grapes; they seem to grow, not on that thorn, or that thistle, but on the kindred tree and vine.

Well, this presumption is heightened by looking back a little. Duties ran down, in 1841, into the neighborhood of those which you say will give ample protection now. Manufacturing labor ran down too, and pari passu. You raised the duties, by the present law, to their present height. These employments sprung up, too, with an instantaneous and marvellous sympathy. The revival followed so close upon the passage of the law of 1842, it followed so naturally, it was so exactly what was predicted, so exactly what was expected, it was so entirely conformable to all our experience and to all analogy, that we can hardly in the first instance resist the conviction that the law was cause, the revival effect.

Then, I repeat it, the burden is heavy on you, who say that half or any other proportion of the duties of 1842 will give adequate protection, to prove it. This law of 1842 is no new law; it has no new, inflamed, untried rates of protection in it. It is for substance the law of 1828-the law of 1824. It has been twenty years in maturing. It has been constructed with great care; with much labor and much thought; by the aid of much investigation and much evidence. The system which it embodies has been long and thoroughly tried. You have tried it as in 1825, 1829, 1843, by keeping it in force; and you have tried it as in 1820 and 1841, by suffering it to fall. If now you say it is a great blunder, and that it lays duties in any proportion larger than its own objects require, you must prove it.

Well, what are the proofs? Have you any evidence of experienced persons, collected by a committee? Have any witnesses been examined, any opinions taken, any parliamentary inquisition holden? Nothing at all of the sort.

You say, manufactures flourished on the low duties of 1789 and 1807. Why, we might as well be told that antediluvians lived a thousand years. Where is the period from 1789 to 1807? With the days beyond the flood. Why reason from the experience of a world, which neither you nor I shall ever see again? Why not consult the experience of the actual world for which you legislate? You tried low duties in 1816, since the present age began, and you failed. You tried them

in 1841, and you failed again. Is not this experience, decisive and stern, to dispel the delusive dreams, whispered by the irrevocable and inapplicable past? To go back to the protection of 1789, for the prosperity of 1789, is to go back in old age to the place of our birth, to seek for the singing-birds of childhood which now sing no more.

You say some branches of manufactures are earning enormous profits. Well, what then? What does the bill of the Senator from South Carolina thereupon propose? What do the principles of the Senator from Missouri provide for such a case? Do you institute an investigation into the appalling phenomenon, to ascertain whether the fact is so; how long it has been so; what are the temporary and accidental causes; whether the laws of business hydrostatics are not already bringing such profits down to the general level of all employments? Not at all. Do you proceed to reduce the duties on these unreasonably prosperous branches? No such thing. You seize the scythe, and just swing it at large over the whole field of labor, prosperous or unprosperous. Worse than Procrustes, who only pared down the too tall one, you, because one man is longer than the standard, cut the whole regiment in two in the middle. Cottons thrive, say the free-trade newspapers,—and down go the duties on hats! Fustians are lively,

and off comes the shoemaker's protection! Great stories are credibly and anonymously told of large salaries at Lowell; dividends which they are afraid to divide; and calico printing which is making all their fortunes; whereupon, in our zeal, we propose to take off about one third, more or less, of the duties on ready-made clothing! I do not understand the logic of the operation. Here is a building, some seven or ten stories high, with a thousand tenants. You propose to put your hands on the top of it, and press it down, bodily, into the ground about one half way. I humbly suggest the question, whether it is altogether safe for the persons in it? Perfectly so, say you, perfectly so; why do these people want to live seven, eight, ten stories in the air? Well, for them it may be safe, but what becomes of those who inhabit the basement and the ground rooms? They will be stifled to death!

Sir, let me respectfully recommend cautious and delicate handling of these interests. Vast, various, prosperous, as they

are, a breath can unmake them, as a breath has made. This bill strikes a blow, the extent, degree, and nature of whose injurious effect no man can foresee or limit or cure. That which you certainly mean to do, involves consequences which you certainly do not mean. You begin by saying profits are too high. Then you propose to reduce profits. You begin by saying more foreign manufactures must be imported, because you propose to increase revenue by reducing duties. This demands, of course, enlarged importations. To that extent, to a new and undefined extent, you displace, disturb, diminish the domestic market of your own manufacturers. But can you really strike down the general profits and break up the actual market of American labor, and yet leave it prosperous, rewarded, and contented?

I intended, Sir, to have said something on the fallacy of the argument, that when manufactures are so firmly established as to have reduced prices, and made them reasonable, stable, and proportional to other prices, that then you may abolish protecting duties. But this topic has been so well handled by others, and particularly by my colleague, and I have already detained you so long, that I forbear. Let me read a single passage from the same speech of Mr. Calhoun, to which I have referred so much :

"But it will no doubt be said, if they are so far established, and if the situation of the country is so favorable to their growth, where is the necessity of affording them protection? It is to put them beyond the reach of contingency."

I may say, however, in a more general way, that, in the universal judgment of the world, stability, steadiness, the lapse of considerable periods of time, years, years of adequate protection, are required to build up manufacturing and mechanical arts to a consummated and durable prosperity. The policy of caprice will not do it; the policy of high duties to-day and low ones to-morrow; of inflation and collapse, jumping back fifty years, to rock grown men in the cradles of infants - this never will do it. Let me call to your notice a few extracts from the "Monthly Review," London, March, 1844, which convey, I think, a certain and important truth:

"It is to be hoped free trade sophistry will not go so far as to exclaim : England having once brought her manufactures no matter by what

means

- to the utmost degree of perfection, free trade can only prove

her advantage, since foreign competition in her market is out of question in most articles, while her own will be brought to foreign markets free of duty.

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They (the continental statesmen) well know that, as soon as the system of free trade is adopted, all idea must be abandoned of ever establishing manufactories in the present agricultural countries, even for home consumption alone; since it lies in the nature of a manufacturing country to have at command a mass of knowledge, expertness, practice, implements, and machinery, wholesome public institutions and regulations, vast connections and wealth, in all of which agricultural countries are deficient, as they can only be acquired slowly and gradually, through an uninterrupted series of ages, and the possession of which is manifest in the comparative cheapness of the manufactures. It is the principle of stability, continuation, and perseverance, that constitutes the basis of all the great works and institutions realized by the hands of men.

"The history of dynasties, nations, countries, and towns, as well as of the arts and sciences, corroborate the power of that principle. The latter (arts and sciences) have arrived at their present state of development, as the former did at power, riches, and authority, only through the exertions of a series of generations, striving and working to one and the same end, the succeeding generation always taking up the thread where the preceding had left off. By this principle alone was it possible to erect monuments, the stupendousness of which we now admire, even in their decay. To bring their principle more home, inquire of every master mechanic or manufacturer, and he will tell you to how many difficulties and expenses the outset of a contrivance is subject, and how comparatively easy and profitable the more advanced progress is. In looking more attentively into the history of the useful arts, and the various departments of industry, which are now brought to so flourishing a condition, we find that one branch has sprung out of the other, and that the success of one depended on that of the others; in short, that they all mutually influence each other, and that the elements hostile to the principle of stability and continuation such as civil disturbances, critical periods in trade, and fluctuations in prices — have destroyed in a very short time the labor of ages."

Germany is attempting, as we are, to develop her industrial capacities, and is annoyed, as we are, by the selfish and senseless prattle of free trade. I like the good sense and the firmness with which a writer in the "Augsburg Journal" remarks on the honeyed and gilded plausibilities of Dr. Bowring:

"Dr. Bowring deceives himself very much, if it be his belief that Germany desires no better fortune than to be allowed exportation of her corn and wood to England, receiving in return English manufactures. Some few landholders on the Lower Elbe, and some few possessors of forests on the Baltic, may cherish the same hopes, and have expressed the same wishes, as the Doctor.

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Manufactures are plants of slow growth; and in a few years is easily destroyed that which took ages to build. Now or never is the time to found

durably German industrial independence and the greatness of Germany. To this end, it is before all things necessary that the Germans themselves should feel full confidence in the solidity of German industry.

"The more Germany advances on the path of industry which she has adopted, the more decidedly appears the necessity of a determined and changeless duty system, having for its aim the regular advancement of German industry."

Let me say, Mr. President, that it would seem to me no matter of rejoicing or pride to see the absolutism of the European continent attracting and retaining about its steadfast thrones these useful and manly arts, denied to us, yet so much more appropriately and more naturally forming the ornament, strength, and enrichment of popular liberty. Other arts I could give those governments up. I could resign, without a sigh, all the beauty and all the grace that live on canvas. They may have the breathing and speaking marble, for me. I could give them up all the poetry and all the music that ever

consoled a nation for the loss of freedom. But I cannot so far divest myself of the prejudices, if they are such, instilled by the study of the history of the Constitution and of its earlier administration; I cannot so far forget the counsels of so many presidents and great men, the living and the dead; I cannot so far overlook the mighty causes of the wealth and power of nations, as not to feel a profound anxiety that these nobler and manlier arts, these arts which, as Washington thought, guard our independence, insure our security, and clothe and feed our masses; these arts, whose only regulator, whose only patron, whose only reward, is the wants of the people that these arts should be all our own. Whether they shall be or not, depends on the stability and energy of our policy. It depends on you. It depends on the deliberations of this day.

You see, then, Mr. President, that I concur with the distinguished Senator from Missouri in the importance of stability and of harmony,-harmony in the country; stability in the law. They are worth something. They are worth a great deal. But, Sir, without an adequate protection to these forms of labor, you can have no harmony and no stability; and they would not be worth having, if you could. Our seasons of inadequate protection have not been seasons of harmony, because they have not been seasons of prosperity. Such was the period from 1783 to 1789. Such that from 1816 to 1824.

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