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So long as we can not supply our own wants, and have wherewithal to purchase, and do not buy beyond our means of paying, we are accommodated, at the same time that we pay these foreign taxes; for, in any case, we pay them for all we consume of foreign products. But in all that we are capable of supplying our own wants, under a system of protection, and yet, for lack of protection, are compelled to depend on foreign producers, nearly the whole amount of such expenditures is not only absorbed in systems of foreign taxation, but it is a positive tax to the country, while no party or person in it is benefited. Many, it may be thousands, or tens of thousands, are of course injured-deprived of their rights, and in a greater or less degree impoverished—inevitably incurring a negative loss, by not being able to acquire what they otherwise could, and are entitled to.

But we have not even yet arrived at the points of this argument which are of the greatest force, and which are most strikingly illustrative of the great truth which we are now endeavoring to make apparent. None, it is believed, can fail to appreciate the demonstration for such is the character of the proof-presented in the above examination of the secretary's project for the tariff of 1846. It can not but be seen that the plan there laid out for increased importations is not only identical with a scheme of foreign taxation, to a very great amount, even for twenty millions of people, but that it is, at the same time, a plan for the suppression of so much American industry and labor, which is an aggravation of the case. But, in order to have a more full appreciation of the natural and necessary results of this plan, it will be useful to recur to our history of imports and exports from the earliest date, as well as to the evidence displayed in the foregoing statements of the foreign taxes which this country paid from 1821 to 1845; though it is admitted that they were not all necessarily, or of course, a burden; and that, for a portion of that period, and for a part of this amount through the whole, they were an accommodation; that is, so far as the imports supplied wants which we could not ourselves supply, and so far as we were protected against excessive importations which we were not able to pay for, and the burden of which broke down the country.

The history of our imports and exports, as furnished by the public (treasury) documents, does not go farther back than 1791, which is sufficient, and is very instructive on this point-instructive in itself, in the contrast of its columns of imports and exports, and in

its exhibition of the fluctuations of excess, one over the other; and still more instructive as compared with the history of British imports and exports. It appears from Anderson's Commercial History of Great Britain, that from 1700 to 1787, there was not a single year when the exports did not exceed the imports; and that the aggregate excess or balance of exports over imports, for this period, was £289,321,713; or $1,400,317,090. Since 1787, the balance has also been uniforinly on the side of exports, but greatly in excess of the former period, and that excess constantly auginenting. In a report of the American Institute, New York, 1844, on "the commercial intercourse of the United States and Great Britain," they say :—

"The total value of exports and imports of Great Britain and Ireland for three successive years was as follows:

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Balance in favor of Great Britain, £149,767,136, or an annual average of £49,822,378, equal to $237,227,414." This statement is manifestly too large, arising, probably, by taking the valuation established in 1694, instead of finding the "declared value."

We find in M. Say the following passage on this point: "The returns of British commerce, from the commencement of the eighteenth century down to the establishment of the existing papermoney of that nation [the bank-of-England suspension, in 1797], show a regular annual excess, more or less, received by Great Britain, in the shape of specie, amounting altogether to the enormous total of £347,000,000 sterling."

The commercial history of the United States, as appears from our public (treasury) documents, is a remarkable contrast even to Anderson's tables. From 1791 to 1845, inclusive, there was an excess of exports over imports only for eleven years of this period, the aggregate of which was $79,545,660; whereas, the aggregate excess of imports over exports, for the other forty-four years, was $798,505,146; making an aggregate balance of imports over exports, for the whole fifty-five years, of $718,959,486.

It is not less instructive to observe when and from what apparent causes the balances in favor of the country have occurred, small as they are, compared with the other side. The first favorable balance

we find, is one of a little less than eight millions, in 1811, the year before the war. It was after a protracted period of unfavorable balances, running back to 1791, the first year of any official statements on the subject; of course running back into the years of the confederation, worse yet; and into the colonial history, the worst of all.

For the six years immediately preceding 1811, the amount of balance against the country was upward of $140,000,000. The country at this time was, therefore, much exhausted, poor, without credit, and the small excess of exports over imports, in 1811, was the natural result of the obligation, and of an effort, to make remittances for foreign demands. The next (second) excess of exports over imports was a little less than $6,000,000, in 1813, in the midst of the war, when our imports were only twenty-two millions, reduced in 1814 to thirteen millions. The major part of our commerce, as may be supposed, was then carried on in neutral bottoms; and the excess of exports in 1813 was more than counterbalanced in 1814, when the exports were only seven millions against thirteen millions of imports. After a lapse of seven years from this time-years of an immense excess of imports, amounting in the aggregate to upward of $190,000,000-there was another small excess of exports in 1821, a little in excess of two millions of dollars; another in 1825, of three millions; another in 1827, a little less than three millions; and another in 1830, also less than three millions. These, of course, were but of small amount against the large excess of imports running along the same period of about ten years. From 1830 to 1840, the aggregate excess of imports over exports, was $224,000,000, which had so much impoverished the country, and run it so much in debt, that it had no credit abroad to buy with. As a natural consequence, the exports in 1840 present a larger excess over imports, than in any other year of our history, being a little less than $25,000,000, half of which, at least, was required to pay interest on foreign debts, contracted in the nine previous years. In 1841, there was another excess of imports, $6,000,000. But from that time, under the tariff of 1842, till it was repealed in 1846, the balances were all, and uninterruptedly, in favor of the country, amounting, for the years 1842 to 1845, inclusive, to upward of $29,000,000.

The heaviest balances of imports against the country, are found, either at a period of the disturbance of our foreign relations, or at periods of low duties. The first heavy balance of $32,000,000, was in 1791, before the country was fairly rescued, by the opera

tion of the new constitution, from the Free-Trade period of the confederation. During the disturbance of our foreign relations, from 1804 to 1812, the year that war was declared, there were also some heavy balances against us: In 1805, $24,000,000; in 1806, $27,000,000; in 1807, $29,000,000; in 1808, $34,000,000; in 1810, $18,000,000; and in 1812, $38,000,000. The first two years after the peace, the balances against us, for want of adequate protection, were very great: In 1815, $60,000,000; and in 1816, $65,000,000. Though much abated, the next three years brought an aggregate balance against us, of upward of $50,000,000. From that time, the balances against us, were comparatively light, and some years in our favor, as above noticed, till the protective system was disturbed and impaired, in 1833, when the balances against us began again, and soon rose to a fearful and ruinous amount: In 1833, it was 18,000,000; in 1834, $22,000,000; in 1835, $28,000,000; in 1836, $61,000,000; in 1837, $23,000,000; in 1838, $5,000,000; and in 1839, $41,000,000; making an aggregate balance against us, in seven consecutive years, without interruption or relief, of $198,000,000.

According to the premises before laid down, three fourths at least of this aggregate balance against us, that is, $148,500,000, was a positive tax on the people of the United States, for the support of foreign powers, and for the impoverishment of this country, all paid, drawn from us, in seven years, or consolidated into foreign debts, to be paid thereafter, with interest. The whole of it, indeed, was a tax on the country, and much more, all of which an adequate protective system might and should have barred. It was in our power, under a well-adjusted and well-sustained protective policy, to have supplied from among ourselves, all this excess of imports over exports—or all that was wanted, for we then really imported much more than was wanted, in the prodigality of wastefulness; and we could have supplied it at lower rates, and in better articles. When the breaking down of the protective system, effected by the policy of that period, and all its disastrous, ruinous consequences to the industry, labor, and capital of the country, are considered, this loss of $198,000,000, does not by any means measure the injury done to the country. It is enough, however, for our present argument, that the people of the United States actually paid the taxes imposed by foreign governments, in one form and another, on the products purchased with this $198,000,000, amounting to not less than $148,000,000, without a single penny's worth of

equivalent; with great additional loss, indeed, in the general putback of the country, as to the use and application of its capital and labor. And they paid this tax to foreign powers in seven years, or became indebted for it, and paid afterward, and are still payingfor it is not all paid even yet. And yet all these goods might have been produced at home, cheaper and better; and all the American labor and capital that should have produced them, were deprived of so much employment, and suffered for want of it-were themselves compelled to buy these very things, and pay for them, sending their money abroad, instead of using it at home to increase their own and the public wealth. Was it not a tax?

Nor is this the end of the reckoning. It is a pity, indeed, that we have no colonial commercial records, of an official character, to instruct us on this point; for those must have been disastrous times, which so exasperated the people, and at last goaded them on to rebellion. And it is worthy of note here, that they were troubles, hardships, oppressions of this very kind-originating from this sole cause, to wit, by forcing the colonists to purchase their articles of manufacture from the mother-country, and thus to pay her taxes. It is a pity, too, that we have no official records of the commercial history of the states under the confederation, which would be full of instruction on the subject now under consideration. By such means, we should be able to show, in figures, how the money and the wealth of the colonies, and afterward of the states, before the constitution was adopted, were drawn from the country, for want of Protection, to enrich foreign parts, and strengthen foreign powers. But we can only begin with 1791, from which date, down to 1845, a showing has already been made, from public documents, of the commercial balances of the country, in its trade with foreign parts. A glance has been taken at the commercial history of Great Britain, in the same aspects, beginning with the year 1700. It has been seen what that is, and what a contrast is presented in the commercial history of the United States: The former always drawing in balances in her favor, from the wide world, never failing, and for ever increasing in amount; while the United States is almost always losing almost always making sacrifices. From 1791 to 1845, inclusive, the aggregate balance against this country, resulting from its foreign trade, as certified by. public official records, is $718,959,486. Three fourths of this at least, as already shown, or $539,236,604, was a tux on the people of this country, which they have been forced to pay to foreign pow

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