respect the objects of duties and the modes of collecting them, involve the most important subjects of American legislation, and it would be well for the country if the American statesman who does not understand them, should resign his pretensions, and go home to school. own experience, which I give you annexed. My brother and myself were brought up in the town of Manchester, and well acquainted with the manufacturers and manufacturing. At the age of twenty years it appeared very evident to me that we could finish goods and import goods into New York about ten per cent. lower than the American merchant; and with this conviction I agreed to come out to New York and dispose of the goods, and leave my brother to finish and forward the goods. "The result was equal to our expectations. We imported our goods ten per cent. cheaper than our competitors, and by the ad-valorem duties we paid nearly five per cent less duties; so that, in twenty-two years, we made nearly a million of dollars, while nearly all the American merchants failed. Now, I reason, what has been will be; and, should the present tariff bill pass, it will give the foreign manufacturer a decided advantage, and tend to reduce the rate of duties lower than is anticipated. And I can not avoid expressing my decided opinion in favor of specific duties, as then the foreign manufacturer would pay the same duties as the American importer. BENJ. MARSHALL.' "Can any man gainsay the truth of all this? Is there a merchant, foreign or American, in the United States, who will express any contrariety of opinion? Is there a man, high or low, who denies it? I know of none; I have heard of none. Sir, it has been the experience of this government, always, that the ad-valorem system is open to innumerable frauds. What is the case with England? In her new notions, favorable to Free Trade, has she rushed, madly, into a scheme of ad-valorem duties? Sir, a system of ad-valorem duties is not Free Trade, but fraudulent trade. Has England countenanced this? Not at all; not at all. Sir, on the contrary, on every occasion of a revision of the tariff of England, a constant effort has been made, and progress attained in every case, to augment the number of specific duties, and reduce the number of ad-valorem duties. A gentleman in the other house [Mr. Seaman] has taken pains-which I have taken also, though, I believe, not quite so thoroughly as he has to go through the items of the British tariff, and see what proportion of duties in that tariff are ad valorem, and what are specific. Now, sir, the result of that examination shows, that at this day, in this British tariff, out of 714 articles, 608 are subject to specific duties. Everything that from its nature could be made specific, is made specific; nothing is placed in the list of ad-valorem duties but such as seem to be incapable of assessment in any other form. Well, sir, how do we stand, then? We have the experience of our own government; we have the judgment of those most distinguished in the administration of our affairs; we have the production of proof, on this most important point, in hundreds and hundreds of instances, of the danger of the ad-valorem mode of assessing duties. What is produced in its favor? Every importer of the United States, without exception, is against it." "This letter [Mr. Marshall's], I think, will startle the honorable gentleman." It is, undeniably, a startling document. It is only wonderful, that a person, who had been a particeps criminis, in this business, could have made the disclosure. He, doubtless, as all foreign factors do, when the laws of the United States open the door, considered the game a fair one; and the country is at least under one obligation to him, viz., for the excellent advice of this letter. CHAPTER XXXII. THE TARIFF OF 1846. The Tariff of 1846 a Surrender and Abandonment of the Principles of Protection.-Popular Instincts on this Subject.-It takes Years for the Proof of a new Tariff Policy.Probable Result of the Tariff of 1846.-A Table showing the Effects of the Tariff of 1846 on American Labor and Arts-Remarks upon this Table.-The Effect of AuctionSales of Imports on American Labor and Trade.—Importance of harmonious Legislation between Federal and State Authorities for Auction of Imports-The Discriminations of the Tariff of 1846 against American Industry and Labor.-Tables in Proof-Object of the Anti-Corn Law League of England-False Reasonings of Free Trade on the Effects of the Famine in Ireland and of the short Crops of Europe. As the principles of the tariff of 1846 are opposed to those of this work, and being now, in 1848, in actual operation as the law of the land, it is regarded not only as suitable, but necessary, for the complete elucidation of our principles, to take some further notice of it than is done in the preceding chapter, and elsewhere by incidental allusions, or in the discussion of abstract principles. As our aim from the beginning, and throughout, is to show what plan of public economy is best adapted to the United States, an actual system in operation, which we regard as ill adapted and injurious, could not with propriety be left unnoticed. The tariff of 1846 is a surrender and an abandonment of the principle of protection. This is not only understood, but the object is avowed in the messages of the president and in the reports of the secretary of the treasury. In these documents the question is argued, and there is no concealment of the design; although, to obtain the necessary revenue, which is the principle of the measure, some degree of protection, in some quarters, remains, not as an object, but as a result which could not be altogether prevented. This is an event of no inconsiderable importance in the political history of the country. We have elsewhere had something to say of the instincts of the American people on this subject; and it may not be amiss to enlarge upon that point a little in this place. Reason is fallible; but instinct never errs. The instincts of animal tribes are the guidance→ of the Divinity within them. Man, too, is endowed with instinct, but in an imperfect degree, compared with animals. Reason, a higher and nobler attribute, was given him, to preside over instinct; but reason is often unfortunate in its dictations. If the convicts of all the state-prisons in the United States were put to making shoes, and the state should throw them into market at a small advance on the cost of the materials and the subsistence of the convicts, would it be necessary for the free laborers engaged in this pursuit to study and understand public economy, before they could appreciate the effects of this measure on themselves? Their instincts would leap to the conclusion with the speed of lightning. They would be excited, alarmed. The riotous disposition manifested in the city of New York, a few years ago, for using the SingSing marble, quarried and dressed by the convicts, and called the "state-prison monopoly," which was sold at prices to paralyze the arm of free laborers, is directly in point. In the same manner, all the free laborers of the United States know that Europe is but a prison-house for labor, forcing it to toil for bare subsistence, and that it is equally unfair and wrong to force them into a competition with such a power as to force shoemakers or stonecutters to compete with the convicts of state-prisons. And all the business pursuits of the country sympathize with each other. One can not be wronged, but all are injured; and if labor, the great power of the country, on which all depend, is depressed, all feel it. Any measure of the government that begins to look like an invasion of the rights of labor, startles the wide community, and people are alarmed. Nor is there any mistake in it; what all see, is truth; it is impossible that such instincts should err. This is what is called a PANIC. It is an error to say it is got up. Trade never commits suicide; it never does that willingly which is injurious to itself; but it will keep off a panic as long as possible. Nor can a few interested persons, like the bears in Wall street, make a general panic. If they succeed in depressing stocks a little one day, they will rise the next. Such a thing as a general panic was never known, in any country, without cause. It is the quick operation, the infallible foresight, the premonition of the instincts of the wide community. In this manner, the inaugural address of President Polk, on the 4th of March, 1845, distinctly foreshadowing the downfall of the protective system, as one of the great aims of his administration, startled the country. The people were enjoying great blessings under the tariff of 1842. Labor everywhere found employment and reward, and the nation had risen from a long period of suffer ing and calamity, produced by the reign of Free-Trade principles, to an unexampled and rejoicing career of prosperity. To have such a condition menaced, from such a quarter, was alarming. Nevertheless, a sanguine people will still hope on, and though timid from instinctive dread, they waited for the message of December 2, 1845, from which time till the passage of the tariff of July 30, 1846, the commercial business of the whole country was paralyzed with apprehension. It was the operation of the public instincts. Ships in large numbers, ready, or nearly ready, or preparing, to sail, freighted with wealth, were stopped; voyages were delayed; orders for goods were countermanded, and others kept back; many, and some vast, schemes of domestic enterprise, with a corresponding capital ready to be invested for the employment of labor, were arrested; and all these great transactions, connected by a thousand channels and a thousand links with all the other great and minor interests of the country, were held in suspense for eight long and tedious months, waiting for the blow that was so seriously apprehended, the falling of which only demonstrated that these instincts of the people were infallibly just. One hundred millions of dollars would not, probably, fully indemnify the people of the United States for all the injury done to their vast and complicated interests during this agitation, till the consummation of the scheme which it proposed to fasten upon the country. What, then, must be the sequel? The sequel is yet in the future. It takes years for a great and comprehensive measure of this kind, to be fully proved; and the natural results, in their proper and full measure, will be staved off, till the crops of Europe and other foreign parts, shall yield their customary abundance; or possibly now, till the extraordinary events opened in Europe, beginning at Paris, February, 1848, shall have assumed a more settled state. If the want of confidence in European institutions, at such a time of general agitation, should induce European capitalists, in any considerable extent, to transfer their funds to the United States, it will of course defer the natural effects and full proof of the tariff of 1846 to a still later period, by the supply of specie which such transfer of capital would bring to the United States, in the same manner as the late failure of the European crops did. Nothing but extraordinary events like these, tending to bring specie to this country for the time of their continuance, can put off the commercial disasters which the tariff of 1846 is necessarily destined to inflict on the country; and the longer they are deferred, the more heavy will be their fall. Enough, indeed, has already transpired, in connexion with the experience of former years, under the two antagonist systems of protective and anti-protective duties, to prognosticate, with a sufficient degree of certainty, the coming results. Not less, probably, than a hundred millions of capital, waiting for the decision of this great question, and ready to be invested in a great variety of enterprises for the employment of labor, and for the increased production of private, public, and national wealth, have already been locked up, or turned to employments not productive of the general good. "Capital," says the Southern Planter, "when not permanently invested, merely seeking interest annually, is almost sure to do more harm than good, because those branches most depressed and in debt are the first to come forward to take offered loans, to pay their old debts, under the hope that business will revive so as to justify the transaction Alas! soon they become convinced, that the capitalist will absorb all, and end in a break-up for both." Such, all know, was the result of the great revulsion of 1836-'7. While there was no encouragement for the investment of capital in those establishments, and in enterprises, manufacturing and other, which employ labor and promote the general good, it turned itself to secure mortgages on the distressed, and made vastly more profits in the end than it could have done in any other way, in the ruin of the thousands that asked its aid. Here is disclosed a great principle, apparently not discerned by those who have sought, by legislation, to depress capital, and impair its position relative to other interests. They only elevate and strengthen it, positively in some cases, relatively in all. They create the very monopoly, the very power, of which they complain. Before, it was no monopolyno undue influence, as shown in these pages. But under the tariff of 1846, the strong manufacturing establishments which are able to stand, will be strengthened by the breaking down of the weak, and the consequent greater business they will have. Lowell will not suffer, except, perhaps, in its printing establishments and woollen factories. Lowell will stand in spite of the world, and rise and flourish on the ruins of all around; and the greater the general ruin, so much greater at least its relative strength, and so much firmer its relative position. It is the weak that will be stricken. down by the tariff of 1846; it is the labor of the country that will suffer first and most. Capital will always take care of itself. Some of it, being so invested as to be assailed by legislation, may |