do not 
 expect improvements in ship building, from men whose whole lives 
 are passed in the interior, where they never see a ship, or in the 
 plough from those Chinese who spend their whole lives in boats 
 without ever going on shore, 
 
 VARIETY OF TRADES, 
 
 There ought to be a variety of occupations in a country, in order 
 that the powers and talents, the enterprise and ingenuity, of every 
 man, may find an appropriate field. But, under free trade, foreign 
 
15 
 
 competition has the effect of narrowing and limiting the number of 
 callings, and so compelling every one to make his choice from a 
 comparatively small list. The same man who will make a good me- 
 chanic, will not necessarily make a good farmer, and if foreign 
 competition compel him to become a farmer, it is a loss to the com- 
 munity, as well as an injury to the individual. Of what use would 
 the genius of Fulton have been to the world, if he had been born in 
 a country where there was no navigation; or of Watt, the inventor 
 of the steam engine, if England had been a purely agricultural, in- 
 stead of a manufacturing country. 
 
 Variety of arts and manufactures gives a value to all physical 
 objects, as well as to all kinds of talent. Our barren fields of sand 
 and clay, and hills of solid rock, were useless as long as Massachu- 
 setts was an agricultural state only. But the sand and clay are 
 now in demand for making bricks and mortar, the stone for the 
 foundations of houses, shops, and factories : all have become valu- 
 able. Yet the province of the farmer has not been narrowed 
 
 Before a protective tariff exists in a country, it is a question of 
 policy whether to establish one or not. It is enacted, if at all, for 
 the good of the nation, and not of individuals or classes. But after 
 the people have experienced its operation, and have adapted them- 
 selves to it, and engaged in employments upon the faith of it, the 
 nature of the question is changed; from being one of expediency, it 
 becomes one of justice. For the benefit of the nation, new employ- 
 ments are opened, in which all have a right to engage. While 
 those who remain in the old trades are alike benefited, by having 
 their competitors changed into customers. Those whose trades are 
 protected by the tariff, enjoy no advantage over those who need no 
 protection, for both alike are exposed to domestic competition. The 
 trade of the boot-maker is protected, that of the butcher is not : but 
 the boot-maker does not therefore make more money than the 
 butcher. 
 
 It is an old maxim, that, in return for the obedience of the citizen, 
 his government owes him protection. This properly includes the 
 protection of his industry, his trade, against injurious competition, 
 as well as of his person and property against the direct violence of 
 foreign nations. It is certain that this is the construction which the 
 rulers of nearly all civilized nations have put upon their obligations, 
 and it is one of the most striking and obvious points in which their 
 conduct differs from that of the chiefs of savage tribes. The gov- 
 ernment which is neutral in the struggle between the industry of its 
 own citizens and those of a rival nation, brings to mind the woman 
 
16 
 
 whose husband was engaged in a deadly struggle with a bear. A 
 neighbor going by, ran to assist the man, but the wife pulled him 
 back, saying, “ fair play : this is the only fight I ever saw, where 
 I did not care which beat.” The government which adopts the 
 principles of free trade, is this impartial wife. 
 
 It may be worth while to consider a moment some of the objec- 
 tions, which the friends of free trade make to the protective system. 
 They say that it presumes that government knows the affairs of indi- 
 viduals better than they themselves, and ought to dictate to them 
 what occupations to pursue. But that each man is the best judge 
 of his own interest, and the interest of the nation is made up of the 
 interests of its individual members. This reasoning is founded en- 
 tirely on the assumption that the interest of each individual is the 
 same with that of the community. But one half of our criminal laws 
 are intended to prevent individuals from pursuing their own interest,, 
 at the expense of the community. Though the payment of taxes is 
 essential to the community, it is contrary to the interest of each 
 individual tax-payer. 
 
 But let ns take an example more exactly in point. We may sup- 
 pose there are two blacksmiths in a place, who, in shoeing horses 
 and mending tools, find just sufficient employment. A third black- 
 smith comes to the town, and it is for his interest to try to get part 
 of the business of the other two. If he succeeds in obtaining an 
 equal share of the employment, he will have work two thirds of the 
 time, but all that he gains the others lose. He might, instead, em- 
 ploy himself in making axes, which are usually imported from a for- 
 eign country. But the disadvantages of engaging in competition 
 with foreign manufacturers, of more capital and experience, and the 
 prejudices which his axes, however good, would have to encounter 
 in the beginning, make it for his interest rather to try for a part of 
 the business of the others than to embrace the risks of the new em- 
 ployment. But in this case his labors do not in the least benefit the 
 community, or increase the amount of the national wealth. What- 
 ever he earns is so much bread taken out of the mouths of the two 
 others. So that it is for the interest of the community that he should 
 make axes, though he earns but a shilling a day at it Thus the 
 interest of the nation and of the individual are in this case different. 
 And we need a protecting duty on foreign axes, to induce the third 
 blacksmith to pursue that occupation which the welfare of the com- 
 munity requires. 
 
 The case here might be stated still more strongly in favor of pro- 
 tection. For axes are an article of real utility and necessity, and 
 
17 
 
 that the price of them should be raised, though but for a time, is in 
 itself an evil, only to be counterbalanced by the greater good of suf- 
 ficient employment for everybody. The article protected, instead 
 of being useful, like axes, might be ornamental merely, like silk 
 goods, as to which it matters little whether they be dear or cheap, 
 for if they were not dear, they might cease to be esteemed. 
 
 More than half of the goods imported into the United States, and 
 three quarters of those paying duties, are commodities whose value 
 lies chiefly in fancy or fashion. When the price is raised by duties, 
 it is very doubtful whether the consumer suffers, for when dear they 
 will be more valued than when cheap. When cotton stockings, in 
 Bonaparte’s time, could only be imported into France with great 
 difficulty, and were in consequence very dear, they were much 
 more fashionable than silk ones. But the benefit that protection 
 confers by encouraging the industry, ingenuity, and enterprise of 
 our own citizens, is no such matter of fancy. 
 
 It has been said that if we impose high duties upon the produc- 
 tions of foreign nations, they will retaliate, and so the warfare may 
 go on forever. But in such matters nations do not act from passion, 
 but from policy; according to their own interest, and not from mo- 
 tives of resentment. England does not impose a duty of 1000 per 
 cent upon our tobacco, from hatred of us, but from love of her own 
 revenue. The tobacco duties pay more than half the expense of 
 her navy. Neither does she admit our cotton free of duty from any 
 regard to us, but from a regard to her own manufactures. 
 
 England is the only country in the world that can be said to have 
 been decidedly a sufferer by our protective system, so that it is 
 from England, if from any country, that we should expect retalia- 
 tory measures. But none of the four great powers of Continental 
 Europe, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, deals so liberally 
 with her as we do. No two of these nations, are, together, such 
 good customers to England as the United States, notwithstanding 
 the tariff. This is sufficient reason why, if Great Britain chooses 
 to retaliate upon any, she should not select us. The protective 
 system under which our manufactures have flourished, has not in- 
 duced her to retaliate in any instance. On the contrary, our suc- 
 cess in the cotton manufacture, was the known and avowed reason 
 for repealing the duty on cotton, the far most important of our ex- 
 ports to England. 
 
 The staple production of Brazil is coffee, which is admitted into 
 the United States free of duty, while in England it is taxed 12 cents 
 a pound, or 150 per cent. Yet Brazil grants no favours to our 
 commerce, above that of England, though a small preference to our 
 cotton goods would be an important benefit. 
 
It has been -objected to protection, in the United States, that rt 
 compels the farmer to pay a higher price for the goods lie buys, 
 without enabling him to .get a higher price for the produce he sells. 
 Now the friends of protection do not concede that in the end it rais- 
 es the price of goods, for it encourages the home manufacturers to 
 extend their business, until in the end domestic competition reduces 
 the price to the lowest point. But even admitting that the price of 
 manufactured goods is somewhat raised, let us enquire whether the 
 value of agricultural produce is not also enhanced. If the price of 
 an article in the market is low, and we wish to increase it, we must 
 either diminish the supply or increase the .demand, — diminish the 
 number of sellers or increase that of the buyers. And, if by turn- 
 ing sellers into buyers, we .are enabled to work at both ends at once, 
 our object will be accomplished twice as fast. Let it be agricultu- 
 ral produce, of which we w T ish to raise the price; to do it we must 
 either diminish the number of farmers or increase that of their cus- 
 tomers. Or„ our task will be easier, we can do both at once, and 
 convert farmers into buyers of agricultural produce. Now the en- 
 couragement of manufacturing and mechanical occupations, by pro- 
 tecting duties, accomplishes this object., for it tempts some who are 
 farmers to change their trade, and induces young men who are 
 growing up, and have their occupation yet to choose, to select some 
 other trade than farming. 
 
 ST HE FOREIGN MARKET FOR AMERICAN FARMERS. 
 
 It is urged that the foreign manufacturer will, if we buy our goods 
 of him, be just as good a customer as the domestic to the American 
 farmer. But, in the first place, the articles constituting two thirds 
 in value of the food of man, fresh meat, milk, butter, and vege- 
 tables, cannot be transported across the Atlantic. They must be 
 consumed on the spot, or not at all. Only flour, grain, cheese, -and 
 salt provisions, can be carried to Europe, however great the demand 
 for them may there be. These last commodities must encounter a 
 severe competition, for their prices here are as high as in several 
 countries on that continent. We shall not examine in detail, the 
 trade in all these commodities, but that in flour being by far the 
 most important, deserves our particular attention. It has been sup- 
 posed by some that wheat is cheaper and more abundant in the 
 United States than in any other country in the world; and that even 
 if there were no home market, the farmers of the Middle and West- 
 ern States might do a good business in raising wheat for export to 
 Europe. But in fact, we are but one among several wheat growing 
 
19 
 
 countries. Russia, Poland, and Germany,, all export large quanti- 
 ties of wheat, which is shipped chiefly from the ports of Odessa, in 
 the south of Eui-ope,, and Dantzic and Hamburg, in the north. It 
 is the wheat of Dantzic and Hamburg that ours would be most 
 likely to come into competition with; and it may be worth while to 
 inquire what the prices in these ports are. Their wheat in the 
 market of England, say, will have a considerable advantage over 
 ours, in the cost of freight, which will be about half what it is from 
 the ports of the United States. But it may be thought that the 
 prices of Dantzic and Hamburg are so high, that they will remune- 
 rate well the American grower, deducting the difference in freight 
 It therefore becomes interesting to us to krquire what the prices at 
 these European ports are. 
 
 The average price of wheat at Dantzic, for the twenty-two years 
 ending with 1843, was ninety-three cents a bushel, — at Hamburg, 
 eighty-four cents; while the average price in the seaports of the 
 United States, for the same period, was one dollar and seventeen 
 cents. But if we are to be regular exporters of wheat to Europe, 
 we must not only accept their prices, but considerably lower ones, 
 on account of the difference in freight, which is tw ice as high from 
 the United States to England, as from the Baltic. Or if wheat from 
 the United States, during these years, had been admitted into the 
 market of Great Britain duty free, and that coming from the Baltic 
 had been charged with a duty of thirty-three per cent, the Baltic 
 wheat grower would still, upon an average of seasons,, have enjoyed 
 a considerable advantage over us* 
 
 Thus if wheat is to become an object of regular export to Eng- 
 land, we cannot see what is to prevent our prices from ranging ten 
 cents a bushel lower than those of the north of Europe, for their 
 wheat must always be worth about that sum more than ours, to ship 
 for the English markets. And when w'heat in the Baltic falls to 
 seventy cents, a price as frequent there as ninety cents is here, it 
 must be sixty cents in New York. But may the farmers of the 
 United States never be reduced to this condition; — may the country 
 never be so impoverished as to accept such prices.. 
 
 If we compare our prices with those of Odessa, the principal port 
 in the south of Europe from which grain is exported, the difference 
 will be found to be still more in our favor, as wheat there, for the 
 fourteen years ending with 1&43, averaged only sixty-four cents a 
 bushel. 
 
 Considering then that under a protective tariff the wheat growers 
 of the United States have realized so much better prices than those' 
 of the other grain exporting countries in the world, we should think 
 that they at least would be averse to any change. They should be- 
 
20 
 
 ware of killing the goose that has laid them so many golden eggs. 
 
 But since bread stuffs are annually exported to a large amount 
 from the United States, how, it will be asked, can our prices be 
 higher than those of the European ports, from which the same com- 
 modities are shipped ? In the first place, our steady home demand, 
 which is incomparably greater than that of Poland, prevents our 
 prices from ever sinking so low, or fluctuating so much, as theirs. 
 Secondly, the United States are much more conveniently situated 
 than any European country, for supplying the West Indies and 
 South America with flour, and it will, on an average, command a 
 considerably higher price there than in Europe. 
 
 The cultivation of wheat for a distant foreign market, must, from 
 the nature of the case, ever be an uncertain and ill remunerated 
 business. It is an article which the poor consume as well as the 
 rich, and therefore it cannot permanently bear a high price. It is 
 produced in almost every country upon the globe, and therefore the 
 competition in the. sale of it must be very great. Thus while the 
 farmer, who has the advantage of proximity, gets but a moderate 
 remuneration for his labor, the profits of the distant farmer are 
 swallowed up in the expense of transportation. 
 
 In France, domestic agriculture is [protected by duties upon the 
 importation of bread stuffs, aad they are dearer there than in any 
 other of the great countries of Europe, except England. As to the 
 necessity of^this protection, the following strong language is used, 
 in a report of a committee of the Chamber of Deputies, made in 
 1832 : 
 
 “If we admitted the food and raiment, and colonial and other 
 products, which strangers would bring to our ports we might proba- 
 bly gain some hundred millions of francs; should we be the richer 
 in consequence? — for the riches of a state are in the elements of la- 
 bor, and when labor fails to find employment, misery is reproduced. 
 And it is not only a question of comfort, but one of existence; for if 
 wheat were introduced without duty from the Baltic or Black Sea, 
 our maritime shores would remain uncultivated, and the effect of a 
 ruinous competition would affect more and more nearly the whole of 
 our population.” 
 
 Yet the average price of wheat in France, for the twenty-three 
 years commencing with 1814, and ending with 1836, — one dollar 
 twenty-nine cents a bushel, — equivalent to six dollars a barrel for 
 flour, does not seem very high. The average price of flour in 
 Philadelphia for the same period, was six dollars fifty cents. So if 
 there were no freight or other expenses to pay, the exportation of 
 flour from the United States into France, would upon the average 
 of these years have been attended with positive loss. And as our 
 
21 
 
 prices were higher than those of France, how could we have enter- 
 ed into competition with those countries whose low priced wheat 
 was only prevented by protective duties, from ruining French agri- 
 culture? Indeed, it would seem that the wheat growers of the Uni- 
 ted States would, had Poland been equally near them, have been in 
 the same danger, from her competition, with those of France. 
 
 In years like the present, when the grain crops of Europe are 
 deficient, and those of the United States abundant, we may no 
 doubt export flour to Europe with advantage. But this is a benefit 
 which fortune confers, and which does not depend upon free trade. 
 So in 1837, when our crop was deficient, we imported a large quan- 
 tity of wheat from Europe. 
 
 A celebrated English writer on commerce says, “ The prices of 
 wheat in America are usually higher than in the Baltic; so that lit- 
 tle can be brought from the former, except when the demand is 
 sufficient previously, to take off the cheaper wheat of the latter 
 ports.” 
 
 It will be urged by some, that since the repeal of the Corn laws, 
 things are changed, and that for the future England will afford us a 
 good market for almost any quantity of bread stuffs. And the fail- 
 ure of the potato crop this season, happening at the same time with 
 a deficiency in the crops of grain throughout Europe generally, has 
 given a great advantage to those who maintain this theory. But 
 what was the effect of the repeal of the Corn Laws upon the price 
 of bread stuffs in this country, before it was known that the harvest 
 in Europe would be deficient. Soon after, flour fell to a price, 
 (four dollars a barrel,) which, though not unusual in Europe, had 
 not been known in the United States since the adoption of the tariff 
 of 1825, and only once during the present century. The present 
 demand for flour for the European market is merely the natural re- 
 sult of an accidental famine there, and might have existed, indeed, 
 has existed, under the old English corn laws. In the year 1817 in- 
 deed, when there was as now a simultaneous deficiency of the har- 
 vest in France and England, there was an export demand for all the 
 flour our farmers had to spare, at prices much higher than are now 
 current. In addition to the bad season, the troubles in Poland must 
 have interrupted cultivation there, and so diminished considerably 
 the disposable surplus for exportation. 
 
 If the news of the repeal of the corn laws and of a bad harvest, 
 had come to us simultaneously, their effect upon the market might 
 have been confounded, but now it is very easy to make the proper 
 discrimination. 
 
 But will not the opening of the English ports raise the price of 
 wheat so much in the Baltic that ours can come into competition 
 
22 
 
 with it in ordinary seasons? It is not often, if ever, that the pries 
 of any staple article of commerce is raised permanently by an in- 
 creased demand. The cotton growing states of the Union supply 
 nearly all Europe with that commodity, and though in that time the 
 demand has increased seven fold the supply has increased faster 
 still, and the present prfee is but one third that of 1815. To select 
 one more among many instances : the price of coffee has fallen in a 
 similar manner during a great increase in the demand. An in- 
 creased quantity of wheat may be wanted for the English market, 
 but what reason have we to doubt that countries so extensive, popu- 
 lous, and fertile as Poland and Russia, can furnish it at a very small 
 advance upon the present average prices, which, as we have shown, 
 are much lower than would, after deducting the difference in freight, 
 remunerate the grower in the United States. 
 
 Few countries in the world excel in manufactures, fewer still 
 have a prosperous navigation, but if we except the deserts of Arabia 
 and the frozen shores of Greenland, agriculture is pursued every 
 where. If we survey the different countries of Europe, we shall 
 find that even those which are only second’ rate m manufactures, 
 like France and Belgium, are superior in civilization, wealth, and 
 general prosperity, to Russia, Poland, and Turkey, which are fore- 
 most in the export of agricultural produce. 
 
 A market on the other side of the Atlantic, for the bulky products 
 of the agriculture of the free states, is, in general, no market at all 
 for one half of them, and low prices for the rest. This tends to pre- 
 vent improvements in farming, and the agriculture of England and 
 Belgium is carried on with more intelligence and skill than that of 
 Russia and Turkey. 
 
 England regulates her tariff with a view to her own interest ex- 
 clusively, and by the late alterations does not lay us or any other na- 
 tion under an obligation to reduce the duties on English manufac- 
 tures. If, instead of retaining protective duties on some articles 
 supposed to need protection, as is done by the new tariff, England 
 were to admit, free of duty, every article that we can possibly export,, 
 still we may rest assured that it would be done from the same motive, 
 her own interest, without any regard for us. If we should choose to 
 adopt in any particulars that protective policy of England, under 
 which her manufactures have grown up to their present greatness, 
 we should be quite as free to do so as ever. In the language of 
 Washington’s farewell address, there can be no greater error than 
 to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is 
 an illusion which experience must cure, and which a just pride 
 ought to discard. 
 
23 
 
 SECRETARY WALKER’S SLIDING SEALE. 
 
 By the new tariff all specific duties are abolished, and ad valorem 
 duties substituted in their place. Perhaps few have considered all 
 the consequences of such a measure. The Secretary himself ad- 
 mits that this system will encourage frauds on the revenue, but the 
 advocates of the present tariff contend that the guards against fraud 
 are sufficient. Whether fraud can be easily prevented where the 
 temptation is so great, it is not now our object to inquire. It may 
 be remarked that the tariff of 1842 deals less in specific duties than 
 that of almost any other country. Most European nations adopt the 
 principle of specific duties as far as it is deemed practicable, as be- 
 ing more equal and uniform in their operation, and far more secure 
 against fraud. Thus woollen and linen manufactures and hardware 
 are charged with duty by weight. 
 
 The ad valorem duties imposed in England on foreign manufactures, 
 are only on articles comparatively unimportant, small in amount, 
 and consequently of no great moment either for revenue or protec- 
 tion. Whenever the duty is intended for protection, as upon corn, 
 boots, and shoes, and gloves, or as a material source of revenue, as 
 upon tea, sugar, and tobacco the duty is specific. 
 
 But setting aside the question of fraud, it is a sufficient objection 
 to an ad valorem duty, that it is altogether fluctuating and uncertaiu 
 and may be at one time too high and at another too low, as the value 
 of goods may be high or low. The sliding scale of the English corn 
 laws, was intended to make the price uniform by imposing a high 
 duty when corn was cheap, and gradually diminishing the duty to 
 almost nothing as the price rose. This was much censured by the 
 advocates of free trade in England for its uncertainty. They admit- 
 ted that it fluctuated in the right direction, but contended that all va- 
 riations in duties are pernicious. Now an ad valorem duty is this 
 sliding scale reversed. When the commodity is dear, and any duty 
 whatever is felt as a burden, then the duty rises, but when the arti- 
 cle becomes cheap, and a high duty would be scarcely felt by the 
 consumer, then the duty falls. Thus fluctuation in prices, in some 
 degree unavoidable, but universally considered an evil, is much ag- 
 gravated by an ad valorem duty. 
 
 The Secretary professes a great regard for the consumer, but it 
 is plain that such a sliding scale of duties is directly contrary to the 
 interests of consumers as well as producers. With a specific duty 
 priees of foreign goods might not vary here more than in the mar- 
 kets from which they were imported, but now the difference be- 
 tween high and low prices must necessarily be much greater. 
 
 The duty on sugar is thirty per cent. Some years ago, the cost of 
 
24 
 
 sugar at Manilla was but two cents a pound, and a number of car- 
 goes at that cost were imported into the United States. By the new 
 tariff the duty would have been but six tenths or three fifths of a 
 cent per pound, or, including charges, perhaps a little more. It 
 must be recollected that the duty is assessed on the invoice value or 
 cost of the article in the foreign market, including charges, and 
 not on the valuation here, and that the freight makes no part of 
 the cost in assessing the duty. If the cost of sugar at Manilla 
 should be double, then the duty will also be double. If sugar of a 
 similar quality should cost much more at Havana than that from 
 Brazil or Manilla, the duty will b- higher in proportion, and make 
 the disparity in price still greater. And so of every other commod- 
 ity subject to duty. 
 
 Let us see how this sliding scale affects the American manufac- 
 turer. When prices abroad are high, and protection is little need- 
 ed, then the only effect is to increase the profits of the producer. 
 But when prices fall and protection is essential to his exertion, then 
 the duty falls too, and leaves him without resource. When the 
 price of bar iron is ten pounds erling in England, the duty of thir- 
 ty per cent may be a tolerable protection, but when it is from four 
 to five pounds per ton, the duty falls in proportion, and the Ameri- 
 can makers may be ruined. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun, another advocate of free trade, lately recommended 
 for rail road iron a sliding scale of the opposite kind, like that of the 
 English corn law, a low duty when the price is high, to be raised as 
 the price falls. So that we have two noted enemies of protection, 
 each advising a change from a fixed duty, but each wmuld substi- 
 tute a fluctuating duty, directly the reverse of the other. When 
 Rail Road iron is at its maximum price, Mr. W alker’s tariff will be 
 at its highest point, and Mr. Calhoun’s at the lowest, and vice versa. 
 
 Thus we believe the sliding scale of Secretary Walker, caused 
 by adopting universally the ad valorem system, will be contrary to 
 the interest of all classes in the community, except fraudulent im- 
 porters. To the consumer it is unfavorable, as it increases the nat- 
 ural and ordinary fluctuation in the prices of foreign goods, and 
 requires him to pay a higher duty precisely at the time when from 
 the high price of the article he is less able to pay it. It is hostile 
 to the home manufacturer and producer, by diminishing protection 
 when most wanted, and increasing it only when less necessary. It 
 makes the same average amount of revenue to the treasury, to be 
 felt as a greater burden to the community than if produced by a 
 specific duty, or a sliding scale in the opposite direction. 
 
 

 THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 ft 
 
 VAN BUREN DENSLOW, LL.D., 
 
 OF THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE INTER OCEAN, CHICAGO. 
 
 BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF A LECTURE DELIVERED JANUARY 10, 1883, 
 BEFORE THE REVENUE REFORM CLUB OF BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL SOLIDARITY OF SOCIETY. 
 
 No producer or consumer stands alone. What each man can earn 
 or make depends more on what others are doing than on what he 
 himself does, as the safety of each soldier in a battle or a march de- 
 pends more on the manner in which the whole army is handled than 
 it does on the talent he displays in carrying his particular gun and 
 knapsack. When therefore a pseudo economist says, “ What we want 
 is~ to let each man fight the battle of life alone and on his own hook,” 
 that economist is an economic savage ; he is not even proposing to 
 handle the industrial armies of civilization as wholes or in large 
 masses, or with strategic effectiveness, or to bring them all into ac- 
 tion, or to so organize them that infantry, artillery, cavalry, and 
 commissary, i. e., transportation, manufactures, mining, commerce, 
 and agriculture, shall effectively aid each other, and the whole army 
 shall manifest the power that springs from organization and unity. 
 What he is proposing is disorganization, bushwhacking, savagery, 
 the resolution of our Industrial Army into a chaotic self-antagoniz- 
 ing mass, one-half of which will set to killing off* the other half, as 
 was witnessed in our American Industrial System in 1860 to 1864. 
 
 DEPENDENCE OF THE UNIT ON THE MASS. 
 
 Political Economy regards a man as a member of the social and 
 industrial mass called society ; his individual welfare can not be 
 § brought about except as the whole industrial body prospers. The 
 3 whole body prospers when every part of it is harmoniously employed ; 
 
2 
 
 THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 when all labor, the moment the laborer has taken the night of rest 
 and eaten the morning meal which render him ready for work, can 
 find, right at his hand and ready for the expenditure of his brain 
 and muscle, the very work which, by his nature, strength, and ca- 
 pacity, inherited and acquired, he is best fitted to do. Our great 
 producers are the products of great societies. What could Robert 
 Fulton, Abbott Lawrence, Cornelius Vanderbilt, or Henry Ward 
 Beecher have beeij if Patagonia had had the making of him ? Only 
 a first-class ranch man with a few more cattle than his neighbors, 
 raising beasts for their hides and tallow, selling the whole raw hide 
 for a button or exchanging it perhaps for the manufactured tail of 
 that same hide. Where would have been Beecher’s eloquence, his 
 taste for art, his religious insight, and his wide sympathies; where 
 Fulton’s steamer, Vanderbilt’s railways, or Lawrence’s factories? 
 They would not have existed. They are the creatures of a definite 
 social environment, the supply that was forced into being by the 
 stress of a pre-existing demand. Yet the people who fill the great 
 cities of New York and Brooklyn are nearly all, in like manner, 
 the intellectual products of a compact civilization — so are 8-15ths of 
 the people of America the entire urban mass — they live by means 
 by which in Patagonia no man could live. Hence the man who 
 says, “ My political economy has nothing to do with keeping labor 
 universally employed and capital generally busy. I do not look 
 upon the aggregated people of a country en masse nor propose any 
 paternal panacea for promoting ‘the general welfare.’ I dissolve 
 your so-called ‘general welfare’ into 51,500,000 units and propose to 
 limit the function of government to keeping those units from break- 
 ing each others’ heads ; ” such a man is not a political economist 
 at all. His calling should be to put on a blue uniform and carry a 
 policeman’s club. He has not even discovered the function of Po- 
 litical Economy. No inquiry concerning wealth which stops at the 
 profits of swapping has even uncovered the subject of Political 
 Economy. It must consider man in his social condition, in his alli- 
 ance with all other men who are members of the same state and na- 
 tion, and between whom and himself there must exist certain unities 
 which do not apply as between him and the citizens or subjects of 
 other nations. 
 
 HOW ALL FREEDOM LIES WITHIN UNITY. 
 
 When therefore a pseudo professor of Political Economy says : 
 “ My system perceives no reason why trade should be free between 
 
THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 3 
 
 the people of New Jersey and New York which does not equally 
 apply as a reason why trade should be free between Canada and 
 New York, or between England and Illinois,” be sure that man has 
 not yet discovered even the function of Political Economy. He does 
 not know what it is about. If he did, he would know that all free- 
 dom takes place only within the limits of some previously recognized 
 and assumed unity. Even the freedom to converse between two per- 
 sons implies that degree of unity between them which we express by 
 the word acquaintance, as freedom to advise implies friendship or a 
 willingness to serve, and freedom to rebuke implies authority, and 
 therefore an obligation to protect. 
 
 Partnership creates a unity between the members of the firm, 
 whereby each partner acquires the freedom to bind his partner by 
 his signature in the course of the firm business. But he who would 
 say he could see no reason why A of the firm of A & B should freely 
 deal with the rights and property of B, so far as they had been in- 
 vested in the firm business, which would not constitute an equally 
 good reason why A should sign for B & C, in a firm of which he 
 was not a member, would be a lunatic, or else a forger and a felon. 
 There is a unity to every town, city, county, state, and nation, and 
 within this unity rights are exercised which do not extend outside of 
 it, but are shared and enjoyed only by those who are on the inside 
 of that unity. Between New Jersey and New York there is perfect 
 Free Trade, because they have entered into a perpetual contract 
 that, come weal or come woe, come peace or come war, they will 
 stand or fall together in the unity of one nationality, viz., the Fede- 
 ral Union of the United States of America. From that unity each 
 is profited by many things done and paid for by the other. 
 
 Between New York and Canada no such unity exists. In the 
 event of a war with England, New Jersey and New r York stand to- 
 gether. Canada and New York become parts of hostile nations. 
 All trade between them is interdicted. Whatever pow r er Canada 
 has accumulated during peace is used in war against New York. 
 
 This, however, is the least important difference between the rela- 
 tions sustained by Canada and by New Jersey to New York. Dur- 
 ing all the years of peace the American Union represents the legis- 
 lative power of the 51,500,000 people, constituting the American 
 Nation, to reinforce the industrial power of each individual by the 
 aggregated power of the whole. This powder of the mass to aid the 
 unit of the nation, to help the individual producer, is one of the 
 most important functions of all governments. It is in the exercise 
 
4 
 
 THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 of this power that New York built the Erie Canal and the United 
 States projected the Pacific Railway. The town fulfills this func- 
 tion when it builds roads and bridges; the county, when it builds 
 jails and holds court ; the State, when it lays out and gives private 
 title to lands, digs canals, improves rivers; cities, when they pave 
 streets, provide water, sewerage, and gas ; the nation, when it as- 
 sumes the control of our relations to the people of foreign countries, 
 gives a national character to, and assumes a national responsibility 
 to protect, our merchant vessels ; when, as an incident to these du- 
 ties, it finds itself called upon to collect a revenue, and in the col- 
 lection of this revenue it makes the utmost discrimination it can, in 
 order — 
 
 1. To collect as much as possible of this revenue from foreign 
 producers who compete with our own by the sale of their products 
 in our markets ; and 
 
 2. To use the taxing power as a means of discouraging the need- 
 less and costly importation from abroad of goods which our own idle 
 capital and unemployed labor could more economically to the whole 
 country produce at home ; and 
 
 3. Thus to provide the fullest and widest range of employments 
 to all our labor and capital, and especially 
 
 4. To develop manufactures, which, owing to their great use of 
 machine power, contribute in a higher degree and more rapid ratio 
 to a nation’s wealth than agriculture can possibly do — with the same 
 number of men and the same amount of capital. 
 
 In all this work the nation reinforces the individual producer by 
 its aggregated legislative power, and it is idle to say that the whole 
 American people have the same interest in reinforcing the Cana- 
 dian laborer that they have in protecting the laborer in New York 
 or New Jersey. Between the man who trades or works in New 
 York and New Jersey there is the unity of a common nationality 
 and citizenship — as sacred as marriage — but between either of them 
 and the Canadian trader or worker there is no such unity, and hence 
 no right to that freedom from those trade restrictions which are 
 avowedly intended to lessen the trade' of foreigners with us in order 
 to increase the volume of our own trade with each other. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNITY UNDERLIES NATIONAL UNITY. 
 
 Any man who demands freedom of international trade at the sac- 
 rifice of National Unity is a traitor to his country and his flag in an 
 industrial sense. ^For the sole di J *; of government is to protect. It 
 
THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 5 
 
 has no other function. To protect our soil is well, but only because 
 the soil is an implement of industry. To protect industry itself is 
 far better. A hostile army might occupy half the State of Maine 
 without any American being the worse for it. But if competing 
 producers make half our clothing, our iron, and our books, this 
 means ruin, starvation, and famine to an army larger than Grant 
 or Napoleon ever commanded. Our territory is assailable along our 
 frontiers, and on these we plant our forts. The frontiers of our in- 
 dustries are those branches of industry whose products we may have 
 every natural facility to produce with as little labor as they can be 
 produced anywhere, yet they can not at the outset be produced here 
 at a profit, perhaps because the division of labor which results from 
 a large employment of labor in that art can not yet be practiced, or 
 because our standard of freedom and of living for laborers is more 
 costly. 
 
 For such industries the maintenance of prices which include fair 
 wages of labor and fair profits of capital stands in the same relation 
 as the maintenance of forts does to the defense of the soil. Around 
 every such industry the wise political economist will throw the pro- 
 tecting arm of the nation’s power. 
 
 REFORMING THE REVENUES. 
 
 Your name, the “ Revenue Reform Club,” implies that a large 
 proportion of your members believe that the revenue system of the 
 country needs reform in some vital principle, and I happen to know 
 that what you think to be this reform is specially the enlargement 
 of the freedom of foreigners to trade with us in those kinds of goods 
 which we are trying to produce. I, on the contrary, hold that the 
 essential principles of our revenue system, for twenty-two years past, 
 have been in accordance with the views of the best economic minds 
 in the world. 
 
 But, perhaps, you complain that we ought to have either a freer 
 trade, or a trade entirely free, from the imposition of all customs du- 
 ties. This term Free Trade is seductive to many minds because it is 
 deceptive. It is like misapplying the term humanity so as to use it 
 in the narrower sense of love for Englishmen, so that when a man 
 really means that he is in favor of promoting Englishmen’s profits 
 he should say he desires “ the welfare of humanity.” The term 
 “ Free Trade,” when used to designate hostility to Protective duties, 
 is three times as broad as the actual idea it covers, and hence as a 
 mere name it contains two parts of falsehood to one of truth. The 
 
6 
 
 THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 only idea it truly applies to is the freedom of foreign producers to 
 sell their wares in our markets without paying taxes. But this is 
 but a small part of trade. It does not include the freedom of 
 American producers to sell in foreign markets nor to trade with 
 each other — both of which are either wholly free, or are subject to 
 obstacles which are not involved in this issue. 
 
 FREE TRADE INVOLVES NO GAIN OF FREEDOM TO AMERICANS. 
 
 But you say you are fighting not only for the freedom of foreign 
 producers to sell in our markets, but for the freedom of American 
 purchasers to buy at foreign prices, as you contend in many cases 
 they might but for the Protective system. 
 
 This last portion of your claim I deny. For it is in the power 
 of every one of you to enable the American purchaser to buy at 
 the foreign price, notwithstanding the Protective system, by simply 
 going to work and yourself producing the article and selling it to 
 him at the foreign price. The plea that you can not do so at a profit 
 is not a valid one for you to use, since on your theory government 
 has no more to do with enabling you to do anything at a profit 
 than it should have with enabling any manufacturer to manufac- 
 ture at a profit. Your right to see American buyers purchase at 
 the foreign price under a Protective tariff stands on the same foot- 
 ing exactly as the manufacturers’ power to make American goods. 
 You say the manufacturer’s right remains intact whether he can 
 make goods at a profit or not. So I reply your right to secure to 
 American purchasers the advantages of foreign prices remains in- 
 tact, notwithstanding the exercise of it, by making the goods your- 
 self and selling them at foreign prices, would involve a loss. 
 
 IF THE PROFITS ARE HIGH, TAKE THEM YOURSELF. 
 
 While, as an abstraction, this may seem like an undue refinement, 
 in actual practice it develops into a truth which divests the Protec- 
 tive system of every pretense of injustice. When the Free Trader 
 came to convert Horace Greeley and said, “Don’t you know, Mr. 
 Greeley, that the protection on pig iron is so high that the profits of 
 making it are greater than in any other business?” Mr. Greeley’s 
 reply was, “ Make it yourself then, and pocket the profits.” 
 
 It was a complete answer ! Whoever concedes that it is one of 
 the functions of government to promote industry, as every man 
 must who claims for a town the power to build roads, can not stop 
 short of the conclusion that the popular majority can use the taxing 
 
THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 7 
 
 power in a manner to promote domestic rather than foreign indus- 
 try, and the plea that to do so raises prices, and so taxes one class 
 for the benefit of another, is absolutely and fully met in the fact 
 that each person taxed has the right to step into the shoes of the 
 person for whose alleged benefit he is taxed. If he reply, “ I haven’t 
 the capital to do so,” this reply is fully met by saying, “ It isn’t the 
 business of Government to supply you with capital. If you want 
 prices as low here as in other countries, make and sell the goods as 
 low yourself, but do it at your own cost. This is but the application 
 to yourselves of the doctrine you so freely apply to the manufac- 
 turers, when you say to them, ‘ If you want the industries of the 
 country diversified, diversify them if you please, but do it at your 
 own cost.’ ” 
 
 WHO PAYS THE DUTIES? 
 
 This feature of the tariff discussion — viz., the degree in and cir- 
 cumstances under which the tariff is a tax, and upon whom the tax 
 really and finally rests, has been made the subject of such moun- 
 tains of misrepresentation and falsehood that it is not too much to 
 say that a large proportion of all the fools in the country — and the 
 United States holds so many of them that it is difficult for men of 
 sense and candor to outvote them ; a large proportion, I repeat, of 
 all the fools in the country are absolutely crazy on this point. Any 
 one who has studied history to any purpose knows that there are 
 classes of lies which propagate with great rapidity and tend to pro- 
 duce social and collective insanity on public questions among great 
 masses of men otherwise sane. The histories of witchcraft, the Cru- 
 sades, the South Sea bubble, and the Inquisition are illustrations of 
 this capacity of sane men in individual matters for becoming afflict- 
 ed with social frenzy. 
 
 HOW ECONOMIC LIES MAY PRODUCE A SOCIAL FRENZY. 
 
 The American people are peculiarly addicted to social frenzies, 
 because we have a great many questions to decide, such as religious 
 questions, temperance questions, reform in government, new philos- 
 ophies, and national economies, and we acknowledge no experts in 
 any of these departments of thought. The people must decide them 
 all. 
 
 As an illustration of how these social frenzies may affect the 
 tariff question, I will merely say that from Boston to Nebraska 
 there has been weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth among all 
 the Free Trade papers over the duty on lumber, it being represented 
 
8 
 
 THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 that millions of Western people in Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska are 
 compelled to live in dug outs, mud huts, adobe caves, and under 
 tents, and that motherless babes usually sleep out under pelting 
 storms, because a set of lumber barons in Michigan insist on exclud- 
 ing by a 20 per cent, duty the vast supplies of lumber which are 
 ready to pour over from Canada into the Prairie States if the duty 
 could be repealed. What are the facts? Why, that lumber is 
 cheaper in the Northwest at all the lake ports than it is at any of 
 the lake ports of Canada, consequently that instead of flowing from 
 Canada into the Northwest it flows from the Northwest into West- 
 ern Canada and from Eastern Canada into New York. This simple 
 fact converts the whole Free Trade agitation concerning lumber 
 into a frenzy founded on ignorance, like the frenzies of the middle 
 ages. Yet great metropolitan dailies, and college professors sup- 
 posed to be experts, are caught by this frenzy, including the New 
 York Times , Herald, and World, Boston Herald and Transcript , 
 Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, Missouri Democrat and Republican, 
 and of course the Chicago Tribune, a journal that makes it a point 
 always to be crazy if there is any insanity around. 
 
 Much of the social insanity that prevails in some quarters con- 
 cerning Protection arises from wholesale lies as to the degree in 
 which Protective duties enhance prices. 
 
 THE LAW OF THE INCIDENCE OF CUSTOMS DUTIES. 
 
 Something like an economic law on this point may be deduced 
 from a sufficiently wide observation of facts. 
 
 1. No duty can be Protective unless there is some domestic pro- 
 duction of the commodity on which it rests, nor unless the domestic 
 supply is inadequate to fill the domestic demand. For instance, a 
 duty on coffee would not be Protective because there is no domestic 
 production of it. The duty on cotton or wheat is not Protective 
 because the domestic production is more than adequate to supply 
 the demand. 
 
 2. In the case of every really Protective duty, therefore, there is 
 a domestic production which the duty is constantly stimulating into 
 a condition more nearly approximating to that of fully supplying 
 the demand. Hence, in the case of every really Protective duty, 
 the foreign price, with duty added, ceases to be the criterion for 
 fixing the American price, for the latter is being constantly more 
 and more determined by a new factor, viz. : the competition and 
 cost of production among American producers. Thus, for several 
 
THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 9 
 
 years the American demand for steel rails was so great that Amer- 
 ica developed a capacity of production greater than that of England 
 before the price began to fall under the influence of American com- 
 petition between producers ; but when America reached a capacity 
 of producing 1,500,000 tons, and our demand was only 1,100,000 
 tons, the price fell to $40, though the foreign price, with freight and 
 duty added, would have been $52. 
 
 3. In the ratio that American production becomes competent to 
 supply the American demand the price ceases to be in any manner 
 affected by the duty. It depends on American cost of production 
 only. For instance, there are cotton prints now selling in America 
 for 41 cents a yard, and which we export to China and all African 
 and South American ports in competition with English prints sell- 
 ing at the same price. On the importation of these cotton prints 
 there is a duty of 5 cents per yard. They are, therefore, not im- 
 portable. But the duty forms no element whatever in the price, 
 because American competition produces the prints as cheaply as 
 English competition. 
 
 4. Hence, the improbability that the price of an American man- 
 ufacture is affected by the duty at all increases as the American 
 supply becomes adequate to fill the American demand, and when 
 we see the American article going abroad as an export that fact 
 becomes conclusive proof that, whether a duty rests on the article 
 or not, its price is as low in America as in England or any other 
 part of the world. For instance, we export paper of all kinds to 
 every part of the world. Yet Professor Perry, in addressing an 
 Iowa audience told them that a returned missionary had told him 
 that paper was cheaper in Natal, South Africa, than in the United 
 States, and he argued, of course, that the dearness was caused by 
 the duty. Had he looked at our commerce reports he would 
 have seen that we ship paper to South Africa, and that the mission- 
 ary was as likely to have used American as English paper while at 
 Natal. 
 
 5. A prominent Western journal recently complained that the 
 whole people of the United States were “ taxed ” on starch, when 
 starch is as much an article of export as high wines or wheat. The 
 Free Trade intellect ought not to be of so low an order as to need to 
 be told that products which go abroad to seek higher prices in foreign 
 countries than they can be sold for here are not made higher in price 
 by any duties that may be enacted against the contingency of their 
 importation, whether such duties be 40 per cent, or 1,000 per cent. 
 
10 
 
 THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 6. In strange obliviousness of all these principles concerning 
 prices it is the constant habit of Free Trade theorists to charge that 
 the greater the domestic production of any protected article the 
 greater the “tax” upon the people, since in all cases the whole 
 amount of the domestic product is, they say, raised in price by the 
 amount of the tax, whereas the fact is that the greater the domestic 
 production the more difficult it is to raise the price in the least de- 
 gree by any duty that can be laid upon it, because at the least rise 
 in price, though it be by only one-tenth of the duty, the domestic 
 production expands in quantity and so prevents absolutely a further 
 rise in price. Thus, in my judgment, the wool that was protected 
 by a duty of 13 cents a pound can be demonstrated to have sold 
 during 3 years past at not more than 3 cents a pound higher than 
 the foreign price of wools of similar quality, because American 
 wool growers, producing nine-tenths of the American supply, (and 
 those of them who produced it in Texas and the Territories pro- 
 duced it nearly as cheaply as it could be produced in Australia,) 
 had too much wool to sell to admit of the American price rising to 
 the foreign price with duty added. 
 
 7. When the American supply is wholly or nearly adequate to 
 the American demand it may nevertheless happen that the article 
 will be imported, notwithstanding the American price is no higher 
 than the foreign. In every such case the foreigner either divides 
 the duty with the American consumer or pays it all. I hold it to 
 be demonstrable that about $35,000,000 of our customs revenue are 
 in this manner paid by foreigners, and are not a tax on the Amer- 
 ican consumer at all. 
 
 Such are the duties on wool and a share of those on woolen goods, 
 the whole duty on lumber, coal, wheat, barley, rye, and other agri- 
 cultural products, including rice, part of the duties on cottons and 
 lately on silks, much of the duties on cutlery, iron ore, crude iron, 
 earthenware, and nearly every competing article. If $35,000,000 
 of annual revenue are collected out of foreigners through our Pro- 
 tective duties, the whole body of American taxpayers are relieved 
 to that extent of the entire incidence or burden of the tax. 
 
 The evidences that such a sum is collected out of foreign pro-r 
 ducers are cumulative, viz. : 
 
 a. About that sum in all is collected on articles which sell as low, 
 by the concurrent observation of all dealers, in America as any- 
 where. For instance, $23,000,000 are collected on woolen goods, 
 yet Marshall Field, the largest importer of woolen goods in Chicago, 
 
THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 11 
 
 perhaps in America, says, “ in all ordinary cotton and woolen goods 
 for business suits and the wear of working men and women Amer- 
 ica is as cheap a market as there is in the world.” Doubtless while 
 half of this revenue is collected on costly goods, there still remains 
 a substantial contribution to the Treasury from foreign manufac- 
 turers struggling to hold our markets in flannels, hosiery, broad- 
 cloth, cassimeres, and common goods. 
 
 b. The mode in which foreign producers pay a share of our duties 
 is by making a different and lower price list to American from that 
 they make to other customers. This it is known that they do. 
 English manufacturers sell on a lower price list in America than 
 those on which they sell in Australia, Canada, or any other part of 
 the world, except France. French silk dealers refuse to deal with 
 American purchasers directly at all, knowing that no American 
 purchaser can afford any longer to buy silks at French prices, and 
 pay full duties on them, against the Paterson Mills. They, there- 
 fore, refer American customers to their agents in New York, a fea- 
 ture which would not be necessary if goods were selling in New 
 York at the French price with duty added. 
 
 c. Foreign producers plainly confess to the proper parties and in 
 the proper places that they are paying not only part but a large 
 share of the American duties. 
 
 8. Upon comparison it will be found that the very duties which 
 Protectionists say are most economical, since they collect revenue 
 out of foreigners in a manner which neither enhances the price of 
 the product nor rests as a burden of any kind on American taxpay- 
 ers, are identical with those against which Free Traders most loud- 
 ly complain, on the ground that they tax the many American con- 
 sumers for the benefit of the few. This is an issue of fact, a straight 
 issue, the merits of the question are undivided, and the Free Traders 
 are wholly and absolutely in error concerning it. It is their chief 
 and great error. A sufficient activity and sincerity in propagating 
 this error amounts to insanity. A wide enough reception of it by 
 the people would result in one of those frenzies, in which any form 
 of economic suicide might be possible. 
 
 Briefly stated, then, the most important law concerning the inci- 
 dence of a customs duty is that no duty can enhance the price of 
 any article of which the country is producing an adequate supply ; 
 nor can any duty raise the price in favor of producers without set- 
 ting producers into competition with each other, which competition 
 constantly tends to reduce the price to the lowest one at which its 
 
12 
 
 THE LOGIC OF PROTECTION. 
 
 production can be maintained. Hence a Protective duty, once 
 properly and wisely laid, never needs repeal any more than a fort 
 once wisely built needs tearing down. Its only effective repeal, con- 
 sidered as a tax, is the reduction in prices effected by its operation. 
 The repeal of the duty after this reduction in prices is effected is an 
 idle and needless ceremony. The repeal of the duty before this re- 
 duction in prices ensues is a war upon the domestic production be- 
 fore it is ripe for the foreign competition. 
 
 When you see a man looking into a tariff act to find out how 
 much he is taxed, without stopping to inquire whether the article on 
 which the duty rests is selling any higher because of the statute, be 
 sure that he is insane. When he begins to repeat a formula first 
 used by Dean Swift a century ago about a farmer rising in the 
 morning at the sound of a clock taxed 50 per cent., washing in a 
 basin taxed 35 per cent., with soap taxed 30 per cent., wiping on a 
 towel taxed 25 per cent., putting on pantaloons taxed 40 per cent., 
 a coat taxed 45 per cent., and so on, you may be quite sure that that 
 man is either an editor of a newspaper and is saying that stuff for 
 lack of brains or he has gone mad. Morrison of Illinois, S. S. Cox, 
 and Professor Sumner, are lunatics of this grade. The latter fre- 
 quently refers to the degree in which he is taxed to sustain the Wil- 
 limantic Thread Company, but omits to mention that, owing to the 
 exemption of Yale College from State taxation, the Willimantic 
 Thread Company is obliged to contribute every year toward the sup- 
 port of Yale College, while owing to the American manufacture of 
 cotton the cotton thread sells for less by two cents a spool than it 
 sold for when it was brought from Scotland. 
 
J§,n Argument for a |1rot{ttibe Cariff. 
 
 THE FARMER’S QUESTION: 
 
 BEING 
 
 A REPLY TO THE COBDEN CLUB TRACT 
 
 ENTITLED 
 
 “THE WESTERN FARMER OF AMERICA.” 
 
 JONATHAN B. WISE. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
The within paper , written bp John L. Hayes, LL.D., 
 
 of Cambridge , Mass., is heartily commended to the attention 
 \ 
 
 of the Farmers of America. 
 
 HENRY L. DAWES , of Massachusetts. 
 GEORGE F. HOAR , 
 
§,tt Argument far a |Jrot«trbc tariff. 
 
 THE FARMERS QUESTION 
 
 BEING 
 
 A REPLY TO THE COBDEN CLUB TRACT 
 
 ENTITLED 
 
 “THE WESTERN FARMER OF AMERICA.” 
 
 BY 
 
 JONATHAN B. WISE. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 1880. 
 
To the Farmers of America: — 
 
 Tiie writer of these pages, although not a farmer by occupation 
 traces his descent through an uninterrupted line of farmers since his 
 Scotch ancestor landed in New Hampshire, just two hundred years 
 ago. Raised on a farm, he has for more than sixty years cherished 
 the associations connected with it, and has applied the lessons learned 
 there in his later studies. The last fifteen years of his life have been 
 devoted mainly to promoting some of the most important interests of 
 American husbandry dependent upon legislation. He has in this cause 
 written and published many pages, which have been kindly received, 
 and even with more appreciation at the West and South than in the 
 East, where he residesc He can show at his home, substantial testi- 
 monials of service to their cause from farmers’ associations in the two 
 leading agricultural States of the West and the East. He makes these 
 personal statements only as claims upon you for a kindly hearing, and 
 as his authority for signing himself 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 Jonathan B. Wise. 
 
 Cambridge, Mass., October, 1880. 
 
THE FARMERS’ QUESTION. 
 
 A pamphlet of some thirty pages, recently printed in 
 England, entitled “ The Western Farmer of America,” by 
 Augustus Mongredien, author of “ Free Trade and English 
 Commerce,” is being extensively circulated in this country. 
 The production of an author commending himself to Ameri- 
 can readers as a writer upon English commerce would 
 scarcely receive attention in this country save for the seal 
 conspicuously stamped upon its covei, bearing the name “ The 
 Cobden Club,” with the plausible motto “ Free trade, peace 
 and good-will among men.” This paper must not be slighted 
 as the production of a flippant and impertinent meddler with 
 our affairs, but as the authorized manifesto of a British asso- 
 ciation so formidable in the numbers, wealth, and social and 
 political influence of its members, and so serious in its con- 
 templated interference with our laws and institutions, that 
 we can no more ignore its manifestos than we would those of 
 a hostile national power. 
 
 Before I attempt to answer the question which will be 
 asked by some of my readers, “ Who and what are the Cobden 
 Club?” let us glance for a moment at the condition and 
 necessities of Great Britain, of which this club is the out- 
 growth. 
 
 British Motive for Free-trade Essays. — To subsist her 
 population Great Britain must annually import articles of 
 food to the value of eight hundred millions of dollars ; and 
 to pay for these articles she must import, also, raw mate- 
 
6 
 
 rials to be used in manufacture, to the value of nearly seven 
 hundred million dollars ; and annually sell her manufactured 
 products in foreign markets to the value of twelve hundred 
 million dollars. With these conditions, in spite of her 
 enormous capital the most dependent country in. the world, 
 her struggle for manufacturing supremacy is a struggle for 
 national life. Cheap raw materials for manufactures, with 
 cheap food that the wages of her workmen may be as low as 
 is compatible with existence, and the command of foreign 
 markets for her manufactured products are the essential 
 conditions of this supremacy and the national life dependent 
 upon it. Cheap raw materials and food must be secured 
 by diminishing the home market in foreign agricultural 
 countries that their products may flow into her ports, and 
 foreign markets for manufactures must be secured by sup- 
 pressing all competing manufactures. The first object of 
 British statesmanship is, therefore, the creation of a current 
 of sentiment which will tend to a removal by other nations 
 of restrictions upon the entry of British goods. In this it 
 has in view a triple purpose, — the occupation of foreign 
 markets, the means of increasing the prices of British goods 
 by crushing out competing manufactures, and the cheapening 
 of the coveted products of agriculture, which is sure to result 
 from the abandonment of domestic manufactures in all the 
 countries in which the goods of the older and more powerful 
 nation, having a superabundance of capital and producing 
 with low wages, can enter without restriction. England’s 
 most popular statesman, Mr. Gladstone, speaking of the pro- 
 tective policy of other countries, says, “ Their policy demands 
 from us a vigorous and steady counteraction.” The attempt 
 to inaugurate free trade, first through British example, and 
 then through reciprocal treaties of commerce, having signally 
 failed, the next step of “ vigorous and steady counteraction ” 
 to the national policy of other nations was the formation of 
 the club bearing the name of the celebrated opponent of the 
 British corn laws, — a name doubtless selected to win favor 
 with the agriculturists of foreign nations whom the aboli- 
 tion of the corn laws may seem to have benefited. 
 
T 
 
 Character of the Cobden Club. — The object and the pre- 
 sumption of the Cobden Club are sufficiently set forth in 
 the pamphlet under review. That influence in the United 
 States is its primary object is shown by the circumstance 
 that some sixty-one of our citizens — twice as many as from 
 any other country — are enrolled among its members, and 
 by the prominence given to any American who favors its 
 views ; while the fact that of all foreign markets for British 
 productions ours is the largest — our imports, even with 
 the high restrictive duties, having in ten years from 1876 
 amounted in value to one thousand eight hundred and 
 thirteen million dollars — doubtless justifies in British eyes 
 the formation of this powerful association, and even the auda- 
 cious means it is adopting to increase the American imports 
 of British goods. It is probable that there is no association 
 in Great Britain representing so much political influence. 
 We have the authority of the London “ Times ” for declaring 
 that on the list of the members of the Cobden Club are two 
 hundred members of Parliament, and that of the present 
 cabinet ministers twelve are members of the club. The acts 
 of an association thus composed have a national significance 
 and importance. Arguments addressed to us having such 
 endorsers demand grave consideration, and a waiving for the 
 moment of the first impulse of indignation that they should 
 be addressed at all. They are offered in all seriousness, for 
 we know from the announcements of the British press and 
 the official declarations of the club itself, the profound im- 
 pression they are expected to make upon American public 
 opinion. This may be an excuse for the grave answers given 
 to arguments which to many of my readers may appear to 
 involve their own contradiction, and for the serious analysis 
 of statements and figures whose exaggeration at first view 
 savors of Munchausenism. The influence and recognized 
 intelligence of this association are pertinent to another con- 
 sideration. The formidable character of the attack trum- 
 peted forth by the heralds of the British press warrants the 
 conclusion that the whole armament of free trade argument 
 is concentrated against our national system. If happily these 
 
8 
 
 arguments should be successfully met in this and other 
 papers, or better still by the reasoning which each farmer is 
 able to derive from his own experience, we may welcome an 
 attack which proves our position to be impregnable. 
 
 PRELIMINARY ASSUMPTIONS DENIED. 
 
 The first sentence of this appeal to American farmers 
 sounds the keynote of the whole argument, and the keynote 
 of that system of political economy which considers the gross 
 amount of national wealth of higher moment than human 
 welfare, which reduces the wages of labor to the barest means 
 of subsistence, which has empoverished India, Turkey, and 
 Ireland, and has brought the people of the nation adopting 
 its fatal theories to the condition described by the most elo- 
 quent of her living writers. “ Though England is deafened 
 with spinning-wheels, her people have not clothes ; though she 
 is black with digging of fuel, they die of cold ; and though 
 she has sold her soul for grain, they die of hunger.” * It is 
 as follows : — 
 
 “The Golden Rule for successful trading is to buy in the 
 cheapest and sell in the dearest market. Strange to say, the 
 American farmer reverses this rule ; he sells in the cheapest 
 and buys in the dearest market. For what he raises he gets 
 a lower price, and for what he consumes he pays a higher 
 price than the land-tillers get and pay in any country in the 
 world.” 
 
 Farming under our Protective System not Unprofitable. — 
 Leaving for a moment the consideration of the “ Golden Rule 
 of trading” in its application to farmers, let us consider 
 the assertion of fact' that the American farmers pay more and 
 get less than any land-tillers in the world. The fallacy of 
 this statement consists in making nominal prices paid and 
 received, and not actual balances, the tests of successful farm- 
 ing ; but as broadly made it means nothing more nor less, 
 and is intended to give no other impression than that farming 
 
 * Mr. Ruskin. 
 
9 
 
 in America yields less net results, or is more unprofitable, 
 than in any other country. This I do not hesitate to declare to 
 be a palpable misstatement. I assert that labor and capital 
 employed in farming in America are more productive — that is, 
 give to those pursuing it a greater capacity for consumption 
 of general commodities — than in any country in the world. 
 This I shall hereafter show is mainly due to our national or 
 protective policy. In no other country, to say nothing of 
 abundant food, is the agricultural population so well clad, so 
 well housed with dwellings so well furnished, and so well 
 supplied with implements of labor, agricultural and mechani- 
 cal, — in short, provided to such extent and variety with 
 manufactured products of necessity or luxury. The testi- 
 mony of foreigners visiting this country, and of our own 
 citizens who have travelled abroad, establish this point. 
 
 Admissions of the Essay. — Singularly enough, the produc- 
 tiveness of American farming is confirmed by remarkable 
 testimony in the pamphlet under review. Its author, speak- 
 ing elsewhere of the American farmer, incautiously admits 
 that “his occupation is of itself a profitable one.” He goes 
 further: overlooking the logical consequences of his state- 
 ments, he derives from the last census the fact that there are 
 now in this country 7,000,000 agriculturists, and fixes, 
 “from careful investigation and consultation with persons 
 most competent to judge,” the annual expenditure by each 
 one of these 7,000,000 persons of all articles of consump- 
 tion, except food and drink, otherwise called by him “ man- 
 ufactured products,” at $200. 
 
 The number of agriculturists given we know includes both 
 farm laborers and those tilling their own land. From the 
 official labor-returns of Massachusetts, it appears that the 
 number of agricultural laborers and of farmers tilling their 
 own land are about even. If the same proportion exists in 
 the other States, one half of the 7,000,000 farmers, so called, 
 are agricultural laborers for wages. Although the amount 
 given for expenditure is the basis of all the startling figures 
 given to expose American folly, I do not propose to inquire 
 how it is possible for each of these three and a half million 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 farm laborers to expend for manufactured products alone 
 $200 out of annual wages which hardly average that sum 
 for employment only a part of the year, nor to inquire 
 how this large amount could be expended by each of the 
 7,000,000 farmers when the whole value of our agricultural 
 products as given in the last census, being divided among 
 that number, would amount to but $400 each. Neither shall 
 I comment upon the singular fact that the whole value of the 
 home product and importation of manufactures in 1870 being 
 in round numbers $2,000,000,000, an expenditure of $200 
 each by 5,000,000 farmers, the number given in the census of 
 that year, would leave but $150 to be expended by each of 
 the 6,500,000 engaged in all other classes of occupation, mak- 
 ing the farmers’ power of expenditure 25 per cent greater 
 than all other clases. I prefer to accept these statements of 
 expenditure as admissions by the author and his informants of 
 their exalted impression of the capacity of American farming 
 to give wages to labor and power of consumption of general 
 commodities to the tillers of their own land. The fact that 
 American agriculturists consume this large amount simply for 
 manufactured commodities proves that the existing system has 
 enabled the American farmer to get from “ what he raises ” 
 the means for this expenditure. That this expenditure sur- 
 passes that of any other farmer in the world is too obvious for 
 argument. As the author takes our whole agricultural popu- 
 lation as a basis for his statement, it would be legitimate to 
 make a comparison with the whole agricultural population of 
 his own country. But it would be too painful to consider in 
 detail the condition of a class of which an English writer can 
 thus speak : “ Our agricultural population, whose almost 
 
 hopeless lot is best told by the simple fact that in many places 
 the luxury of meat is comparatively unknown.” Yet this is 
 the country where, according to the Cobden Club tract, “ the 
 farmer enjoys in the present one decided advantage : he sells 
 his produce in the dearest and buys his clothing, implements, 
 &c., in the cheapest market in the world.” 
 
 Agricultural Immigration. — The comparative productive- 
 ness of American farming is demonstrated by the agricul- 
 
11 
 
 tural emigration to this country, especially from England, 
 at the present time. The Earl of Derby declares that five 
 millions of British people could emigrate with advantage. 
 Consul-General Badeau says, in a report to our own De- 
 partment of State, “ There can be little doubt that a supe- 
 rior and increasing class of emigrants from the British Isles 
 may be expected to arrive in the United States within the 
 next few years. Men who have hitherto held small farms 
 and tilled them successfully, earning a small but certain live- 
 lihood, now, seeing the chances of competency disappearing, 
 are already contemplating emigration in large numbers.” 
 11,646 farmers and agricultural laborers have emigrated to 
 the United States from England in the last seven years, and 
 31,988 from the United Kingdom in the last nine years.* 
 Mr. Thomas Hughes, a member of Parliament and doubtless 
 of the Cobden Club, with the Earl of Airlie and others of 
 social distinction, is now visiting this country to establish an 
 agricultural colony in Tennessee, not for common farmers, 
 but to open a field of agricultural enterprise to the younger 
 sons of British noblemen and gentlemen. Thus the class of 
 
 * Table showing the number of Farmers and Agricultural Laborers who have 
 emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States within the last nine years. 
 (Prepared by the United States Bureau of Statistics. ) 
 
 Years ending June 30. 
 
 England. 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Wales. 
 
 Isle of Man and 
 Channel Islands. 
 
 Great Britain, not 
 further specified. 
 
 Total for the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 1871 .... 
 
 
 1,286 
 
 
 
 
 2,793 
 
 4,079 
 
 1872 .... 
 
 
 2,116 
 
 
 
 
 3,042 
 
 5,158 
 
 1873 .... 
 
 2,427 
 
 2,862 
 
 542 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 5,845 
 
 1874 .... 
 
 2,282 
 
 1,537 
 
 764 
 
 15 
 
 * *3 ' 
 
 
 4,601 
 
 1875 .... 
 
 1,622 
 
 1,050 
 
 434 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 3,121 
 
 1876 .... 
 
 1,552 
 
 594 
 
 223 
 
 21 
 
 * 3’ 
 
 
 2,393 
 
 1877 .... 
 
 1,329 
 
 564 
 
 334 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 2,239 
 
 1878 .... 
 
 1,179 
 
 685 
 
 293 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 2,172 
 
 1879 .... 
 
 1,255 
 
 733 
 
 375 
 
 17 
 
 
 
 2,380 
 
 Total, nine years 
 
 11,646 
 
 11,427 
 
 2,965 
 
 109 
 
 6 
 
 5,835 
 
 31,988 
 
12 
 
 men to which the members of the Cobden Club belong prac- 
 tically assert that there are no impediments in America to 
 successful farming. 
 
 Successful Farming due less to Natural Advantages than a 
 Wise Policy. — It may be said that American farming is suc- 
 cessful on account of our superior natural advantages of cheap 
 and fertile land and favorable climate. To this I answer, al- 
 though I anticipate a more extended argument, that these are 
 advantages only when improved by a wise economical policy. 
 In the sugar and coffee districts of Cuba, where Nature has 
 lavished her richest gifts of soil and climate, there exists, in 
 the opinion of a world- wide traveller, “ the most desperate and 
 deplorable poverty on the face of the earth.” The power of 
 consumption of manufactured commodities, which so strikingly 
 illustrates the present prosperity of our farmers, has been abso- 
 lutely coeval with the establishment of the protective policy, 
 which has given them a home market ; made consumers out 
 of competitors ; saved cost of transportation of articles to be 
 bought or sold ; made manufactured products, attainable by 
 exchange of farm products, cheap by domestic competition, 
 and desirable, because fabricated as can only be done at home, 
 in exact conformity to their wants. Soil and climate were just 
 as favorable sixty years ago, when the farmers of this country 
 Avere deplorably wanting in all the comforts and luxuries of life 
 except those produced on their own farms. I myself remember 
 seeing the wagon-trains of emigrant New England farmers on 
 their weary march to Ohio because there was no prospect of 
 anything but bare subsistence at home. I remember the time 
 when scarcely a farmer’s house in the country was painted, 
 when hardly one farmer in ten had a great-coat and none 
 wore underclothing, when even the implements of husbandry 
 were in so little demand or so hardly obtainable that the lar- 
 gest manufacturer of agricultural implements in the country 
 made but ten dozen shovels a week, while his successor now 
 makes 2,000 dozen in the same time. This was the time 
 when Gen. Jackson uttered his famous exclamation, “ Where 
 has the American farmer a market for his produce?” The 
 older men of our community observe that no change in our 
 
13 
 
 social aspect is so remarkable as the improved condition of 
 our agricultural population and their increased consumption 
 of manufactured commodities, — a social change sufficiently 
 illustrated by the simple fact that our city and country popu- 
 lations are now absolutely undistinguishable by their dress. 
 This change I assert, without attempting at present to fully 
 verify my assertion, commenced with the passage of the tariff 
 of 1816, which gave the first impulse to our manufacturers, 
 and was first conspicuously manifest after the tariff of 1824, 
 and its complement, the tariff of 1828,* — the highest we have 
 ever had, with rates of duty averaging 41 per cent upon 
 imports subject to duty ; while the prosperity of our agri- 
 cultural population has continued to fall and rise with the 
 ebb and flow of the protective policy, culminating in the 
 long protective period of the last twenty years. If the fact 
 of our agricultural prosperity is demonstrated, as it seems 
 to be beyond all question by the admissions I have cited, 
 what becomes of the assertion that American farmers “ pay 
 more and get less than any land-tillers in the world ” ? This 
 position failing, the keystone falls from the arch so skilfully 
 builded and the whole structure of argument topples to the 
 ground. I might here rest my case if experience had not 
 proved the value of accumulated argument, and if it were not 
 instructive to consider other fallacies in this appeal no less 
 unsound and delusive. 
 
 The Maxim “ Buy cheap and sell dear ” considered. — 
 A fallacious argument to be successfully met must be en- 
 countered in its very premises, and free trade is delusive, 
 because the pure assumptions upon which it rests are incau- 
 tiously admitted. Such is the assumption that to “ buy cheap 
 and sell dear ” is the sole criterion of the best economical policy, 
 private and national. I maintain that, of all classes, this rule 
 is most inapplicable to farmers, and especially those of this 
 country. This doctrine considers men only as purchasers and 
 
 * Mr. Clay says of this period, “ If the term of seven years were to he 
 selected of the greatest prosperity this people have enjoyed since the establish- 
 ment of their constitution, it would be exactly that period of seven years which 
 immediately followed the passage of the tariff of 1824.” 
 
14 
 
 vendors. It is the rule of the mere trader, or rather huckster, 
 who occupies himself solely with the net present profit and 
 loss result in his cash account. It is a rule only for to-day 
 and has no notion of a to-morrow. The farmer is not a mere 
 purchaser and vender : he is eminently a producer ; although 
 he properly seeks to make good bargains in the exchange of 
 what he already has, it is infinitely more important for him 
 to put himself in the way of producing more. Every farm is 
 a little state of itself, and has or should have its own national 
 policy, as it were, looking more to the future than the pres- 
 ent. To the husbandman the principal object is the improve- 
 ment of his farm, for it is well-known that nearly all the 
 accumulations of our farmers are represented by their im- 
 proved lands. Ignoring the temporary policy of the trader, 
 he clears forests and grubs up swamps to increase his perma- 
 nent power of production. To have only in view buying 
 cheap and selling dear would be for him to skin his land, to 
 part with his seed-corn, to sell his hay instead of feeding it 
 to stock, to sap the soil each year of its elements of fertility 
 without restoring them, to make butter of oleomargarine and 
 sell it as “ gilt-edged,” to buy Brummagen axes, shovels, and 
 hoes, to wear British shoddy-cloth instead of the sound pro- 
 duct of his own flocks worked up in his responsible neighbor’s 
 mill, — in short, to live for to-day without thought of to-morrow, 
 and to be the grasshopper rather than the ant of the fable. 
 This is not the sentiment of American farmers. The most 
 stable, long-abiding, and patient of all classes, more than any 
 others, in this country at least, they look to their interests in 
 the long run. They, as well as our mechanics, for most farmers 
 are both, will have the best attainable implements and tools 
 in spite of their first cost ; and what prices will they not pay 
 for the best breeding stock, patiently biding their time for the 
 improvement of their flocks and herds? Looking to their in- 
 terests “ in the long run,” they rejoice in seeing manufac- 
 tories spring up around them, bringing them consumers, 
 helping to pay taxes and support schools, giving employ- 
 ment to their children, increasing the value of their land, and 
 making them partakers of a common prosperity. They take 
 
15 
 
 still a broader view. The absolute owners of the country, as 
 Vice-President Wheeler has recently well said, and, aside from 
 the comparatively small area of the cities and villages, the 
 proprietors of all the soil, they have a stake in the national 
 welfare, such as no other classes have, and in fact concern 
 themselves with its interests as no others do. They are our 
 bulwarks against European communism, and we may hope 
 against other no less dangerous forms of foreign propagandism. 
 They constitute the ruling political majorities, at least in the 
 North and the West. Conservative, yet wisely progressive, 
 controlling the political power, as they have by their votes 
 for the last twenty years, including the great crisis in our 
 history, it is they who have eliminated from our institutions 
 the last vestige of feudalism ; and it is they who have incor- 
 porated into our legislation the principle of the new and be- 
 nign gospel of political economy which considers “ the laws of 
 the production and distribution of wealth,” not alone, but in 
 their relations to human welfare. The narrow and selfish 
 maxim of mere trade has no place in a political economy like 
 this. How inappropriately, then, is it applied to those who 
 make it subordinate in their private transactions, and sink it 
 wholly in their determination of public duty, because, as “ the 
 absolute owners of the country,” they are compelled to seek 
 in the development of the nation and the welfare of all its 
 people the first source of their own prosperity ! 
 
 The Farmers' First Object to sell dear . — It should be 
 observed, moreover, that there are obvious reasons why 
 farmers disregard the “ Golden Rule of trade ” in their pri- 
 vate transactions. To the trader it is equally important that 
 he should buy cheap and sell dear. To the farmer it is com- 
 paratively of little importance for him to buy general com- 
 modities or manufactured products cheap, provided he gets 
 good prices for his farm products. Obtaining the chief 
 necessaries for subsistence from his land, it is his happy lot to 
 be able to retrench at will, without much inconvenience, his 
 consumption of purchased commodities. He therefore looks 
 mainly to the prices of his own products. Their high prices 
 to him are something more than trading results, — they are a 
 
16 
 
 source of personal pride, an indication of the productiveness 
 of his farm, the assurance of future prosperity ; hence the good 
 times in which farmers rejoice are not those when goods are 
 cheap but when farm products are high. All that the Cobden 
 Club pretends seriously to offer him in its system is cheap 
 goods. In vain is the net set in sight of any bird. This is a 
 poor lure to one who can see with half an eye that in those 
 cheap foreign goods is involved the loss of what he values 
 above all other things, — a home market for the products 
 of his farm. 
 
 Our Farmers seek and receive Direct Protection. — I will 
 but glance at the next proposition in the Cobden Club 
 appeal, to follow them in their order, which is that farmers 
 have no direct interest in our protective policy. The state- 
 ment is thus broadly made: “The Western farmer himself 
 neither receives nor seeks legislative ‘protection.’ He re- 
 quires no State subvention.” So far from this being true, 
 farmers are protected by what would be regarded in Europe 
 as high duties upon all the important agricultural products, 
 as by a duty of from 10 to 20 cents per bushel on all cereals, 
 20 per cent on animals, &c., the duties being demanded, it is 
 true, to resist not European but Canadian competition. The 
 vigor with which our farmers resist a reciprocity treaty with 
 Canada, which would involve a partial surrender of these 
 duties, shows how stubbornly they insist upon retaining such 
 protection as they have. Upon all agricultural products in 
 which the foreign competition is more formidable, our pro- 
 tective duties to agriculture attain the highest range, as in 
 rice, sugar, and wool, the protective duty on the latter being 
 higher than upon any manufactured product except those 
 of silk. I need not show how essential this protective duty, 
 although amounting to from three to four millions annually, is 
 to sustain, against the competition of the half-civilized growers 
 of the Southern Hemisphere, the most cherished and wide- 
 spread of all our agricultural industries, our sheep husbandry, 
 because the pioneer of agriculture, the most available means of 
 restoring the land and the chief source of cheap animal food. 
 The facts that the wool duties were imposed at the demand 
 
17 
 
 of the West, and that the many attempts made in the last ten 
 years have met their chief resistance from the West, are suf- 
 ficient to refute the assertion that “ the Western farmer neither 
 receives nor seeks legislation.” It is amusing to hear the 
 Cobden Club teachers proclaim to the Western farmer the 
 enormity of the duties he is compelled to pay on woollen 
 and worsted goods, asserted to be 66 per cent on the aver- 
 age, when more than half of this duty is the mere equivalent 
 of the duty upon wool imposed for the protection and at the 
 demand of the Western farmer himself. 
 
 THE ILLUSION OF CHEAP FOREIGN COMMODITIES. 
 
 The propositions which I have been combatting are but mere 
 preliminaries to the central argument in this, as in all the’ 
 essays of free-trade, — the pretended cheapness of commodities 
 which it offers to those adopting its theory. The single object 
 of the essay in question is to illustrate the losses which our 
 farmers incur by consuming the manufactured products of their 
 own country, or in short, in the words of the writer, “ how 
 much is taken out of the pockets of the American farmers by 
 compelling them to buy dear instead of allowing them to buy 
 cheap goods.” So little am I appalled by the figures of 
 “dreadful and wanton waste” set forth by the writer, that I 
 will faithfully state them to my readers, and reproduce his 
 argument, though with some condensation, with the utmost 
 possible fairness. 
 
 The writer, as I have before said, taking the number of 
 agriculturists in this country at 7,000,000, which number 
 includes farm laborers, estimates the yearly consumption of 
 manufactured products by each at $200, making the “ stu- 
 pendous sum ” of 1,400 million dollars. The best informed 
 men in this country, I am confident, would not place the con- 
 sumption at above $100. But I let this pass, although it 
 makes the slight difference of 700 millions in the calculation. 
 He determines the losses which our farmers suffer b}^ consum- 
 ing our own domestic manufactures instead of the foreign, as 
 follows. He professes to have clearly ascertained that the av- 
 erage rate of duties paid here on foreign manufactures is 42J 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 per cent. “ To err on the side of caution,” he makes it 40 
 per cent, which he declares is “ the overcharge which the 
 Western farmers have to pay for all the manufactured goods 
 they consume.” He then concludes, u If the American 
 farmers were allowed to buy as they could buy for $100, 
 what they are now compelled to pay $140 for, it is clear 
 that they could buy for $1,000,000,000 what they now 
 pay $1,400,000,000 for, and consequently they would save 
 $400,000,000 every year.” We will give our teacher the 
 benefit of his rhetoric as well as his figures. Commenting 
 on the latter he exclaims, “ Truly a startling sum, a stu- 
 pendous sum ! That such a pile of wealth should, year after 
 year, be unnecessarily and wantonly flung away and wasted, 
 seems utterly incredible. And yet it is literally true. 4 What ! ’ 
 we can imagine a Western farmer exclaiming, ‘do you mean 
 to say that we farmers, our class alone, are every year, out of 
 our hard earnings, needlessly and heedlessly throwing away 
 $400,000,000, and that we could if we would save in our 
 yearly expenses a sum large enough to pay the whole of the 
 national expenditures twice over?’ ‘ Yes, sir,’ we reply, ‘it 
 is a fact.’ ” 
 
 I have given in all candor the whole of the argument, 
 with a fair specimen of the rhetoric with which it is enforced, 
 that all the economical wisdom at the command of the illus- 
 trious Cobden Club can bring to bear upon the industrial 
 policy of this country. It is summed up in the statement, 
 “ The farmers of America can save 400 million dollars 
 yearly by importing each year 1,000 million dollars’ worth 
 of foreign (British) goods.” Our instructors avoid telling 
 us how the farmers of America, with the loss of the home 
 market which their policy implies, will be able to pay for 
 these foreign goods, or how long these goods would remain 
 cheap with such an increased demand as has not been known 
 since ships sailed upon the sea. Do they not know that, 
 under the rates to which agricultural products would fall, 
 with England the only customer, and goods would rise, with 
 England the only vendor, all the agriculture of America 
 would not suffice to pay for 1,000 million dollars’ worth of 
 
19 
 
 imported manufactures ? While American competition being 
 destroyed, all Europe would be unable to spare the manufac- 
 tured goods we now produce by our own industry. 
 
 But let us see how these figures will bear the test of 
 analysis. I am mistaken if my readers have not already 
 likened them to the child’s tower of cards which topples 
 over from its very height, and if they have not already 
 detected the fallacy which makes these figures the most pre- 
 posterous ever addressed by one sensible man to another. 
 In free-trade argument there is always a concealed assump- 
 tion. Our British teacher tries to hide his, but in vain. He 
 tries to hide it by saying that “ prices in America must be at 
 least 50 per cent in excess of those current in England,” be- 
 cause British manufacturers can afford to pay the duties on 
 goods imported into the States and still get a profit. 
 
 This, I will barely remark, is no proof of superior cheapness 
 in the country exporting, because foreign goods sent here are 
 to a large extent surpluses which th§ foreigner cannot sell 
 in his own country at fair prices without breaking down his 
 own market. They are sent here and sold by auction at 
 forced prices, to a large extent, without profit, because it is 
 better to incur a loss than to glut the home market. Again, 
 a large class of foreign goods are bought by the luxurious 
 and exclusive classes without reference to their cost, — the 
 cost even enhancing their desirableness as tokens of wealth 
 on the part of the purchaser, just as the ladies of France 
 preferred smuggled cotton stockings, because more fashion- 
 able than those of silk, when the former were made the 
 dearest by a prohibitory duty. The fact is notorious that 
 these classes in our large cities will pay for foreign cloths at 
 a fashionable tailor’s double the price for which equally 
 handsome and substantial articles of domestic manufacture 
 may be procured. The importation of foreign goods is there- 
 fore no test of their cheapness in the country of production. 
 
 The assumption upon which the figures of our farmers’ 
 enormous loss are really based by the author is thus disclosed 
 in the pamphlet under review. I quote his exact words : 
 “ The average (of the duty on) imports 42j per cent, is the 
 
20 
 
 measure of the difference between the prices which the West- 
 ern farmers now pay for what they consume and those which 
 they would pay were foreign articles admitted free.” This 
 means nothing less than that a duty on articles such as are 
 produced in the country, whether in manufactures or agricul- 
 ture, enhances the price to the consumer not only of what is 
 imported but of the whole domestic production to an amount 
 of which the duty is “ the measure.” 
 
 This theory, as old as the first attack upon our tariff system, 
 has been so often and so completely refuted that nothing but 
 a contempt for American intelligence could have permitted it 
 to be revived at this day. It is a theory so preposterous that 
 it can hardly be answered seriously and is best met by that 
 method of logic which consists in reducing a proposition to 
 an absurdity. Our last British teacher in political economy 
 seems to imagine that the “ mare’s nest ” of monstrous figures 
 which he has found is a new discovery in the unexplored field 
 of American finances.. Years ago American theorists of the 
 school of Calhoun, Walker, and Wells saw in the clouds of 
 their own fancy similar monsters ; but happily the people to 
 whom they were pointed out failed to see their huge propor- 
 tions or to respond with Polonius, “Very like a whale!” 
 Years ago our wiser economists, such as Clay, Phillips, and 
 Elder, showed that those monsters were but clouds and phan- 
 tasms. The monstrosity of the tax upon consumers was 
 the staple of the stump-speeches against the tariff of 1842. 
 Mr. Clay, in his Raleigh speech of 1844, tells us how the 
 Western farmers pricked the bubble theory with the needle 
 fact in his day. “ My friend,” cried a Western demagogue 
 from the stump to a farmer in his audience, “do you know 
 that these tariff monopolists make you pay six cents a yard 
 (the amount of the duty) more than you ought to pay for 
 the shirt on your back? ” “ I suppose it must be so,” replies 
 
 the farmer, “ since you say it, but I can’t quite understand 
 how it can be, since I gave for it only five cents and a half a 
 yard ! ” 
 
 Thirty j^ears ago Judge Phillips, replying to Secretary 
 Walker, showed that if the duty were added to the price of 
 
21 
 
 all articles imported and produced in the country the then 
 existing duty upon corn and other cereals would inflict a tax 
 upon our people, or a dead loss by producing these cereals 
 ourselves instead of importing them from abroad, of $74,000,- 
 000. An average duty of 21 per cent upon $470,000,000, the 
 then estimated amount of our manufactures he shows upon 
 the same theory, would inflict a loss of $66,000,000 through 
 producing our own manufactures instead of importing them. 
 He presents these figures to show by their enormity the ab- 
 surdity of the free-trade theory upon its very face. Our 
 British teacher swells his figures of loss, even to the farmers 
 alone, to the appalling sum of $400,000,000, and does not seem 
 to suspect that the very enormity of his statement makes it 
 ridiculous. 
 
 At a later period Dr. Elder, replying to Mr. Wells, — a 
 believer in the reflected effect of duties upon the prices of do- 
 mestic commodities, — shows that in the year 1867-1868 the 
 average duty on foreign goods competing with American was 
 a small fraction less than 48 per cent, while the value of Ameri- 
 can products in that year was $3,487,000,000. On this sum, 
 he says, according to the theory of free trade, “A 48 per cent 
 increase of cost to consumers must have fallen, and therefore 
 the duties charged upon the foreign import surcharged the 
 prices of their domestic rivals the total sum of $1,473,760,000, 
 or nine and one half times the amount of the duties secured to 
 the Treasury by the system of raising revenue at the custom 
 house ! ” These figures are scarcely larger than those given by 
 our British teacher. There is the important difference in the 
 objects of the statements made by the two economists. By 
 one they are made seriously and by the other ironically, as if 
 the bare statement sufficiently exposed its absurdity. We 
 may half suspect that Dr. Elder is responsible for our British 
 friend’s delusion. It is not the first time that an American 
 extravaganza has been taken by credulous foreigners for 
 sober fact. 
 
 The theory is reduced to its utmost verge of absurdity by 
 a later statement of Judge Kelley in his speech on the Wood 
 tariff bill in May, 1878, who gives the following table of the 
 
22 
 
 quantities of certain specified agricultural products raised in 
 the country, the quantities exported and retained for home 
 consumption, the rates of duty on each and the consequent 
 tax imposed upon the people at large for the benefit of the 
 farmers, if it be true that duties are added to the prices not 
 only of imported articles but those of domestic production. 
 
 (Products. 
 
 Number of bushels 
 raised in 1877. 
 
 Number of bushels 
 exported. 
 
 Balance for home con- 
 sumption. 
 
 Duty per bushel. 
 
 Amount of tax imposed 
 on the consumers in 
 the United States, 
 calculated in accord- 
 ance with the free 
 trade dogma that the 
 duty is added to the 
 price. 
 
 Wheat 
 
 360.000.000 
 
 57.043,936 
 
 302,956,064 
 
 $0.20 
 
 $60,591,212 80 
 
 Barley 
 
 35.600.000 
 
 1,186,129 
 
 34.413,871 
 
 .15 
 
 5.162,080.65 
 
 Potatoes 
 
 146.000.000 
 
 529,650 
 
 145.470.350 
 
 .15 
 
 21.820,552.50 
 
 Corn 
 
 1,340,00ii,000 
 
 73,100.518 
 
 1,266.899,482 
 
 .10 
 
 126,689.948 20 
 
 Oats 
 
 405,000,000 
 
 2,854.128 
 
 402,145.872 
 
 .10 
 
 40,214,587.20 
 
 Rye 
 
 22,100,000 
 
 2,227,000 
 
 19,873,000 
 
 .10 
 
 1,987,300.00 
 
 Total 
 
 2,308,700,000 
 
 136,941,361 
 
 2,171,758,639 
 
 
 $256,465,681.35 
 
 Applying a similar calculation to other agricultural produc- 
 tions, — hay, vegetables, animals, wool, etc., — the theory 
 would make the tax imposed for the benefit of the farmers 
 not less than 500 million dollars. This is precisely as true, 
 because established by the same reasoning, as that 400 mil- 
 lion dollars are “ wrung from ” the farmer “ to support un- 
 profitable manufactures in the Eastern States.” 
 
 The Foreigner pays the Duty . — If it were necessary to 
 seriously combat the position that a duty upon such articles 
 as are produced in the country is a tax upon the consumer to 
 the extent of the duty, I might show that the duty is wholly, 
 or in a great part, paid by the foreign importer, by a dimin- 
 ution of his profits, or what is more generally the case, a 
 reduction of wages and the cost of raw materials, which 
 enter into his products. The very earnestness with which 
 foreigners oppose our duties shows that the duties are ob- 
 noxious, because they are heavy drawbacks upon their own 
 profits. British manufacturers, in addressing us, tell us that 
 our people pay all the duty. In consulting among them- 
 
23 
 
 selves, in their Chambers of Commerce at Bradford and 
 Manchester, they invariably complain of the tax which they 
 have to pay for the admission of their goods into foreign 
 countries. The orators in Canada, clamoring for a Recipro- 
 city Treaty, constantly declare that Canadians have to pay 
 the whole of the duty on the coal, barley, and wool imported 
 into the States ; and our experience under the Reciprocity 
 Treaty, when for a time these articles were free, proved con- 
 clusively that the remission of the duty which our Govern- 
 ment lost inured to the benefit, not of the American 
 consumer, but the foreign producer, — the prices in our 
 markets being no dearer with the duty than when these arti- 
 cles were free. 
 
 Goods cheapened by Protection. — If it were material for 
 the point I have in view to show the intrinsic or practical 
 cheapness of manufactured commodities to our farmers, in 
 consequence of our home manufactures under the protective 
 system, I might show that the invariable effect of the intro- 
 duction, through protective duties, of a domestic fabric, has 
 been the immediate reduction of the price of the foreign com- 
 peting article, and a continually increasing reduction, through 
 domestic competition, in fact bringing them to the level of 
 cost required by the wages of labor and profits of capital in 
 all the branches of business in the country. Cottons, wool- 
 lens, in their infinite variety, hardware, steel, cast and Bes- 
 semer, glass, nails, screws, and machinery are palpable proofs 
 of this proposition. Every farmer past middle age can recall 
 from his own experience the multitudinous articles which have 
 been cheapened and improved by our protected manufactures. 
 
 Foreign Goods Cheap only when not in Demand. — If it were 
 necessary to dwell upon the question of cheapness, I might 
 show that the cheapness of foreign commodities ceases the 
 moment there is a demand for them, — as English rails rose 
 from fifty up to eighty dollars a ton when the tariff of 1846 
 closed our own furnaces and rolling mills, and as, in the last 
 year, English combing wools, in England, rose from ten pence 
 to eighteen pence per pound when the exceptional demand of 
 fifteen million pounds of these wools was made upon England 
 
24 
 
 from this country. A temporary cheapness, to be followed 
 by excessive dearness, or a tinter board movement of prices, 
 is no benefit to consumers. It is too obvious to need arom- 
 ment that our consumers will best secure equable or gradu- 
 ally falling prices by a system which, while not prohibiting 
 importation, preserves domestic competition in full activity. 
 
 High Wages benefit Farmers . — I do not commend our 
 national protective system to American farmers because it 
 produces manufactured goods as cheaply as they can be made 
 in Europe. As I have said before, the nominal cheapness of 
 these commodities is, to the farmer especially, of little im- 
 portance, in comparison with other considerations. I freely 
 admit that manufactured commodities cannot be produced in 
 this country as cheaply as in Europe, for the simple reason 
 that, while wages of labor constitute from one fourth to three 
 fourths the cost of nearly all manufactures, we pay, and from 
 the nature of our institutions must continue to pay, for a day’s 
 labor from two to four times as much as is paid in Europe. 
 But let the farmers remember that it is these higher wages, 
 although making manufactured products nominally dearer, 
 which create for them the greater part of the consumers of 
 farm products, — the mechanics, artisans, and manufacturing 
 operatives of the country, with their dependents, diverting 
 them also from labor on the land, and converting them from 
 competitors into consumers. It is the higher wages which 
 enable these consumers to pay liberal prices for the agricul- 
 tural products which constitute at least three fifths of their 
 expenditure. It it these higher wages which enable the 
 farmer, in his turn, through the better prices received for his 
 products, to obtain the commodities manufactured by these 
 consumers at little cost of transportation, and to obtain them 
 more abundantly and practically more cheaply than they 
 could possibly be obtained from distant countries ; for to the 
 farmer those commodities are the cheapest the greatest quan- 
 tity of which are procurable for the product of a given 
 number of days’ labor on his land. The intelligent farmer 
 can readily see that he, of all men, would be least benefited 
 by the cheap foreign manufactured products with which 
 
25 
 
 free trade would tempt him ; he must see that they mean 
 nothing else than one of two things, — a total abandonment of 
 manufactures in this country — the real object of the Cobden 
 Club — and a total loss of the chief part of his customers ; or 
 a lowering to European rates, — a reduction, of at least one 
 half, of all the wages of labor in our mechanical and manu- 
 factural industries, with a diminution to the same extent 
 of the ability of the workers in these industries, to purchase 
 the products of the farm. Three fifths, at least, of the higher 
 wages of manufacturing labor, created and sustained by our 
 protective system, go into the pockets of the farmers ; and 
 every ton of iron and every yard of cloth produced in this 
 country represents to that extent the products of American 
 farms. 
 
 How Goods fall and Land rises . — Let me conclude this 
 branch of my subject — the illusion of cheap foreign com- 
 modities — by recalling a law in social science, first an- 
 nounced and demonstrated b}^ the most illustrious economist 
 of the present century, the late Mr. Carey, whose authority, 
 I trust, will be sufficient for its acceptance without the illus- 
 trations which might be given. It is this : in countries in 
 which society advances with perfect freedom for develop- 
 ment, as in those defended by protective laws from foreign 
 interference, it is the fixed law that the cost of manufactured 
 commodities tends constantly to decrease, and the value of 
 land, and the costs of the products of the land, to increase. 
 Thus, under the protective system, the farmers of this coun- 
 try, not through the selfish methods of the trader, but con- 
 sistently with the welfare of the whole community, may 
 attain the ultimatum of free trade, in buying commodities 
 cheap and selling land and land products dear. 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF THE HOME MARKET. 
 
 Having met the grand argument of the Cobden Club 
 Essay, following its propositions in their order, and finding 
 its other remaining positions too loosely expressed, or dis- 
 posed with too much disorder, to be followed in logical 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 sequence, I will next consider the doctrine inculcated on 
 every page of that essay, and revealing with shameless dis- 
 tinctness the utter selfishness of its appeal, viz., that it is for 
 the interest of Western farmers to abandon their home mar- 
 ket and seek for their prosperity in a dependency upon Eng- 
 land. 
 
 British free trade has in view, not only the destruction of 
 the manufactures of rival countries, but the acquisition of the 
 food and raw material of all the rich agricultural countries in 
 the world. It would make these countries, like the provinces 
 of ancient Rome, merely the granaries of the imperial city. 
 Even the Revolution could not eradicate from British minds 
 the idea that a perpetual colonial dependency is the divinely 
 appointed condition of this country. The last appeal of the 
 Cobden Club is but an echo of the cry which England has 
 rung in our ears from the time of Chatham to that of Glad- 
 stone : “ Let us do the manufacturing, and you grow the 
 food and raw material. ” 
 
 In the essay before us, either from an ignorance which 
 seems incredible, or for a double purpose of insidiously 
 depreciating the home market of the “ Western farmer ” and 
 fomenting the supposed jealousy of his section, the Western 
 farmer is represented as a pitiful sacrifice to the rapacity of 
 Eastern manufacturers. Thus, on the first page of the essay, 
 it is said : “ He (the Western farmer) is heavily taxed to sup- 
 port unprofitable manufactures in the Eastern States, and 
 has to make good their losses out of his profits.” The an- 
 tithesis is continually repeated, — “ Western farmer ” and 
 “ Eastern manufacturer.” The latter is specifically referred to 
 not less than twenty-one times, to show how the West is sub- 
 sidized for the benefit of the East. The fact is absolutely 
 ignored, or carefully suppressed, that the West has any manu- 
 factures of its own. Now, this suppression keeps out . of 
 view the vital fact that the Western farmer has an im- 
 portant supply of manufactured commodities, and a market 
 for his farm products, through manufactures at his very home, 
 and that the protective policy is even more important to the 
 West than to the East, because the system of manufactures 
 
27 
 
 which she has so vigorously commenced is not completed, and 
 needs to be extended to the newer States. 
 
 I need not tell Western men how enormously manufactures 
 of every form pursued at the East are developed, and with 
 what wonderful vigor and rapidity they are advancing, in 
 their States. We, of the East, know it well enough, and I 
 might say, to our cost, if Western competition had not com- 
 pelled us, in Mr. Webster’s phrase, to find “room higher up.” 
 Ohio is declared to be the third manufacturing State in the 
 Union. Chicago threatens to rival Philadelphia. Without 
 specifying other industries, the West makes substantially all 
 her agricultural machinery, and, with the exception of some 
 fabrics of cotton and silk, clothes what would be equal to her 
 whole agricultural population. I have personally collected 
 from the official returns of the census, now in progress, the 
 following comparative table : — 
 
 NUMBER OF WOOLLEN MILLS IN EASTERN STATES. 
 
 Maine 64 
 
 New Hampshire 96 
 
 Vermont 52 
 
 Massachusetts 329 
 
 Rhode Island 94 
 
 Connecticut 159 
 
 794 
 
 NUMBER OF WOOLLEN MILLS IN WESTERN STATES. 
 
 Ohio . 208 
 
 Indiana * ... 107 
 
 Illinois 78 
 
 Missouri 71 
 
 Wisconsin 61 
 
 Iowa 65 
 
 Minnesota 11 
 
 Colorado 1 
 
 Utah 10 
 
 Washington Territory 1 
 
 Michigan •. 43 
 
 California . 12 
 
 668 
 
28 
 
 By these tables it will be seen how rapidly the West is 
 trenching upon the East. I do not pretend that the Western 
 mills equal in capacity those of New England, nor that they 
 produce certain classes of fabrics, such as dress goods and 
 carpets, which can be more advantageously made in larger 
 establishments. But each one of these mills is the nucleus for 
 a broader extension. Many a Western two-set mill of ten 
 years ago has already quadrupled its capacity. These small 
 mills of the West are what the germs of most of the large fac- 
 tories of the East were forty or fifty years ago, while the 
 greater part of the Western mills enumerated have grown up 
 within only thirteen years under the fostering influence of 
 the tariff of 1867. It has been observed that the woollen 
 mill is everywhere the pioneer of other manufactures. The 
 erection of a woollen mill of one or two sets in a new State, 
 which seems to people of the older States a trifling affair, 
 is in fact an epoch, — the dawn of manufactures, — which 
 all experience tells us will expand into a widely diversified 
 industry, with its sure accompaniment, a prosperous and im- 
 proving agriculture. The table above given does not merely 
 show what the West has now, but what she is sure to have 
 within the lifetime of even middle-aged men, — an industry 
 capable in itself of supplying all the necessary commodities, 
 and most of the luxuries, required by its people. 
 
 Illustration of Home Market . — We do not have to go far 
 for an illustration of the advantages of a home market. All 
 the Western States above enumerated are eminently wool- 
 producing States. Take Ohio, with its two hundred and eight 
 woollen mills, distributed in all parts of the State, and its four 
 million sheep. The raw material, wool, composes a little more 
 than one half the cost of the cloth made in these mills. The 
 whole of this cost is paid to the farmer by the mill almost at 
 his door. One quarter, at least, of the remaining cost of the 
 cloth consists of the wages of labor, and of this, as I have 
 before said, the farmer gets at least three-fifths. Of the 
 last remaining quarter, comprising some cost of raw material, 
 profits, &c., the greater part is usually expended for improve- 
 ments, making a still further expenditure for labor and the 
 
29 
 
 consumption of farm products. Much the largest part of the 
 cost goes to the farmer. He in his turn wants cloth for him- 
 self and his family. He gets it by mere exchange at the low- 
 est price at which it can be made with a fair profit, because 
 of the competition of the other two hundred and eight mills, 
 and through the same competition obtains the highest market- 
 price for his wool. 
 
 I have before me an advertisement of one of these Ohio 
 mills with this notice : “ The highest market-price paid for 
 wool in goods. All goods warranted free from shoddy and cot- 
 ton.” Here is an exchange made to the utmost possible ad- 
 vantage of both sides. There is no loss in transportation, no 
 loss through middle-men, no possible loss by fraud on either 
 side; for both purchasers know each other, and are perma- 
 nently accountable one to the other. All the devices of trade 
 known since the time of the Phoenicians could not contrive to 
 make the farmer’s cloth so cheap, or his wool so dear, as by 
 the simple exchange I have described. This is what I mean 
 by a home market, and this is what the Cobden Club ad- 
 vises the Ohio farmers to abandon. Although all exchanges 
 in the home market are not so simple as the above, they all 
 involve the same great principle, which is the first aim of a 
 protective policy. Protection would bring, through a home 
 market, the producer and consumer as nearly as possible to- 
 gether, saving the cost of transportation and losses through 
 middle-men. Free trade, on the contrary, aims to separate 
 the producer and consumer as widely as possible, and to sad- 
 dle both with the cost of transportation and commissions for 
 the benefit of the trader and non-producer. 
 
 Free Trade and the Wool-grower. — Let us consider the 
 special commodity of the farmer now under consideration on 
 a larger scale, and see what the system of the Cobden Club 
 would do for the wool-growing farmers of the United States as 
 a whole. The Cobden Club advises the abandonment of all 
 the woollen mills in this country. At the present time, not 
 a pound of American wool goes abroad ; all the wool of our 
 farmers, and nearly all Western farmers, too, of the yearly 
 value of not far from $100,000,000, is consumed in our own 
 
80 
 
 four thousand woollen mills. One American manufacturer 
 consumes in every working day of the year thirty thousand 
 pounds, or the fleeces of at least six thousand sheep. What 
 shall become of this wool, with our own mills abandoned? Will 
 the farmer, now getting from twenty to fifty cents according 
 to the quality, send it to London, where, with his clip added to 
 what is produced by cheap labor in the southern hemisphere, 
 it would not bring more than from ten to twenty cents ? Of 
 course, our sheep would go to the shambles, making mutton 
 cheap, — which free trade would call a blessing, — to be fol- 
 lowed by an increased cost of all animal food, which would 
 make a meat famine such as even Ireland never knew. 
 
 With a Home Market all the Products of the Farm Sal- 
 able. — It may be said that wool, — and the same applies to 
 wheat, — being an easily transportable article, and of high 
 value, the cost of transportation being added to the price, it 
 will realize as much in the distant as the home market. But 
 wool and wheat are only two of the products of the farm. 
 It is the first principle in agriculture that a mixed husbandry 
 is the most profitable. There is not only more profit, but 
 there never can be ruin by the total loss of the farm crop. 
 The most profitable crops are those which are not transporta- 
 ble, at least to distant countries, such as fruits, garden vege- 
 tables, &c. When the farmer can exchange the whole of the 
 products which his land can be made to yield, at rates corre- 
 sponding with the general price of labor, his farm will be worth 
 four times as much as it would be when only wheat and other 
 cereals can be sold. This he can do when the protective 
 policy plants the village of mechanics, artisans, and factory 
 operatives in his neighborhood. Hence it is that land in the 
 vicinity of a manufacturing population is worth, for agricul- 
 tural purposes alone, from $100 to $200 an acre ; while with- 
 out these advantages, it is rarely w’orth in this country $40 
 an acre. 
 
 The State of Massachusetts — perhaps the best type of a 
 manufacturing State — well illustrates how manufactures may 
 be conducive to a prosperous agriculture, even upon poor 
 granitic soils. In this State, according to the State census of 
 
31 
 
 1875, the average value of each of the 44,549 farms is $4,100. 
 In the leading manufacturing county, — Middlesex, — the 
 average value of the 116,134^ acres of cultivated land outside 
 the cities, is $98.05. The average value of 3,988-g- acres of 
 market gardens is $283 per acre. The total value of the 
 agricultural products of Massachusetts, in round numbers, is 
 forty millions of dollars. Of this amount the cereals and the 
 wool, the easily transportable products, yield only $1,724,346 ; 
 over thirty-eight millions of miscellaneous farm products not 
 so transportable being consumed at home, principally by the 
 manufacturing population. The latter fact shows how a 
 manufacturing State ceases to be a rival of the West in the 
 production of the cereals, which at present can be more ad- 
 vantageously grown there, while each one of its 1,651,912 
 people consumes yearly at least one barrel of western flour. 
 
 Labor displaced by Free Trade thrown upon the Land. — I am 
 naturally led by the facts last cited to consider how the loss 
 of the home market, through free trade, would be aggravated 
 by turning all our present manufacturing workmen upon the 
 land. The Cobden Club, in its essay, fully recognizes that 
 its scheme of abolishing our protective duties would deprive 
 our mechanics and factory workmen of their manufacturing 
 employment. It sa} r s, not in the precise words, but substan- 
 tially, that this would be no evil, because the displaced 
 workmen would betake themselves to the land for subsist- 
 ence. Its argument is, that the increased imports of foreign 
 goods would necessitate increased exports (of agricultural 
 products, of course) to pay for them. And it says in so 
 many words, “ The workmen are merely thrown on to other 
 work [farm work] to supply the articles that will be ex- 
 ported to pay for the new imports.” I will not stop to show 
 that all the ships in the world could not carry to Europe the 
 agricultural products now consumed at home by our mechan- 
 ical and manufacturing laborers ; nor to show that, even if 
 they could all be carried, a demand for “additional exports,” or 
 even a market for half that is now raised, would be impossible. 
 I refer to these passages only as full admissions, by the highest 
 free-trade authorities, that the abolition of protective duties 
 
32 
 
 would compel the present workers in our shops, furnaces, 
 and mills to become workers upon the land. Of course 
 in a country where land is so easily obtainable, this is the 
 only resource left for displaced industrial labor. Of this 
 change of employment the Cobden Club coolly says, “ The 
 same amount of capital and labor would be employed as 
 before.” But are the present farmers prepared to see this 
 change, whose fatal results may be thus summed up ? Three 
 million mechanics and workmen, now the farmer’s best cus- 
 tomers, are to cease to be consumers of his products, and to 
 become his competitors in supplying a market, — not at home, 
 for that will have ceased, but one three thousand miles across 
 the ocean, where the rivalry of the whole world must be en- 
 countered ; while even this market is afforded only on the 
 conditions of unfavorable British crops, of peace among the 
 European nations, and continued commercial prosperity 
 abroad. 
 
 The arguments for preserving our home market, through 
 protection, might be continued indefinitely. The few which 
 I have given are old and familiar ; they have been repeated 
 thousands of times, though perhaps with some variation of 
 illustration : but the advocates of free trade have never 
 answered them ; they cannot answer them, and have never 
 attempted to answer them , as most conspicuously shown in 
 the essay under review. Of what weight, ‘then, are the 
 mere theories of a pretended science, unenlightened by any 
 knowledge of our affairs, against the practical and uncon- 
 tradicted conclusions of American experience ? 
 
 The Foreign Market Unreliable and Inadequate. — The Cob- 
 den Club essay says, “ The very essence of the American 
 farmers’ prosperity depends upon their having large and in- 
 creasing outlets abroad for the large and increasing amount 
 of their produce.” The writer of the essay, unsuspectingly, 
 in another connection, gives a conclusive reason why it is not 
 for the farmer’s interest to seek for his market abroad. He 
 says, “ The more freight the Western farmer has to pay to get 
 his produce delivered in European markets, the smaller the 
 net residue that comes to him, for the European buyer’s prices 
 
33 
 
 include freight.” It is thus admitted that the farmer who 
 sells his wheat in England has first to pay the cost of getting 
 it there. He then and there finds grain competing with his 
 own for sale, which was raised around the Baltic or Black 
 Sea by cultivators who have but a tithe of his burdens to 
 carry, whose product reaches market at a less cost of trans- 
 portation, and which, accordingly, in average seasons can be 
 sold at a lower price than his can be afforded at. The ex- 
 ceptional European demand for American wheat for the last 
 three or four years, I need not say, is due purely to the fail- 
 ure of European harvests within that period. There have 
 been four years of failing harvests in England, and in the last 
 year an unprecedented falling off of the crop in France, — 
 ordinarily an enormous producer of wheat. It cannot be 
 doubted that a return of good harvests in the grain countries 
 of Europe would arrest, or greatly diminish, American impor- 
 tations. Even the Cobden Club essay admits that they would 
 be stopped by “ average harvests in Europe.” It is true that 
 last year the exportation of our wheat reached the extraordi- 
 nary proportion of 24.76 per cent of our total production. 
 But can the wheat-grower, who must provide for his crop a 
 year before he sells, rely upon a permanent demand like this? 
 Besides, constant fluctuations in price and constant distur- 
 bances in the home market are the penalties which our wheat- 
 growers must pay for producing for foreign countries. I 
 might fill my pages with figures illustrating these fluctu- 
 ations, but they would only confuse the reader. I can make 
 my point clearer by quoting the statements of our most 
 eminent agricultural statistician, Mr. Dodge, recently made in 
 a government report. Speaking of our wheat exportation, he 
 says : — 
 
 “ The proportion of exportation is so large and the range of its 
 fluctuation so great, that serious disturbance in the market often re- 
 sults. It not unfrequently occurs that a moderate yield is accompanied 
 by low prices, and a large crop is marketed at high rates. There is 
 no doubt that the wheat-farmer is at the mercy of the foreign demand. 
 If British fields are blighted, there is rejoicing on our prairies over 
 remunerative harvests. If the garners of continental Europe are full, 
 
 5 
 
34 
 
 and England’s wants at a minimum, there is dissatisfaction at the 
 West, liable to be vented on the currency, the tariff, or the railroads. . . . 
 While subject to greater fluctuations than other crops, from the vicissi- 
 tudes of the seasons and depredations of insects, the quantity required 
 annually for exportation is still more variable than the amount of the 
 crop ; the heaviest foreign demand may occur in a season of low pro- 
 duction, and the lightest in a year of abundance, increasing the fluctua- 
 tion. . . . The wheat-grower is at one time elated with remunerative 
 prices, and at another, depressed by rates which fail to pay the cost of 
 production.” 
 
 Such are the blessings of producing for a foreign market ! 
 Is it true, then, that in such a market, as free-trade essayists 
 assert, with all its caprices, fluctuations, and uncertainties, is to 
 be found “ the very essence of the American farmer’s pros- 
 perity ” ? 
 
 Happily our own home market, imperfectly developed as 
 it still is at the West, yet remains as the main reliance of the 
 Western grain-farmer. Of the peculiarly national product 
 of our semi-tropical summer climate, our Indian-corn crop, 
 amounting to 1,342,558,000, bushels, only 87,192,110 bushels, 
 or 6.49 per cent, are exported, 93.51 per cent being consumed 
 at home. Every sensible farmer must admit that an increased 
 exportation of corn is by no means desirable, as there is usu- 
 ally more profit in the sale of meat, wool, and other products 
 of corn. He must admit, too, that the loss of soil fertility 
 and the cost of transportation, often far greater than the 
 original value of the grain, will ultimately bring both him 
 and his farm to poverty, while the corn being consumed at 
 home, the soil elements are preserved, and the meat and wool, 
 into which it is converted, have a value which bears trans- 
 portation. Of our total grain crop, even with the unprece- 
 dented exportation of nearly 250,000,000* bushels of wheat, 
 we still retain and use eight ninths of the total volume of pro- 
 duction. What proof more conclusive than these simple facts 
 can the farmer demand of the immeasurable superiority of 
 the home market over that promised, but by no means 
 
 * The figures under this head are derived from Mr. Dodge. 
 
35 
 
 assured, b}' the advocates of “ outlets abroad for American 
 produce” ? 
 
 How to raise Prices of Farm Exports. — I would by no means 
 deny broadly the value of a foreign market for our farmers’ 
 surplus products ; but I would have the exports, instead of 
 being simply raw products of costly transportation, those 
 which embody to the utmost possible degree American labor, 
 — in short, the manufactured products of the farm, such as 
 cheese, butter, flour, maizena, bacon or other “hog pro- 
 ducts”; and I would have those articles exported at prices 
 fixed by the competition of an active home market, which can 
 only exist where all industry is astir. I have before me a 
 market report, of a month or two ago, in one of our city 
 papers, which shows exactly how foreign prices are governed 
 by the activity of our own industries. It is as follows : — 
 
 “ The market for hog products continues excited, with a demand 
 ahead of the supply, and prices materially advanced yesterday both at 
 home and abroad. Liverpool quotations, following the lead of Chicago, 
 have been marked up nearly every day for the past week. . . . Early 
 in the season dealers on the other side continued to hold off for lower 
 prices until the English markets were very bare of supplies. They 
 did not count upon the enormous and steadily increasing consumption 
 of this country, brought about by the business revival and generally 
 improved condition of our industries. But while European buyers 
 were holding back, prices have continued to advance here, until, com- 
 pelled by their necessities they are now coming in for supplies, and 
 readily pay prices 25 per cent higher than they could have bought for 
 here two or three months ago.” 
 
 This plain business statement well illustrates how a profit- 
 able export is best advanced by the profitable employment of 
 our domestic industries 
 
 Exports not dependent upon Imports. — The Cobden Club 
 essayist maintains that if our farmers do not take the manu- 
 factures of foreigners, they will not buy his produce. He 
 says, “ How are the farmers to export if the manufacturers 
 will not allow imports ?” The proposition, that, if a nation will 
 not import it cannot export, is another of the pure assump- 
 
36 
 
 tions of free trade which is utterly at variance with estab- 
 lished facts. Some of the facts contradicting this assumption 
 are well stated by the able editor * of a leading protective 
 journal, in a reply to Mr. Mongredien’s book on Free Trade 
 and English Commerce. 
 
 “ The United States is a large purchaser of Brazilian coffee and 
 Chinese tea, but neither Brazil nor China buys from us one half the 
 value of our purchases from it. We buy from Cuba large quantities 
 of sugar, and the balance of trade between the two countries is many 
 millions every year in favor of Cuba. Great Britain herself has 
 bought breadstuffs and provisions from this country in the last four 
 years in unusually large quantities, and during the first three years of 
 this period our purchases of her products were much less than they 
 had previously been. She fell greatly in our debt, and had to pay us 
 hundreds of millions in gold or in our bonds which she returned to us. 
 ‘ If you want to export much, you must import much,’ says Mr. Mon- 
 gredien. This is not true to-day, as we have shown, and it never was 
 true in a general sense. One leading function of gold and silver is to 
 equalize the balances of trade which are constantly requiring the atten- 
 tion of commercial nations. England buys our wheat because she 
 must have it or starve, and we buy the coffee of Brazil, the tea of 
 China, and the sugar of Cuba because these articles are necessary to 
 our comfort. England does not hesitate to buy our wheat because we 
 have until recently refused to buy her iron, nor do we stop to dicker 
 with Brazil and China and Cuba concerning the quantity of our 
 products they shall buy from us.” 
 
 I might add that in 1878 France took our exports to the 
 value of over 487 million francs (according to French sta- 
 tistics), while we imported in that year a value of but a little 
 over 207 million francs. For a term of ten years previously 
 our imports exceeded our exports 53 million francs annually, 
 thus proving that exports had no relation to imports. 
 
 This assumption of free trade is devised to show that pro- 
 tective duties check commerce. I barely remark, for this is 
 not the place for a full illustration, that it can be demon- 
 strated that, so far from commerce being checked by protec- 
 
 Mr. J. M. Swank, of Philadelphia. 
 
37 
 
 tion, the periods of our largest general importations precisely 
 correspond with those of our most protective tariffs ; the fact 
 being that the prosperity induced by protection increases the 
 purchasing power of the people, enabling them to import, not 
 only the raw materials for manufacture, but the peculiar 
 commodities of other countries not produced at home.* 
 
 Depreciation of American Skill. — Although I have now 
 considered all the arguments of the essay under review, 
 directly applicable to the farmers’ question, I cannot over- 
 look the imputation upon our national capacity, by no means 
 unequivocally made, in the declaration that the manufactured 
 products of this country are dearer than those abroad on 
 account of the comparative inexpertness of American manu- 
 facturers, who are said to be taken from what they “ can do 
 well,” viz., to dig and to hoe, and are, by means of protection, 
 “ set to do only what they can do badly,” viz., to spin and 
 to weave. I have before me the published statement of the 
 highest German authority in the textile arts to an American 
 correspondent, in these words : “ The greatest part of your 
 own invented machinery is superior to the English, German, 
 or French machinery, especially your looms for finer work, 
 your looms for cotton goods, cassimeres, carpets, and heavy 
 work.” When it is considered that perfected machinery is 
 the recognized test of manufacturing excellence, we may 
 regard the British depreciation as sufficiently refuted by this 
 impartial tribute to American skill, and may be permitted to 
 omit the enumeration of the hundreds of instances which 
 might be cited of American inventions which have contrib- 
 uted to the boasted cheapness and excellence of the goods 
 turned out by British mills. 
 
 FOREIGN INTERFERENCE. 
 
 I have yet to notice the last chapter of this foreign dictation 
 to the farmers of America, in which a remedy is proposed for 
 their imputed grievances. In replying to that chapter there is 
 no place for argument : it demands nothing else than the utter- 
 ance of that indignation, which is the privilege of every honest 
 
 See note on page 40. 
 
38 
 
 man, for an impertinent meddling with the political institutions 
 of this country unparalleled in our intercourse with the people 
 of other nations. Mr. Lowell, our present excellent minister 
 to England, in his witty essay, “ On a Certain Condescension 
 in Foreigners, ” says, “ Every European candidly : admits in 
 himself some right of primogeniture in respect to us, and pats 
 this shaggy continent of ours on the back with a lively sense 
 of generous unbending.” He shows how Englishmen, 
 Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians manifest their supercili- 
 ousness in various ways, and continues, “ But all, without 
 exception, make no secret of regarding us as the goose bound 
 to deliver them a golden egg in return for their cackling.” 
 We can bear to have our feathers ruffled, and even to be 
 plucked, but there is one thing that Americans, whether pro- 
 tective tariff men or revenue tariff men, will not stand, and 
 that is, an interference with their voting franchise. A noble 
 British peer, proving his nobility by his delicacy, a year or 
 two ago warned the members of the Cobden Club that they 
 might go too far in meddling with the affairs of other nations. 
 But, heedless of this advice, these zealous proselytists do not 
 scruple with easy superiority to instruct American voters “ to 
 give their support to no candidate for a seat in the House of 
 Representatives who does not pledge himself, if elected, to 
 vote for a reduction of five 'per cent , every successive year , on 
 the import duties, till the whole are abolished .” Think of the 
 presumption of this dictation by outsiders to American citi- 
 zens, when not a mill-owner in America would dare to tell his 
 hands how to vote ! “ Boy,” said a city traveller to a Yan- 
 
 kee stripling sunning himself on a country fence, “ Boy, the 
 hogs are getting into your potatoes.” “ W ell, I guess them ’s our 
 hogs,” grinned the boy, without moving. “ But, see, they’ll 
 spoil your whole crop of potatoes.” “Well, I guess they 
 are our taters, too,” retorted the youngster without stirring. 
 That boy was a genuine American: he would bear no outside 
 interference with his affairs, even if they were somewhat out 
 of joint. Indeed, in that matter he was pretty much like the 
 sturdy Britons or the citizens of any self-respecting nation. 
 It is known that affairs have been somewhat uncomfortable in 
 
39 
 
 Ireland, of late. Its people simply have been starving. Some 
 benevolent Americans have visited that country to give the 
 famine-stricken people relief. But this was an intrusion on 
 British franchises; and so, as the foreign papers of a few weeks 
 ago advise us, at a public meeting of five hundred freeholders 
 in a very loyal Irish county, it was unanimously resolved that 
 “ all Americans and others interfering with British institu- 
 tions should be expelled from the country!” 
 
 If such condemnation falls upon our humble philanthro- 
 pists for perhaps too much zeal in their errand of mercy, 
 what measure of indignation on our part is there not due to 
 this club of the first noblemen, gentlemen, and public officials 
 in England, who are pouring their incendiary appeals literally 
 by cart-loads into this country, perpetrating in them towards 
 us what is the deepest of social crimes in England, by kin- 
 dling hatred between the classes and sections of this country,' 
 — inflaming farmers against manufacturers, and the West 
 against the East, — and who are insulting the whole people 
 of this country by denouncing the laws which they have 
 ordained, as “ unjust,” “ oppressive,” “ intolerable,” “ mis- 
 chievous,” “ iniquitous,” “ heavy burdens,” and “ fiscal 
 absurdities ” ? 
 
 Suppose we should turn the tables upon our arrogant ad- 
 visers. Suppose a club should be formed in Washington by 
 our legislators and cabinet ministers, and styling itself “ the 
 Jack Cade Club,” and adopting for its motto the proclama- 
 tion of the famous, or infamous, prototype of communism, 
 “ All the realm shall be in common,” should flood England 
 with tracts denouncing her system of land tenure and her 
 laws of primogeniture, the most sacred and peculiar of British 
 institutions. How would such a warfare on our part differ 
 from that now waged by England upon the peculiar institu- 
 tions of America? 
 
 It is time that the nations of the world should distinctly 
 understand that the protection of American industry is the 
 inexorably fixed policy of the American people. We would 
 have them know that our protective sj'stem, like the blood 
 in the body, is an essential and vital element of our govern- 
 
40 
 
 mental economy, and part of our very marrow as a nation. 
 In the words of Henry Clay, 44 Its cause is the cause of the 
 country. It is founded on the interests and affections of the 
 people. It is native as the granite deeply imbedded in our 
 mountains.” It was the first-fruits of the constitution. It 
 is the legacy of our Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton. 
 And now, as in the political struggle of a presidential cam- 
 paign unrivalled in severity, the protective sentiment of 
 the people is reasserting itself as it did in the times of the 
 fathers, and compelling both parties to bow to its power, it 
 is shown that the counter-breath blown from across the ocean 
 is only fanning into a fiercer flame the fire which may some- 
 times have slumbered but has never been extinguished. 
 
 Note. — That protection increases foreign commerce, both imports and ex- 
 ports, is most remarkably shown by twenty years’ experience under the Morrill 
 tariff, with its complements and improvements, as shown in the following table, 
 compiled from the reports of the Bureau of Statistics, giving the total of all the 
 imports and exports of merchandise by the United States in each fiscal year, 
 from 1861 to 1880 : — 
 
 Fiscal 
 years 
 ending 
 June 30. 
 
 Net imports. 
 Gold value. 
 
 Domestic ex- 
 ports. 
 
 Gold value. 
 
 Total foreign 
 trade. 
 
 Gold value. 
 
 Fiscal 
 years 
 ending 
 June 30. 
 
 Net imports. 
 Gold value. 
 
 Domestic ex- 
 ports. 
 
 Gold value. 
 
 Total foreign 
 trade. 
 
 Gold value. 
 
 Merchandise. 
 
 Merchandise. 
 
 Merchandise. 
 
 Merchandise. 
 
 Merchandise. 
 
 Merchandise. 
 
 1861 
 
 1862 
 
 1863 
 
 1861 
 
 1865 
 
 1866 
 
 1867 
 
 1868 
 
 1869 
 
 1870 
 
 $274,656,325 
 
 178,330.200 
 
 225,375.280 
 
 301,113,322 
 
 209,656,525 
 
 423,470,646 
 
 381,041,764 
 
 344,873,441 
 
 406,555,379 
 
 419,803,113 
 
 $204,899,616 
 
 179,644,024 
 
 186,003,912 
 
 143,504,027 
 
 136,940,248 
 
 337,518,102 
 
 279,786,809 
 
 269,389,900 
 
 275,166,697 
 
 370,616,473 
 
 $479,555,941 
 
 357,974,224 
 
 411,379,192 
 
 444,617,349 
 
 346,596,773 
 
 760,988,748 
 
 660,828,573 
 
 614,263,341 
 
 681,722,076 
 
 796,419,586 
 
 1871 
 
 1872 
 
 1873 
 
 1874 
 
 1875 
 
 1876 
 
 1877 
 
 1878 
 
 1879 
 
 1880 
 
 $505,802,414 
 
 610,904,622 
 
 624,689,727 
 
 559,556.723 
 
 518,846,825 
 
 445,938,766 
 
 438,518,130 
 
 422,895,034 
 
 433,679,124 
 
 656,198,440 
 
 $428,398,908 
 
 428,487,131 
 
 505,033,439 
 
 569,433,421 
 
 499,284,100 
 
 525,582,247 
 
 589,670,224 
 
 680,709,268 
 
 698,340,790 
 
 824,106,799 
 
 $934,201,322 
 1,039,391,753 
 1,129,723,166 
 1,119,990,144 
 1,018,130,925 
 i 971,521,013 
 1,028,188,354 
 1,103,604,302 
 1,132,019,914 
 1,480,305,239 
 
 The foreign trade of 1861 was under the operation of the revenue tariff of 
 1857, with an average rate of duty of nineteen per cent. The foreign trade of 
 1880 was under a tariff, with an average rate of duty of forty-six and three 
 eighths per cent. 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 On page i. — For “among men” read “among nations.” 
 On page 9. — For “number” read “numbers.” 
 
 On page 14. — For “vendor” read “vender.”