of showing what that design is. This is the first time, in the history of tariffs, that an attempt has been made to prove a tariff a revenue measure, in the theory of law and the constitution. In doing that, the honest way would be to drop the name, which has ever been held to signify a different thing, and which was devised for a different purpose. Honesty, indeed, would require more than this. For, if all the original and long-continued objects of a tariff are to be abandoned; and if it be indeed true, as Free Trade asserts, that all duties are taxes up to their specific amount, it is a very great injustice to the people to add to these taxes the immense tax of the customhouse system, by sustaining all its machinery and offices. If the doctrines of Free Trade be true, every customhouse in the land should be closed as soon as possible, and the system should be forthwith abandoned. It is a very expensive system, if there is no power in it—as the protective policy avers there is—to sustain itself. According to the theory of Free Trade, the people ought to be relieved from this burden, and a system of direct taxation, to support the government, and supply its wants, ought to be substituted. If the people can have an intelligent belief in Free Trade, it is impossible they should not also see that it will be much lighter, and much more just to all parties, for every one to be fairly assessed on his property for all the requirements of the public treasury. The chief burden of supporting the government would then fall where it ought-on the rich. There can be no apology, according to the doctrines of Free Trade, for continuing a tariff, as a mere revenue measure; for no system of taxation could be more unjust in itself, besides the injustice of imposing on the people the superfluous, heavy, and oppressive expenses of the customhouse system.

But it has been proved in this work, over and again, in a variety of forms, that protective duties are not taxes; and that, if properly adjusted, they will not only support the government, in a time of peace, and defray all the expenses of the customhouse system, which is a part of government; but that it will rescue us from a grievous system of foreign taxation; be of incalculable benefit to all sections and to all parties, rich and poor, of the country; sustain the currency and make it abundant; give employment and good wages to all kinds of labor; and contribute to the wealth of the nation, in a manner and degree that can not be easily estimated : while Free Trade, as all our experience, also abundantly cited in this work, proves, would produce directly the contrary effects in

all these particulars. The original and legitimate object of a tariff, especially in the United States, is "to regulate commerce with foreign nations"-an express authority of the constitution—so as best to secure the interests of the country and of the people, as above specified-especially the interests of labor, which is the soul and body of all wealth; whereas, the object of obtaining revenue by a tariff was originally, has ever been till now, secondary and purely incidental. If the protective principle is to be abandoned, it is obvious that the only honest course is to abandon with it, altogether, the customhouse system. Without protection, it is a useless expense, and a heavy additional tax.

Nothing could exceed the confusion and derangement which the principle of this "revenue-standard" theory, reduced to practice, would occasion to the interests and business of the country, because that rate of duty on a specific article which would raise the most revenue, when imposed, would, almost invariably, by its operation, require to be changed every year-often every six months-to accomplish the same object. It would, indeed, if carried thoroughly into execution, in a very short time, most seriously derange, if not break up a vast many of the most important interests of the country, besides the injurious effects it must have on all others, by an indissoluble connexion and sympathy.

A common error, both of the secretary and of the president, in carrying out their "revenue-standard" theory, seems to have been in assuming, that every duty on articles of desired home production, is protection. This is an important practical error, and has given rise to the false notion of "incidental protection," when, in fact, there can be no such thing as incidental, that is not positive, protection. On this point, the president says, in his message of Dec. 2, 1845: "If Congress levy a duty for revenue, of one per cent., on a given article, it will produce a given amount of money to the treasury, and will incidentally and necessarily afford protection or advantage to the amount of one per cent., to the home manufacturer of a similar or like article, over the importer." The entire fallacy of this doctrine of "incidental protection" will be seen at once, when it is considered that the ability of the home-producer to begin and to sustain himself against foreign competition, depends altogether on his having adequate and positive protection, which is rarely, if ever, as low as one per cent.; may be five, or twenty, or fifty, or one hundred, or two hundred per cent. But he can never begin, and can never sustain himself, till he has a positive protec

tion, equal to the ability of the foreign producer to undersell him in his own market. This idea, therefore, of "incidental protection," is a perfect fallacy-a positive deception. There never wasthere never can be any such thing, measured out in the way the president proposes, as if it could be effective for the degree specified, when it fails to be adequate. And yet-strange to say-this phantom is the only basis on which the president and secretary build their scheme of protection for the people. It is the only protection that is proffered to their hopes in the tariff of 1846. The Pennsylvanians are favored with an "incidental protection," not of one, but of thirty per cent., on iron and coal. Is that protection? So of a vast many interests of the country-an "incidental protection" to their ruin. Just enough to miss it.

The rule of minimum duties is, that a given kind of goods, or merchandise, valued at or below a given price, shall be assessed with a specific duty at that price; as for example: "Manufactures of cotton, not dyed, colored, printed, or stained, not exceeding in value 20 cents per square yard, shall be valued at 20 cents per square yard," for the assessment of an ad-valorem duty of 30 per cent., as under the tariff of 1842.

There has been a most inexcusable ignorance or dishonesty, in the reasonings of the advocates of Free Trade, on the effect of minimum duties. With some, it seems to have been ignorance; and charity would lead us to suppose it has been so with most. The secretary of the treasury, in his annual report of December, 1845, says: " If any discrimination should be made, it should be the reverse of the minimum principle, by establishing a maximum standard, above which value the duties on the finer article should be higher, and below which they should be lower on the cheaper article." He argues that by the minimum rule, the rich are favored at the expense of the poor; or that there is a partiality in favor of the former, and against the latter; and at first sight, as an ad-captandum argument, it would seem plausible. But it is demolished by proof of the fact that these protected articles of manufacture are cheapened by protection. The secretary, through either ignorance or design, fails to consider how this minimum rule operates on prices of the articles, in consideration of the different state of the manufacturing arts in this country and in Europe, when the rule was established, and that as soon as the minimum duty becomes prohibitory, the consumer here is rescued from a system of foreign taxation, and has all the benefit of a vigorous home competition,

that gives him these articles, which are covered by the minimum duties, cheaper than he could have got them from abroad, if the home producer had not been encouraged to provide them by protection. It is on the lower degrees of the scale of prices, that American arts, under adequate protection, first overtake and outstrip the European arts; and the system of minimum duties, gradually ascending the scale, enables American arts to rise with them, and as fast as they rise, in perfection and vigor, they cheapen prices; so that the poorer classes have the first and largest benefit of this influence; and they have it chiefly because and when the minimum duties become prohibitory.

There is a most inexcusable statement in the same report of the secretary on this subject, which is the more important, as it constitutes one of the chief elements of his reasoning, and that of others of his school. In the same manner as British factors were introduced into a committee-room of Congress, in the winter of 1845-'6, and invited to display their goods, in order to show how much better it would be for the American people to buy than to make them, so Mr. M'Kay, chairman of the committee of ways and means, in framing his report (house document, No. 306, 1st session, 28th Congress), thought proper to fortify one of his positions by citing a price current published in Manchester, England, by Stewart, Thompson, and Lay, January 31, 1843. The price of "stouts or domestics," an imitation of a species of American cotton goods, was there given, with the additional statement, that they had to pay 100 per cent. duty in entering the United States, under the minimum rule. The secretary of the treasury, eagerly catching at this information found in Mr. M'Kay's report of the preceding Congress, as it suited his purpose, and taking for granted that these goods were actually imported under that duty, made the following statement: "This difference is founded on actual importation, and shows an average discrimination against the poor, on cotton imports, of 82 per cent. beyond what the tax would be, if assessed upon the actual value." The secretary hastily-it is presumed not reluctantly adopted the conclusion, that trade was then going on in that way; whereas, this very species of goods was actually selling lower in Boston and New York, at the time this Manchester price current was published, than the prices there quoted for the English market. It was because the minimum duty was prohibitory, and gave the widest scope for home competition.

It is very well known to those who understand the subject, and

who are acquainted with the facts, that the effect of minimum duties, is to lower the prices of low-priced goods, chiefly used by the poor, and to pull down prices at higher points of the scale, in proportion as American manufacturing skill improves. And yet, the secretary has made a bugbear of minimums, to frighten the poor. Did he himself understand the subject? If so, he is open to a more grave impeachment than that of ignorance.

It is on this false principle, and false statement of facts-of which it is charitably supposed the secretary was ignorant-that he arrives at the following false conclusions, first, generally, that "minimums and specific duties render the tax [which is no tax at all] upon the real value much higher upon the cheaper than upon the finer article ;" secondly, and specifically, that, "by estimates founded on the same document [Mr. M'Kay's report], the discriminations against the cheaper article [under the tariff of 1842] must amount to a tux of $5,108,422, exacted by minimums and specific duties annually from the poorer classes." And yet, as a matter of fuct, the true proposition on the point, is, in both particulars, directly the reverse of this. Is it possible the secretary should have been ignorant in this case ?*

* Minimum duties were first introduced by southern statesmen, Messrs. Calhoun and Lowndes, in the tariff of 1816. It will be found, by an examination of senate document, No. 109, second session, 28th Congress (a document from the secretary of the treasury), that the application of the minimum principle to woollens, puts the tax (if indeed it were one, but it is not) on the costly goods worn by the rich, and is all in favor of the cheaper goods worn by the poor. The annual revenue from this source, under the tariff of 1842 (see same document), was over two millions of dollars. By the same authority, it appears that the application of the minimum principle to cottons yielded annually to the revenue, under the tariff of 1842, upward of four millions of dollars, the chief burden of which (if burden it was, but it was not) falls on the finer goods worn by the rich. Even these are cheapened, such of them as are rivalled at home by the action of domestic against foreign competition; and those not rivalled at home are the finest and most costly, not used except by those who indulge in luxuries. That the lowpriced cotton goods are greatly cheapened, is not only proved by the prices current, but is demonstrated beyond all contradiction by the facts that they go forth into the widest field of competition, in all parts of the world, with British goods of the same description, and that the British government was forced to enact differential duties for their dependencies, in favor of British products, to keep out American.

The revenue raised in one year, under the tariff of 1842, by the application of the minimum principle, on cotton goods, as stated in the abovenamed document, was as follows: $1,121,000 from goods costing above the minimum, at a duty of 30 per cent.; $2,574,000 from printed and colored goods, at 9 cents square yard, or 43 per cent. duty; $544,000 from plain goods, at 6 cents square yard, or 454 per cent. duty; and $34,000 from velvets, &c., at 10 cents square yard, or 35 per