therefore certain of collection; while the ad valorem forms, on foreign values, are as certain to be evaded and defrauded.

But, Mr. President, there is another answer to the suggestion that these duties were moderate. Sir, in the actual circumstances of the time, they were entirely sufficient for the protection of the agricultural, navigating, commercial, manufacturing, and mechanical industry, which they were intended to protect. They effected their object perfectly. And when you consider the circumstances, how plain, coarse, hardy, simple, were the existing mechanical manufacturing employments of the country; how unlike the various, refined, and sensitive forms, which in a later age they put on; that they were, very much, manufactures of wood into cabinet-ware, furniture, carriages, and ships; of leather, in tanneries; of iron in blacksmiths' shops; of cloth, from cotton, wool, and flax, chiefly in private families; that they were many of them very far in the interior; that there was not yet a single cotton mill, and perhaps not a single woollen mill, in the country; that thus they exacted no large accumulations of capital, nor high degrees of skill slowly acquired, nor expensive machinery continually changing; and when you consider, too, that England, that all Europe, was just about to rush into the wars of the French revolution, drawing the sword which was never to be sheathed until night should fall on the hushed and drenched field of Waterloo in view of these circumstances, you will not wonder that even these duties were sufficient. The statesmen of that time, Sir, meant to protect domestic labor; they knew how to do it, and they did it. In point of fact, from 1789 to 1808, the progress of manufactures was slow but sure. Then began a new era, of which I will speak in its place.

I think, Mr. President, that it is scarcely necessary to look beyond this survey of the history of the law of 1789, to discover the spirit, principles, and aims, which presided in and framed it. Let me give you, however, a little supplementary evidence to prove that I have not misconceived its essential structure and nature. Hear, first, in what terms Washington could speak of it, and of the subsequent and kindred legislation upon the same policy. In his last Address, in December, 1796, he says, —

"Congress have repeatedly, and not without success, directed their atten

tion to the encouragement of manufactures. The object is of too much consequence not to insure a continuance of their efforts in every way that shall appear eligible. Ought our country to remain dependent on foreign supply, precarious, because liable to be interrupted? If the necessary article should in this mode cost more in time of peace, will not the security and independence thence arising form an ample compensation?"

That great man thought, you perceive, that even if a protective policy should enhance the prices of a time of peace, security and independence were equivalents with which a nation might be content. Sir, we have won the equivalents, and yet we do not pay the compensation. The " necessary article costs" less, not more; yet is our security more absolute, our independence more real, our greatness more steadfast.

See, too, how Mr. Jefferson, in 1802, describes the policy, which, when he wrote, had been pursued from 1789, for thirteen years:

"To cultivate peace and maintain commerce and navigation in all their lawful enterprises, and to protect the manufactures adapted to our circumstances, are (among others) the landmarks by which to guide ourselves in all our proceedings. By continuing to make these the rule of our action, we shall endear to our countrymen the true principles of the Constitution, and promote an union of sentiment and of action equally auspicious to their happiness and safety."

And Mr. Dallas, Secretary of the Treasury, in 1816, in his very able report to congress upon the subject of a tariff of duties, remarks,

"There are few if any governments which do not regard the establishment of domestic manufactures as a chief object of public policy. The United States have always so regarded it. In the earliest acts of congress which were passed after the adoption of the present Constitution, the obligation of providing, by duties on imports, for the discharge of the public debts, is expressly connected with the policy of encouraging and protecting manufactures."

And Mr. Madison, looking back, in 1828, to a scene in which his part had been so conspicuous, says, in his letter to Mr. Cabell: "That the encouragement of manufactures was an object of the power to regulate trade, is proved by the use made of the power for that object, in the first session of the first congress under the Constitution; when among the members present were so many who had been members of the federal convention which framed the Constitution, and of the

state conventions which ratified it; each of these classes consisting also of members who had opposed and who had espoused the Constitution in its actual form. It does not appear, from the printed proceedings of congress on that occasion that the power was denied by any of them. And it may be remarked, that members from Virginia, in particular, as well of the Anti-federal as the Federal party, the names then distinguishing those who had opposed and those who had approved the Constitution, did not hesitate to propose duties and to suggest even prohibitions in favor of several articles of her productions. By one, a duty was proposed on mineral coal, in favor of the Virginia coal pits; by another, a duty on hemp was proposed, to encourage the growth of that article; and by a third, a prohibition even of foreign beef was suggested, as a measure of sound policy."

And now, Mr. President, let me say, passing strange it would have been, if that congress had not made just such a law; had not founded just such a system! Composed as it was, to so large an extent, of members of the convention which had framed the new Constitution, and of the conventions which had adopted it, fresh, all of them, from the people, and intimately familiar with the evils, the fears, and the hopes, of which the recent government was born: the excessive importations; the exhausting drain of specie to pay for them; the mountain weight of debt not yet paid to the foreign manufacturer and mechanic; the depression of labor, the derangement of currency, the decline of trade; penetrated profoundly with the certain knowledge that a leading, a paramount object, held universally in view throughout the great effort, just crowned with success, to frame a new Constitution, was to insure the capacity and the will to extend governmental protection to domestic labor,—such a congress, thus admonished, thus enlightened, could not help making such a law and founding such a system. They would not have dared to go home without doing so! I once, Mr. President, in this place, on a former occasion, and with a dif ferent purpose, attempted to collect and combine, and to exhibit under a single view, the proofs contained in the writings, such as they are, which appeared in this country between the peace of 1783 and the adoption of the Constitution, tending to show that a policy of protection by means of duties on the produc

tions of foreign labor was most prominent among the beneficial instrumentalities which the new government was expected to possess and exert, and among the controlling inducements to its establishment. Those proofs are very numerous; they are very widely scattered over many hundred pages of newspapers and larger periodical publications, and over a space of six years and more, during which the public mind was in a state of unexampled agitation, anxiety, and activity; they consist of essays, addresses, the proceedings of public meetings, and the like; and they are contributed in almost an equal proportion by every part of the country, although the largest number perhaps come from the central States. Taken altogether, and making every allowance for the fact that a great deal of the writing and speech, in which the opinions, hopes, fears, and intentions of that age were embodied, has perished; and that among the opinions and intentions thus expressed, but of whose existence no contemporary record is left, there may have been some of a different character taken altogether, they prove as clearly that a leading, main, prominent purpose of that generation of our fathers was to create a government which could and should protect American labor, by regulating the introduction of the products of foreign labor, by prohibiting them, by subjecting them to duties of discrimination, and by such other policy as the accomplishment of the object should prescribe they prove this as clearly as you can prove out of the Irish newspapers of this day that Catholic Ireland is agitating for repeal. Sir, I shall not trouble the senate with the repetition of all or many of the proofs which I at that time exhibited; but I cannot resist the temptation of reminding you how North Carolina and South Carolina could reason then on the nature and the cure of the evils which bore down the young America to the dust; on the difference between manufacturing abroad and manufacturing at home, the difference to national wealth, to currency, to true and durable public and private prosperity; on the general policy of the protection of American labor, by a more restrained importation of the productions of foreign labor. I read for that purpose, first, a selection or two from certain letters written in North Carolina in 1787, which I find in the American

Museum for August, 1787. The name of the writer is not given, but he sets out by declaring, —

"That his complaints are not occasioned by personal misfortunes; but he finds himself a member of a great family; he interests himself as a brother in the happiness of his fellow-citizens, and he suffers when they are grieved."

The annunciation of his subject marks his fitness to discuss it.

"We are going to consider whether the administration of government, in these infant States, is to be a system of patchwork and a series of expedients whether a youthful empire is to be supported, like the walls of a tottering ancient palace, by shores and temporary props, or by measures which may prove effectual and lasting measures which may im

prove by use and strengthen by age. We are going to consider whether we shall deserve to be a branch of the most poor, dishonest, and contemptible, or of the most flourishing, independent, and happy nation on the face of the earth."

And what do you think is his "measure which is to improve by use, and strengthen by age"? Why, exactly, the encouragement of domestic manufactures, by taxes on foreign manufactures.

"The more I consider the progress of credit and the increase of wealth in foreign nations, the more fully am I convinced that paper money must prove hurtful to this country; that we cannot be relieved from our debts except by promoting domestic manufactures."

Having adverted to the vast accumulation of our foreign debt since the peace, and to the discreditable and startling fact that it had been contracted for numerous articles of necessity which we could better produce, and numerous articles of luxury which we could better dispense with, he proceeds : —

"Let us turn our attention to manufactures, and the staple of our country will soon rise to its proper value, for we have already glutted every foreign market. By this expedient, instead of using fictitious paper, we shall soon obtain hard money sufficient; instead of toiling in the field, and becoming poor, that we may enrich the manufactures of other countries, we shall prosper by our labor, and enrich our own citizens."

"Every domestic manufacture is cheaper than a foreign one, for this plain reason by the first nothing is lost to the country; by the other, the whole value is lost, it is carried away, never to return. It is perfectly indifferent to this State or to the United States, what may be the price of domestic manufactures, because that price remains in the country."