746

H. OF R.]

The Tariff Bill-Woollens.

policy?

APRIL, 1824.

The power to regulate commerce was never designed to authorize its destruction, or preIt may be, and often is, scribe its channels. necessary to suspend it by embargo, for a time, as the most efficient mode of protection; bui the interests of agriculture or manufactures cannot be improved by continued restrictions on commerce.

their industry in those pursuits to which their | put on the tattered garments of an exploded own good judgment, or their natural advantages, their education, and their skill, are best adapted; but the farmer must leave his plough, and the sailor his ship, and the merchant his counting house, and be immured within the walls of large manufacturing establishments; that your agrimust become culture and your commerce tributary to manufactures; that agriculture, the mother, and commerce, the elder sister, must be sacrificed to the ambition of manufactures, the younger sister, the miss in her teens. This is the new, this is the grand system of policy, which you propose to force upon the good people of these United States.

What will be the effect of imposing heavy duties on the produce and manufactures of other countries, but retaliation, by similar, or perhaps even higher duties on our productions in their ports, which will drive us entirely from their Sir, you will soon find your impotence and markets, and turn the channel of their trade to your weakness in this attempt. The people are other countries, for those supplies which we yet your masters, although you may think them can furnish in abundance? And, while we are your slaves. Before you can effect this great destroying our commerce, in the wretched atchange in the leading policy of the country, tempt to foster our manufactures by law, Europe I am will monopolize the whole trade with the South you must first make the people slaves. well aware, if you could carry your new sys-American States, and we shall find, to our cost, tem of policy into full and complete effect, the that there is no foreign market for our manpeople would soon become slaves; the genius ufactures, which have been nursed with so much care in this hot-bed system; but we must be and spirit of your Government would be entirely changed; the equal distribution of prop- compelled to use our own manufactures, and erty, on which alone a free government can agriculture must pay the increased price, and long exist, and the independent spirit of our make up the deficiency in our revenue, while hardy_yeomanry, would soon be destroyed; the produce, as well of agriculture as manufac your Government changed into a purse-proud tures, will be confined to home consumption. aristocracy, and your population become lords I ask, will this increase your wealth and your independence? Will this furnish a market for Will this encourage and tenants. your surplus produce? domestic industry?

But this you cannot effect. Any attempt to force the people of these States into this silkworm policy, by the magic power of your tariff bills, will prove abortive. Their habits are too deeply rooted. The great variety and fertility of soil, the immense extent of territory, and the ocean which washes nearly three thousand miles of your coast; the majestic navigable rivers which, like the grand arteries in the human body, flow from the heart of your country to the ocean, speak a language which cannot be misunderstood, and never will be disobeyed; you must, and will, be a great agricultural and commercial nation, in spite of all your legislation.

You may, by your restrictions, embarrass and fetter their enterprise for a short period; you may legislate them into adversity, but it is impossible to legislate a people into prosperity.

The greatest degree of national and individual wealth is obtained by permitting labor, skill, and capital, to find their own employment and investment unshackled, and encourage a free and unrestricted trade. Every attempt of Government to direct or regulate the employment of capital, or enterprise, is mischievous. The only object of a wise Government should be, to remove obstructions to the free use of capital and industry. The politicians of Great Britain have become sensible of the truth of this position, and are receding from the system of arbitrary dictation and restrictions, and shall we now plunge into it? Shall we, at this time,

Commerce has afforded you about $400,000,Will your manufacturers, 000 of revenue! without a foreign market, be able to supply the deficit of duty on imports? Can you collect twenty millions of dollars annually from manufactures, even if you could transform all your hardy seamen and farmers into spinners and weavers?

Your manufacturing interest generally, even now, is less depressed than your agriculture and commerce, when skilfully and prudently managed. What stronger evidence of this fact can there be, than that manufactur ing capital is rapidly increasing? You have already afforded protection to this branch of industry, equal to nearly 40 per cent. on the cost of your fabrics; and if, with this bounty, they cannot compete with foreign manufactures, at home, I think it would puzzle the ingenuity of that gentleman, aided by the whole host of professional gentlemen, to show how our manufactures are to find a fair competition in foreign markets, when you add to the original cost the freight and insurance to a foreign market.

In our country, sir, every branch of lawful industry is entitled to an equal portion of your Your tariff fostering care, and has a right to demand equal protection from the Government. bill, by taxing one interest for the encourage ment of another, operates as a bounty, which lays every other interest under contribution for the support of the manufacturer, and, is, therefore, unequal and unjust; it taxes the many for

the support of a few. As a general principle, the perfect freedom of trade or commerce, which is the interchange of commodities, should never be restricted or burdened, except for the necessary purpose of revenue, in the benefits of which every portion of the community is interested; and by universal consent, every well-regulated Government has resorted to it.

The policy of England, which the gentleman has taken as a model for his new American policy, is quoted by the advocates of this bill to prove its utility, and the necessity of adopting this new system of political economy.

[H. OF R.

I ask any member of this committee if he has seen any such picture of extreme distress in this country? A gentleman from Pennsylvania, (Mr. BROWN,) on the subject of iron, indeed, told us, he had seen a sheriff hovering about his iron works, and probably, the iron was hot; but I did not understand him to say that any of the owners or workmen were starving for want of bread; or that there was any insurrection or rebellion against the laws; or that the bloody scenes of Manchester were exhibited in the State founded by the peaceful Penn. That the golden days of our prosperity have continued unclouded to the present time, no one will claim. The whole civilized world has received a shock by the sudden transition from a state of universal war to universal peace. The best remedy is repose; universal languor and lassitude is the natural effect which is uniformly produced by violent exercise, and unusual excitement in the human body, and rest and quiet repose are indispensable to restore the system. Apply the same principle to the body politic, and its effects will be found equally salutary.

Sir, it is much to be regretted that this subject is not better understood. Her wisest statesmen deprecate that policy, to which they have been driven by necessity, in order to meet the enormous expenses incurred in her long-protracted continental wars. Her system of bounties, and drawbacks of excise, which some of our knowing ones seem to admire, and to consider as the true philosopher's stone, the magic wand which has produced her great wealth, is nothing but the miserable effect of her otherwise ruinous system of restriction; and the gentleman might have found the table of the British Parliament groaning under the petitions of her suffering subjects, painting in colors equally glowing with his own description of imaginary distress in this happy country, and signed by ten times the number of half-starved victims which have been obtained by hawking petitions about our country for signatures. Her system is a mere opiate to relieve extreme distress-atures. dose of poisonous or noxious drugs to counteract a raging disease, and the temporary relief, afforded by this violent remedy, has been mistaken by some of our political doctors as evidence of perfect health in the body politic.

I cannot, I will not believe that the zealous admirers of British policy; the warm advocates of this wonderful tariff bill-this patent medicine, which is to cure all diseases, really intended to hazard the operation of this "nostrum" as a mere experiment upon the healthy, youthful, and vigorous constitution of our infant country, merely to test its effects; that they mean to produce disease merely to show their skill in curing the patient. No, sir; gentlemen, in my humble opinion, have been deceived by the visionary dreams of pamphleteers and political quacks, who have inundated this country with their "specifics" and "nostrums;" who have conjured up imaginary scenes of distress, borrowed, perhaps, from novels, or the effusions of a fervid imagination in painting scenes of distress in other countries to which we are total strangers; or, perhaps, merely for the mercenary purpose of finding a catch-penny market for their books, by the relation of horrid tales, made up to frighten old women or credulous children:-like the story of the "Jersey dancers, who were represented as having danced their feet off to the fiddle of the Arch Deceiver, and were left dancing on the stumps of their legs after the feet were worn off."

Every interest in our country is gradually recovering from the shock which has affected every class of our citizens; and if the officious interference of misguided legislation does not prevent it, our agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, will soon find their proper place on a peace establishment. Your tariff of 1816 was intended to afford relief to your manufac

It did, like the British policy, afford a temporary relief; but its effects are still visible on our commerce, and sensibly affects and injures our agriculture; and, at this moment, and for more than three years past, has depressed our manufactures by restrictions imposed on our commerce. For, let me assure gentlemen, that manufactures can no more exist and flourishi without commerce, than animal life can be sustained without air.

Agriculture is the first and noblest employment of man. On this we depend for subsistence. It is the mother of commerce, and all the useful arts. With the increase of population, commerce, or an interchange of commodities of necessity, springs into being, because the variety of soil and climate produces a variety of the fruits of the earth adapted to our conveniences and our wants, and manufactures of different kinds spontaneously grow up to meet the necessary demands of both agriculture and commerce. The mere exchange of commodities with our neighbors-the passing of an article from hand to hand, requires but little aid from manufactures; but the labor of many artists is required to, build the ship to carry on commerce with foreign nations; and I believe I may safely say, that ship-building, at this moment, employs more native American citizens than all the manufactories of the country.

From this view of the subject, it must be clear, that any attempt to build up manufactures on any other foundation than agriculture

H. OF R.]

The Tariff Bill-Woollens.

and commerce, or upon the ruins of either of these great interests, would be as absurd and preposterous as to attempt to build a house on a soap bubble. What has supported the manufactures of Great Britain-what the manufactures of India, but their commerce with the whole civilized world? The amount of supplies always has been, and always will be, regulated by the demand. Commerce is the great artery through which the blood flows to the extremities, which returns with supplies through the veins again to the heart, and gives life and energy to the whole system. It is truly the vis vita of the system.

[APRIL, 1824. argument, to convince us that the bloody scenes at Manchester among the starving manufacturers, or the famine and distress in Ireland, furnish the best evidences of prosperity and happiness, or induce our people to adopt their policy, or excite a wish to exchange conditions.

But, sir, in the same speech in which the gentleman has recommended the adoption of this system of encouraging manufactures by restrictions on commerce, he has, if I understood him correctly, declared himself "the firm friend of a free commerce, upon the principles of perfect reciprocity." The propositions made by him, in committee, for the benefit of the whiskey trade, of an increased duty on molasses of 100 per cent., which must entirely destroy the trade with the West Indies, or impose a heavy tax on the laboring poor, I do not feel myself bound to reconcile with his argument. The gentleman has expressed his extreme

The gentleman has told us there are two classes of politicians in this country-the one devoted to foreign policy, who would lay duties on imports only for the purpose of revenue, and has attempted to prove (with what success we shall probably see hereafter) that this policy actually encourages the industry and manufac-mortification, on looking at a book lately pubtures of foreign countries to the injury of our lished in England, in which the writer states, own. Sir, it would have been very gratifying "that Great Britain enjoys a more profitable to the committee, I presume, if the gentleman trade with the United States, since their indehad told us what country had adopted this pendence, than when they were colonies." Sir, policy, except our own, previous to the tariff of this would not be the first time in which par1816. The other class, to which he professes to ticular and detached parts of a work have been belong, and which he is pleased to style the quoted, in support of particular tenets, or preAmerican policy, would adopt the system of conceived opinions, if such were the case here; restrictions and prohibitions which Bonaparte which, however, I will not believe was deattempted to enforce against Great Britain, as signed in this instance. But, sir, if the gentlethe last desperate effort to distress his invete- man had read the whole work, in my opinion, rate enemy, and which he then called the Con- he would have found stronger grounds for extinental Policy of Europe-a system of entire ultation and national pride, than for "mortifiexclusion and prohibition of British manufac- cation." The writer has endeavored to recontures on the Continent of Europe, while at the cile the British nation to the loss of the colovery same time, the boasted "Army of Eng-nies, by proving that she has enjoyed a better land," as he then styled it, was clad in British manufactures. Spain, poor degraded Spain, has tried this same system of restrictions and prohibitions, until she has sunk from the lofty station which she once held in the scale of nations to her present condition, but a small remove from colonial vassalage. England, in time of war, has resorted to it, for the purpose of extorting from every class a heavy contribution. And now, sir, we are told this is the new discovered, true American policy-lay prohibitory duties on imports from foreign countries; destroy your commerce, which has furnished your whole revenue; prevent the export of any of your produce by prohibiting the import of any thing in return; prohibit any interchange of commodities with foreign nations: and all this to find a market for our surplus produce, and for our domestic manufactures!

trade with us, as an independent nation, than she ever did, or ever could have enjoyed, if these United States had remained British colonies. He contrasts our present condition with that of the colonies; paints, in glowing colors, our prosperity; and recommends the entire abandonment of the colonial policy, and that Canada should become also independent, because she now costs the mother country more than she is worth.

The tariff of 1816, avowedly supported on the same principle of giving a spring to domestic industry, and encouraging our infant manufactures, as the present tariff bill, has been in full operation for seven years; and if the picture of distress so ably drawn by the gentleman, be a fair representation, we should sup pose that gentlemen would be more disposed to abandon it, than to increase the evils, by exThe gentleman highly extols the British tending this system of American policy. One policy, (which he will claim as American,) petition, from Delaware, contains much useful because the enormous amount of taxes paid instruction on this subject: "The duties on in England furnishes strong evidence of her low-priced cottons, amounting nearly to prohiprosperity and ability to pay! I strongly bition, have created such competition in the suspect the American people are not very manufacture of this article, it cannot be manuambitious of showing evidence of their pros-factured to a profit ;" and they pray Congress perity in the same way, by the amount of taxes they can pay. Besides, sir, it will require a long course of instruction, and strong

to increase the duty on the finer cottons, for the purpose of turning some part of the capital now employed in coarse cottons to the manu

APRIL, 1824.]

The Tariff Bill-Woollens.

facture of fine cottons, or to some other employment. The only answer I can give this, is, if this has been the effect "in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?" While you still have some commerce remaining, and these coarse cottons find their way to South America, what will be the condition of these, and all other manufactures, when your commerce is destroyed?

[H. OF R.

of the restrictive system of embargo and nonintercourse, and finally of war with Great Britain, had induced our citizens to engage deeply in commerce. From the year 1790 to 1805, this country enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity; perhaps no nation on earth ever increased so rapidly in wealth; our commerce literally covered the ocean, and our flag waved over every sea. Our surplus agricultural products found a ready market, and industry received a rich re-. ward; we feasted and fattened on the distresses of others.

Perhaps, sir, this should be called the American policy. It is the policy which has been adopted in our country, in relation to banks, which by this time must be tolerably well un- In this situation the war of 1812 found us. derstood in some parts of our country. You The immense amount of capital which had now propose to adopt the same policy in rela- been employed in commerce, readily found a tion to manufactures. Sir, in my opinion, call profitable investment in manufactures, and durit by what name you will, it is a ruinous policy. ing the short period of war received a profit The gentleman tells us the present system fully equal to its previous investment-the operates unequally; some portions of the coun- enormous price of our own manufactures lured try suffer greater distress than others. And the cupidity of avarice to vest a large amount how does he propose to remedy this evil? By of capital in large manufacturing estalishments. making the others suffer as much! Are we to The sudden and unexpected peace of 1815 engage in the unprofitable contest which can found many of these establishments just comdo the other most harm? Would it not be bet-mencing; extensive and very expensive build-ter to adopt a liberal system of policy, insteadings had been erected; and the cost of maof further restrictions, and leave industry, en- chinery in many instances had absorbed the terprise, and capital, free from any unnecessary | whole capital, and the speculator depended on restraint? Each portion of the country would then prosper in proportion to their natural advantages, and their industry and economy.

The gentleman has endeavored to prove that our agriculture and commerce are languishing, by a paper calculation, showing that our exports have not increased in proportion to our population. Such a calculation is as deceptive as the estimates of the "balance of trade against us;" because we sold our produce in a foreign market, for more than it cost at home, which was much relied on by the friends of a former tariff, but seems now to be abandoned. If the labor of one man is capable of producing sustenance for one hundred, does it follow, that if our population has increased ten-fold, that the foreign demand must increase in the same ratio?

the promised profits, in a very short period, to reimburse the expense, and convert this temporary loan into active, solid capital; and in the mean time the farmer found a ready market for his produce. But the peace blasted the fond hopes of the speculator, and destroyed the home market for the produce of the agriculturist.

Under these circumstances, strong appeals were made to Congress for relief; and the tariff of 1816 was the remedy prescribed by the wisdom of Congress; it had its effect in affording a temporary relief; but here, sir, in my humble opinion, commenced the error in our system. I would ask the candid attention of every sound politician to this point: If, at the time of adopting the tariff of 1816, the internal duties had been continued for one year, and the But, sir, we have been told that our com- tariff limited to two years, whether many of merce is already destroyed, and therefore this the present evils would not have been avoided? bill cannot injure it. But does your receipts Your manufactures had been nursed in a hotfrom imports prove this? From whence do bed; they had sprung into existence as if by you derive twenty millions of dollars revenue? magic; they were tender plants, and should It is true, your agriculture and your commerce have been exposed carefully to the open air. languish, even more than your manufactures; But your tariff induced further investments, every interest is in some degree depressed; and which the fate of this country and the state of what is the cause? It is necessary to ascertain the world would not warrant; but they were the true cause to enable you to apply the proper built on your tariff alone, and you still hold remedies. Several causes have combined to out further inducements to manufacturing capproduce this result. The enjoyment of the ital, by the continual promise of further legiswhole carrying trade for the belligerents of lative aid, while your foreign commerce, and Europe, during the long Continental war, from of course your agricultural interests, are lanthe commencement of the French revolution guishing under your restrictive system; and until the jealousy of Great Britain towards our with your manufacturing interest, if you purrising commerce, and the inveterate hostility of sue this American policy, will constantly beFrance against England, produced the famous come more and more embarrassed, as you inOrders in Council and French decrees, which crease manufactures, while at the same time almost swept our commerce from the ocean, you are gradually destroying their market by and which produced on our part the adoption | your restrictions on trade.