of the highest respect, or the most suspicious jealousy, to foreign states? What is it that most enables us to take high relative rank among the nations? I need not say that this results, more than from anything else, from that quantity of military power which we can cause to be water borne, and of that extent of commerce, which we are able to maintain throughout the world.

Mr. Chairman, I am conscious of having detained the Committee much too long with these observations. My apology for now proceeding to some remarks upon the particular clauses of the Bill, is, that, representing a district, at once commercial and highly manufacturing, and being called upon to vote upon a Bill, containing provisions so numerous, and so various, I am naturally desirous to state as well what I approve, as what I would reject.

The first section proposes an augmented duty upon woollen manufactures. This, if it were unqualified, would no doubt be desirable to those who are engaged in that business. I have myself presented a petition from the woollen manufacturers of Massachusetts, praying an augmented ad valorem duty upon imported woollen cloths; and I am prepared to accede to that proposition, to a reasonable extent. But then this Bill proposes, also, a very high duty upon imported wool; and, as far as I can learn, a majority of the manufacturers are at least extremely doubtful whether, taking these two provisions together, the state of the law is not better for them now, than it would be if this Bill should pass. It is said, this tax on raw wool will benefit the agriculturist; but I know it to be the opinion of some of the best informed of that class, that it will do them more hurt than good. They fear it will check the manufacturer, and consequently check his demand for their article. The argument is, that a certain quantity of coarse wool, cheaper than we can possibly furnish, is necessary to enable the manufacturer to carry on the general business, and that if this cannot be had, the consequence will be, not a greater, but a less, manufacture of our own wool. I am aware that very intelligent persons differ upon this point; but, if we may safely infer from that difference of opinion, that the proposed benefit is at least doubtful, it would be prudent perhaps to abstain from the experiment. Certain it is, that the same course of reasoning has occurred, as I have before stated, on the same subject, when a renewed application was made to the English Parliament to repeal the duty on imported wool, I believe scarcely two months ago; those who support the application, pressing urgently the necessity of an unrestricted use of the cheap, imported raw material, with a view to supply, with coarse cloths, the markets of warm climates, such as those of Egypt and Turkey, and especially a vast new created demand in the South American states.

As to the manufactures of cotton, it is agreed, I believe, that they are generally successful. It is understood that the present existing duty operates pretty much as a prohibition over those descriptions of fabrics to which it applies. The proposed alteration would probably enable the American manufacturer to commence competition with higher priced fabrics; and so would, perhaps, an augmentation less than is here proposed. I consider the cotton manufactures not only to have reached, but to have passed, the point of competition. I

gard their success as certain, and their growth as rapid as the most impatient could well expect. If, however, a provision of the nature of that recommended here, were thought necessary to commence new operations in the same line of manufacture, I should cheerfully agree to it, if it were not at the cost of sacrificing other great interests of the country. I need hardly say, that whatever promotes the cotton and woollen manufactures, promotes most important interests of my constituents. They have a great stake in the success of those establishments, and as far as those manufactures are concerned, would be as much benefited by the provisions of this bill, as any part of the community. It is obvious too, I should think, that, for some considerable time, manufactures of this sort, to whatever magnitude they may rise, will be principally established in those parts of the country where population is most dense, capital most abundant, and where the most successful beginnings have been already made.

But if these be thought to be advantages, they are greatly counterbalanced by other advantages enjoyed by other portions of the country. I cannot but regard the situation of the West, as highly favorable to human happiness. It offers, in the abundance of its new and fertile lands, such assurances of permanent property and respectability to the industrious, it enables them to lay such sure foundations for a competent provision for their families, it makes such a nation of freeholders, that it need not envy the happiest and most prosperous of the manufacturing communities. We may talk as we will of well fed and well clothed daylaborers or journeymen; they are not, after all, to be compared, either for happiness, or respectability, with him who sleeps under his own roof, and cultivates his own feesimple inheritance.

With respect to the proposed duty on Glass, I would observe, that, upon the best means of judging which I possess, I am of opinion, that the Chairman of the Committee is right, in stating, that there is, in effect, a bounty upon the exportation of the British article. I think it entirely proper, therefore, to raise our own duty by such an amount as shall be equivalent to that bounty.

And here, Mr. Chairman, before proceeding to those parts of the Bill to which I most strenuously object, I will be so presumptuous, as to take up a challenge which Mr. Speaker has thrown down. He has asked us, in a tone of interrogatory indicative of the feeling of anticipated triumph, to mention any country in which manufactures have flourished, without the aid of prohibitory laws. He has demanded, if it be not policy, protection, ay, and prohibition, that have carried other states to the height of their prosperity, and whether any one has succeeded with such tame and inert legislation as ours. Sir, I am ready to answer this inquiry.

There is a country, not undistinguished among the nations, in which the progress of manufactures has been far more rapid than in any other, and yet unaided by prohibitions or unnatural restrictions. That country, the happiest which the sun shines on, is our own.

The woollen manufactures of England have existed from the early ages of the monarchy. Provisions, designed to aid and foster them, are in the blacklettered statutes of the Edwards and the Henrys. Ours, on the contrary, are but of yesterday; and yet, with no more

than the protection of existing laws, they are already at the point of close and promising competition. Sir, nothing is more unphilosophical than to refer us, on these subjects, to the policy adopted by other nations in a very different state of society, or to infer that what was judged expedient by them, in their early history, must also be expedient for us, in this early part of our own. This would be reckoning our age chronologically, and estimating our advance by our number of years; when, in truth, we should regard only the state of society, the knowledge, the skill, the capital, the enterprise, which belong to our times. We have been transferred from the stock of Europe, in a comparatively enlightened age, and our civilisation and improvement date back as early as her own. Her original history is, also, our original history; and if, since the moment of separation, she has gone ahead of us, in some respects, it may be said, without violating truth, that we have kept up in others, and, in others again, are ahead ourselves. We are to legislate, then, with regard to the present actual state of society; and our own experience shows us that, commencing manufactures at the present highly enlightened and emulous moment, we need not imitate the clumsy helps, with which, in less auspicious times, governments have sought to enable the ingenuity and industry of their people to hobble along.

The English cotton manufactures began about the commencement of the last reign. Ours can hardly be said to have commenced, with any earnestness, until the application of the power loom, in 1816, not more than eight years ago. Now, sir, I hardly need again speak of its progress, its present extent, or its assurance of future enlargement. In some sorts of fabrics we are already exporters, and the products of our manufactories are, at this moment, in the South American markets. We see, then, what can be done without prohibition or extraordinary protection, because we see what has been done; and I venture to predict that, in a few years, it will be thought wonderful that these branches of manufactures, at least, should have been thought to require additional aid from government.

Mr. Chairman: The best apology for laws of prohibition and laws of monopoly, will be found in that state of society, not only unenlightened, but sluggish, in which they are most generally established. Private industry, in those days, required strong provocatives, which governments were seeking to administer by these means. Something was wanted to actuate and stimulate men, and the prospects of such profits as would, in our times, excite unbounded competition, would hardly move the sloth of former ages. In some instances, no doubt, these laws produced an effect, which, in that period, would not have taken place without them. But our age is wholly of a different character, and its legislation takes another turn. Society is full of excitement; competition comes in place of monopoly; and intelligence and industry ask only for fair play and an open field. Profits, indeed, in such a state of things, will be small, but they will be extensively diffused; prices will be low, and the great body of the people prosperous and happy. It is worthy of remark, that, from the operation of these causes, commercial wealth, while it is increased beyond calculation in its general aggregate, is, at the same time, broken and diminished in its subdivisions. Commercial prosperity

should be judged of therefore rather from the extent of trade, than from the magnitude of its apparent profits. It has been remarked, that Spain, certainly one of the poorest nations, made very great profits on the amount of her trade; but with little other benefit than the enriching of a few individuals and companies. Profits to the English merchants engaged in the Levant and Turkey trade, were formerly very great, and there were richer merchants in England some centuries ago, considering the comparative value of money, than at the present highly commercial period. When the diminution of profits arises from the extent of competition, it indicates rather a salutary than an injurious change.*

The true course then, sir, for us to pursue, is, in my opinion, to consider what our situation is; what our means are; and how they can be best applied. What amount of population have we, in comparison with our extent of soil, what amount of capital, and labor at what price? As to skill, knowledge, and enterprise, we may safely take it for granted, that, in these particulars, we are on an equality with others. Keeping these considerations in view, allow me to examine two or three of those provisions of the bill to which I feel the strongest objections.

To begin with the article of iron. Our whole annual consumption of this article is supposed by the Chairman of the Committee, to be 48,000 or 50,000 tons. Let us suppose the latter. The amount

of our own manufacture he estimates, I think, at 17,000 tons. The present duty on the imported article, is $15 per ton, and as this duty causes of course an equivalent augmentation of the price of the home manufacture, the whole increase of price is equal to $750,000 annually. This sum we pay on a raw material, and on an absolute necessary of life. The Bill proposes to raise the duty from $15 to $22 50 per ton, which would be equal to $1,125,000 on the whole annual consumption. So that, suppose the point of prohibition which is aimed at by some gentlemen to be attained, the consumers of the article would pay this last mentioned sum every year to the producers of it, over and above the price at which they could supply themselves with the same article from other sources. There would be no mitigation of this burden, except from the prospect, whatever that might be, that iron would fall in value, by domestic competition, after the importation should be prohibited. It will be easy, I think, to show, that it cannot fall; and supposing for the present that it shall not, the result will be, that we shall pay annually a sum of $1,125,000, constantly augmented, too, by increased consumption of the article, to support a business that cannot support itself. It is of no consequence to the argument, that this sum is expended at home; so it would be, if we taxed the people to support any other useless and expensive establishment, to build another Capitol for example, or incur an un

"The present equable diffusion of moderate wealth cannot be better illustrated, than by remarking that in this age many palaces and superb mansions have been pulled down, or converted to other purposes, while none have been erected on a like scale. The numberless baronial castles and mansions, in all parts of England, now in ruins, may all be adduced as examples of the decrease of inordinate wealth. On the other hand, the multiplication of commodious dwellings, for the upper and middle classes of society, and the increased comforts of all ranks, exhibit a picture of individual happiness, unknown in any other age.' Sir G. Blane's Letter to Lord Spencer, in 1800.

necessary expense of any sort. The question still is, are the money, time, and labor, well laid out in these cases? The present price of iron at Stockholm, I am assured by importers, is $53 per ton on board, $48 in the yard before loading, and probably not far from $40 at the mines. Freight, insurance, &c. may be fairly estimated at $15, to which add our present duty of $15 more, and these two last sums, together with the cost on board at Stockholm, give $83 as the cost of Swedes iron in our market. In fact it is said to have been sold last year at $81 50 to $82 per ton. We perceive, by this statement, that the cost of the iron is doubled in reaching us from the mine in which it is produced. In other words, our present duty with the expense of transportation, gives an advantage to the American, over the foreign manufacturer, of one hundred per cent. Why then cannot the iron be manufactured at home? Our ore is said to be as good, and some of it better. It is under our feet, and the chairman of the committee tells us, that it might be wrought by persons who otherwise will not be employed. Why then is it not wrought? Nothing could be more sure of constant sale. It is not an article of changeable fashion, but of absolute, permanent necessity, and such, therefore, as would always meet a steady demand. Sir, I think it would be well for the chairman of the committee to revise his premises, for I am persuaded that there is an ingredient properly belonging to the calculation which he has mistated or omitted. Swedes iron in England pays a duty, I think, of about $27 per ton; yet it is imported in considerable quantities, notwithstanding the vast capital, the excellent coal, and, more important than all perhaps, the highly improved state of inland navigation in England; although I am aware that the English use of Swedes iron may be thought to be owing in some degree to its superior quality.

Sir, the true explanation of this, appears to me to lie in the different prices of labor; and here I apprehend is the grand mistake in the argument of the chairman of the committee. He says it would cost the nation, as a nation, nothing, to make our ore into iron. Now, I think it would cost us precisely that which we can worst afford; that is, great labor. Although bar iron is very properly considered a raw material in respect to its various future uses; yet, as bar iron, the principal ingredient in its cost is labor. Of manual labor, no nation has more than a certain quantity, nor can it be increased at will. As to some operations, indeed, its place may be supplied by machinery; but there are other services which machinery cannot perform for it, and which it must perform for itself. A most important question for every nation, as well as for every individual to propose to itself, is, how it can best apply that quantity of labor which it is able to perform? Labor is the great producer of wealth; it moves all other causes. If it call machinery to its aid, it is still employed not only in using the machinery, but in making it. Now, with respect to the quantity of labor, as we all know, different nations are differently circumstanced. Some need, more than anything, work for hands, others require hands for work; and if we ourselves are not absolutely in the latter class, we are still, most fortunately, very near it. I cannot find that we have those idle hands, of which the chairman of the committee speaks. The price of labor is a conclusive and un