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without them. But our age is wholly of a different character, and its legislation takes another turn. Society is full of excitement; competition comes in place of monopoly; and intelligence and industry ask only for fair play and an open field. Profits, indeed, in such a state of things, will be small, but they will be extensively diffused; prices will be low, and the great body of the people prosperous and happy. It is worthy of remark that, from the operation of these causes, commercial wealth, while it is increased beyond calculation in its general aggregate, is, at the same time, broken and diminished in its subdivisions. Commercial prosperity should be judged of, therefore, rather from the extent of trade than from the magnitude of its apparent profits. When the diminution of profits arises from the extent of competition it indicates rather a salutary than an injurious change.

Labor is the great producer of wealth; it moves all other causes. If it call machinery to its aid, it is still employed, not only in using the machinery, but in making it. I cannot find that we have those idle hands of which the chairman of the committee speaks. The price of labor is a conclusive and unanswerable refutation of that idea; it is known to be higher with us than in any other civilized state, and this is the greatest of all proofs of general happiness. Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.

THE TARIFF OF 1828

[PROTECTION AND POLITICS]

Silas Wright [N. Y.] Introduces in the House a Tariff Bill "For the Working up of Domestic Raw Materials"-Debate in the House: Denunciation of Bill by Nathaniel H. Claiborne [Va.], George McDuffie [S. C.], James Hamilton [S. C.], Daniel Turner [Va.], John Randolph [Va.]-Bill Is Passed.

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S had been prophesied by the opponents of the protective features of the tariff of 1824, the manufacturing interests were not satisfied with the duties levied upon the products of their foreign competitors, and soon demanded that they be raised still higher. Thus, in 1826, a petition came to Congress from Boston, praying that the duties on woolen goods be increased, and in 1827 a bill to this effect passed the House but failed to become a law. In July, 1827, a convention of wool growers and woolen manufacturers was held at Harrisburg, Pa. Other interests asked to be admitted, and their request was granted. The convention thus unified all the interests demanding a high tariff, and focused the attention of the country upon the question.

During the congressional session of 1827-28, Silas Wright [N. Y.] introduced a tariff bill, which, as he said, was "intended to turn the manufacturing capital of the country to the working up of domestic raw material, and not foreign raw material." However, its scope was soon broadened far beyond this purpose by the many amendments made to it by the various political, no less than industrial, interests.

After a protracted debate the bill passed in the House by a vote of 105 to 94, and in the Senate by a vote of 26 to 21.

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The speakers in advocacy of the bill, almost without exception, confined themselves to discussing specific schedules, and hence their speeches are of little interest. The opposition, however, was rich in oratorical denunciation of the principle of the bill and its political animus, terming it a "bill of abominations." Among the brilliant speakers from the South who opposed the measure as an act of tyranny toward their section were Nathaniel H. Claiborne [Va.], George McDuffie [S. C.], James Hamilton [S. C.], Daniel Turner [Va.], and John Randolph [Va.].

THE TARIFF BILL

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 5-APRIL 18, 1828

MR. CLAIBORNE dwelt particularly upon the great masses who had abandoned the cultivation of the earth. This occupation, he said, is the primitive and favorite pursuit of man.

When the population has advanced to a point where the soil will not maintain it, the eagle-eyed sagacity of the citizen will open to him the road to such employments as will best maintain him. There is no necessity for the Government to resort to a hot-bed system of legislation, to force into premature existence a number of sickly manufacturing establishments that will want constant aid from the Government. When the population advances to that point, Government has only to afford protection to all, secure to every man, by an even-handed justice, the fruits of his labor, whether that labor is devoted to the cultivation of the earth, the navigation of the seas, or the labors of the loom, anvil, or hammer. Need I go further than our own country for a happy illustration of the results flowing from a system of government founded on the mild and philosophical principle I here advocate? Under their influence we have, from small beginnings, grown up into a great people-worthy the respect of the world. Sir, we must become a great agricultural people— we have a sufficiency of arable land for the accommodation of the people of the present day. Nay, more, for the accommodation of our probable population for five hundred years to

come.

If eventually we must become a manufacturing people, let it be by a slow process.

How long did Great Britain exist as a nation before she

soared to unrivaled excellence in commerce and manufactures? I answer, until her population advanced to that point that the soil could not maintain it; then her manufactures and commerce flourished. Do we expect to maintain, in a moment, that which in older countries has been more than equal to the labor of ages? If manufactures are necessary to our independence, they will grow under existing circumstances.

The history of the tariff in this country deserves some notice. There have been four revisals, and they have invariably been effected by compromise. To break in so frequently on the system, and extend the duties, produces jealousy, dissatisfaction, and strife. It keeps the price of labor and property constantly fluctuating. It unhinges the confidence of the people in your laws, and it disorders the circulating medium of the country. This incessant advance in duties entices people to embark in manufacturing establishments with an impression that the Government will sustain them at all events, and make their labor productive. The course pursued by Congress in 1824 has let to this effort to increase the duties. It will be remembered that that enterprising State, now the most extensively engaged in the woolen manufactures, was then opposed to increased duties on foreign woolens. That State, I am told, is now at the opposite point, and for greater increase. Sir, your legislation seduces your citizens to invest time and money in those establishments; and, unless you take a firm stand, you must end in the Chinese system of exclusion. In 1824 the vote of the Massachusetts delegation encouraged a belief that the manufactures there were then prosperous; the increased duties laid that year seduced very many to invest their capital in woolen manufactures. Many entered into the business, no doubt, with borrowed capital. What followed? That which was to be apprehended: competition was encountered at home and from abroad. The profits, at first large, are reduced and now comes the application for further protection; and no doubt, in my mind, it will be continued until it works a total exclusion.

This system of exclusion I can never agree to; a mutual exchange of commodities, or free commerce, makes the most distant people friends, and converts the universe into a community of brothers.

MR. MCDUFFIE.-Mr. Speaker, it is distressing to witness the kind of aristocratic influence by which measures of this sort are obviously controlled. I have witnessed, with astonishment and regret, as a strong proof of the aristocratic tendency of every system of government, the melancholy fact that intelligent and

honorable men upon this floor, in whose congressional districts there is perhaps a single manufactory of iron, owned by perhaps the very wealthiest man in the country, will give their votes, without the least compunction, to impose an odious and oppressive tax upon the remaining thousands of their poor constituents, to increase the profits of one wealthy nabob.

And yet, sir, we talk about a democratic government and the responsibility of the Representative to the people! I speak not the language of a demagogue, but the grave and solemn language of historical and philosophical truth, when I say that it is the very genius of this system, as exhibited in this and every other country, to tax the many and the poor for the benefit of the few and the wealthy. Take up the articles embraced in the scheme of protection, one by one, and I defy any man to point out a single one of them that does not specifically prove and illustrate the proposition I have laid down. Salt, for example, is an article of first necessity, equally consumed by the poor and the rich. The people of the United States now pay about one hundred per cent. on every bushel of salt they consume, amounting in the aggregate to a tax of at least a million and a half dollars, paid by all classes, for the exclusive benefit of the owners of some one or two hundred salt works at the utmost. The same remark is strictly applicable to the duty on iron. It imposes a universal tax, both heavy and permanent, for the benefit of not more than one or two hundred iron masters in the United States. And I appeal to the members from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Western Virginia, to state whether these men have not accumulated princely fortunes by the very business which we are taxing the people still higher to sustain? I was myself informed by one of those iron masters that the establishment in which he was concerned yielded an annual income of, I think it was, $15,000 or $20,000, and that he could afford to sell iron at ten dollars a ton less than the present prices and do a profitable business. And yet, sir, with all the republican simplicity imaginable, we are imposing a heavy tax upon the whole democracy of the country, to increase the already overgrown fortunes of this single branch of the aristocracy! The high duty on imported sugar is another illustration of the view I am attempting to impress upon the House; and I am induced to notice it the more particularly because it has been urged as a reason why the Southern States generally ought to submit to the proposed imposition of high duties on other articles. Sir, what sort of logic is that which urges the justice of imposing a tax upon South Carolina for the benefit

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