Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

CHAPTER IX.

The Tariff Question in its Relation to the Political Revolution of 1860.—A Century's Experience as to Best Mode of levying Duties.— Original Course of Federal Government in Regard to Revenue.—First Tariff Act.—The Objects defined in a Preamble.—Constitutional Power to adopt Protective Measure.—Character of Early Discussions. —The Illustrious Men who participated.—Mr. Madison the Leader.— The War Tariff of 1812.—Its High Duties.—The Tariff of 1816.— Interesting Debate upon its Provisions.—Clay, Webster, and Calhoun take part.—Business Depression throughout the Country.—Continues until the Enactment of the Tariff of 1824.—Protective Character of that Tariff.—Still Higher Duties levied by the Tariff of 1828. —Southern Resistance to the Protective Principle.—Mr. Calhoun leads the Nullification Movement in South Carolina.—Compromise effected on the Tariff Question.—Financial Depression follows.— Panic of 1837.—Protective Tariff passed in 1842.—Free-trade Principles triumph with the Election of President Polk.—Tariff of 1846.—Prosperous Condition of the Country.—Differences of Opinion as to the Causes.—Surplus Revenue.—Plethoric Condition of the Treasury.—Enactment of the Tariff of 1857.—Both Parties support it in Congress.—Duties lower than at Any Time since the War of 1812.—Panic of 1857.—Dispute as to its causes.—Protective and Free-trade Theories as presented by their Advocates.—Connection of the Tariff with the Election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency. —General Review.

The Slavery question was not the only one which developed into a chronic controversy between certain elements of Northern opinion and certain elements of Southern opinion. A review of the sectional struggle would be incomplete if it did not embrace a narrative of those differences on the tariff which at times led to serious disturbance, and, on one memorable occasion, to an actual threat of resistance to the authority of the government. The division upon the tariff was never so accurately defined by geographical lines as was the division upon slavery; but the aggressive elements on each side of both questions finally coalesced in the same States, North and South. Massachusetts and South Carolina marched in the vanguard of both controversies; and the States which respectively followed on the tariff issue were, in large part, the same which followed on the slavery question, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line. Anti-slavery zeal and a tariff for protection went hand in hand in New England, while pro-slavery principles became nearly identical with free-trade in the Cotton States. If the rule had its exception, it was in localities where the strong pressure of special interest was operating, as in the case of the sugar-planter of Louisiana, who was willing to concede generous protection to the cotton-spinner of Lowell if he could thereby secure an equally strong protection, in his own field of enterprise, against the pressing competition of the island of Cuba.

PROTECTION AND FREE-TRADE SECTIONAL.

The general rule, after years of experimental legislation, resolved itself into protection in the one section and free-trade in the other. And this was not an unnatural distinction. Zeal against slavery was necessarily accompanied by an appreciation of the dignity of free labor; and free labor was more generously remunerated under the stimulus of protective laws. The same considerations produced a directly opposite conclusion in the South, where those interest in slave labor could not afford to build up a class of free laborers with high wages and independent opinions. The question was indeed one of the kind not infrequently occurring in the adjustment of public policies where the same cause is continually producing different and apparently contradictory effects when the field of its operation is changed.

The issues growing out of the subject of the tariff were, however, in many respects entirely distinct from the slavery question. The one involved the highest moral considerations, the other was governed solely by expediency. Whether one man could hold property in another was a question which took deep hold of the consciences of men, and was either right or wrong in itself. But whether the rate of duty upon a foreign import should be increased or lowered was a question to be settled solely by business and financial considerations. Slavery in the United States, as long experience had proved, could be most profitably employed in the cultivation of cotton. The cost of its production, in the judgment of those engaged in it, was increased by the operation of a tariff, whereas its price, being determined by the markets of the world, derived no benefit from protective duties. The clothing of the slave, the harness for the horses and mules, the ploughs, the rope, the bagging, the iron ties, were all, they contended, increased in price to the planter without any corresponding advance in the market value of the product. In the beginning of the controversy it was expected that the manufacture of cotton would grow up side by side with its production, and that thus the community which produced the fibre would share in the profit of the fabric. During this period the representatives from the Cotton States favored high duties; but as time wore on, and it became evident that slave-labor was not adapted to the factory, and that it was undesirable if not impossible to introduce free white labor with remunerative wages side by side with unpaid slave-labor, the leading minds of the South were turned against the manufacturing interest, and desired to legislate solely in aid of the agricultural interest.

It was this change in the South that produced the irritating discussions in Congress,—discussions always resulting in sectional bitterness and sometimes threatening the public safety. The tariff question has in fact been more frequently and more elaborately debated than any other issue since the foundation of the Federal Government. The present generation is more familiar with questions relating to slavery, to war, to reconstruction; but as these disappear by permanent adjustment the tariff returns, and is eagerly seized upon by both sides to the controversy. More than any other issue, it represents the enduring and persistent line of division between the two parties which in a generic sense have always existed in the United States;—the party of strict construction and the party of liberal construction, the party of State Rights and the party of National Supremacy, the party of stinted revenue and restricted expenditure, and the party of generous income with its wise application to public improvement; the part, in short, of Jefferson as against the party of Hamilton, the party of Jackson as against that of Clay, the party of Buchanan and Douglas as against that of Lincoln and Seward. Taxes, whether direct or indirect, always interest the mass of mankind, and the differences of the systems by which they shall be levied and collected will always present an absorbing political issue. Public attention may be temporarily engrossed by some exigent subject of controversy, but the tariff alone steadily and persistently recurs for agitation, and for what is termed settlement. Thus far in our history, settlement has only been the basis of new agitation, and each successive agitation leads again to new settlement.

EXPERIENCE IN TARIFF LEGISLATION.

After the experience of nearly a century on the absorbing question of the best mode of levying duties on imports, the divergence of opinion is as wide and as pronounced as when the subject first engaged the attention of the Federal Government. Theories on the side of high duties and theories on the side of low duties are maintained with just as great vigor as in 1789. In no question of a material or financial character has there been so much interest displayed as in this. On a question of sentiment and of sympathy like that of slavery, feeling is inevitable; but it has been matter of surprise that the adjustment of a scale of duties on importations of foreign merchandise should be accompanied, as it often has been, by displays of excitement often amounting to passion.

The cause is readily apprehended when it is remembered that the tariff question is always presented as one not merely affecting the general prosperity, but as specifically involving the question of bread to the millions who are intrusted with the suffrage. The industrial classes study the question closely; and, in many of the manufacturing establishments of the country, the man who is working for day wages will be found as keenly alive to the effect of a change in the protective duty as the stockholder whose dividends are to be affected. Thus capital and labor coalesce in favor of high duties to protect the manufacturer, and, united, they form a political force which has been engaged in an economic battle from the foundation of the government. Sometimes they have suffered signal defeat, and sometimes they have gained signal victories.

The landmarks which have been left in a century of discussion and of legislative experiment deserve a brief reference for a better understanding of the subject to-day. Our financial experience has been practically as extended as that of the older nations of Europe. When the Republic was organized, Political Economy as understood in the modern sense was in its elementary stage, and indeed could hardly be called a science. Systems of taxation were everywhere crude and ruthless, and were in large degree fashioned after the Oriental practice of mulcting the man who will pay the most and resist the least. Adam Smith had published his "Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" in the year of the Declaration of Independence. Between that time and the formation of the Federal Government his views had exerted no perceptible influence on the financial system of England. British industries were protected by the most stringent enactments of Parliament, and England was the determined enemy not only of free trade but of fair trade. The emancipated Colonies found therefore in the mother country the most resolute foe to their manufacturing and commercial progress. American statesmen exhibited wisdom, moderation, and foresight in overcoming the obstacles to the material prosperity of the new Republic.

When the administration of Washington was organized in 1789, the government which he represented did not command a single dollar of revenue. They inherited a mountain of debt from the Revolutionary struggle, they had no credit, and the only representative of value which they controlled was the vast body of public land in the North- west Territory. But this was unavailable as a resource for present needs, and called for expenditure in the extensive surveys which were a prerequisite to sale and settlement. In addition therefore to every other form of poverty, the new government was burdened in the manner so expressively described as land poor, which implies the ownership of a large extent of real estate constantly calling for heavy outlay, and yielding no revenue. The Federal Government had one crying need, one imperative demand,—money!

An immediate system of taxation was therefore required, and the newly organized Congress lost no time in proceeding to the consideration of ways and means. As soon as a quorum of each branch of Congress was found to be present, the House gave its attention to the pressing demand for money. They did not even wait for the inauguration of President Washington, but began nearly a month before that important event to prepare a revenue bill which might, at the earliest moment, be ready for the Executive approval. Duties on imports obviously afforded the readiest resource, and Congress devoted itself with assiduous industry to the consideration of that form of revenue. With the exception of an essential law directing the form of oath to be taken by the Federal officers, the tariff Act was the first passed by the new government. It was enacted indeed two months in advance of the law creating a Treasury Department, and providing for a Secretary thereof. The need of money was indeed so urgent that provision was made for raising it by duties on imports before the appointment of a single officer of the Cabinet was authorized. Even a Secretary of State, whose first duty it was to announce the organization of the government to foreign nations, was not nominated for a full month after the Act imposing duties had been passed.

THE TARIFF ENACTED BY FIRST CONGRESS.

All the issues involved in the new Act were elaborately and intelligently debated. The first Congress contained a large proportion of the men who had just before been engaged in framing the Federal Constitution, and who were therefore fresh from the councils which had carefully considered and accurately measured the force of every provision of that great charter of government. It is therefore a fact of lasting importance that the first tariff law enacted under the Federal Government set forth its object in the most succinct and explicit language. It opened, after the excellent fashion of that day, with a stately preamble beginning with the emphatic "whereas," and declaring that "it is necessary for the support of government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and for the encouragement and protection of manufactures, that duties be laid on imported goods, wares, and merchandise." Among the men who agreed to that declaration were some of the most eminent in our history. James Madison, then young enough to add junior to his name, was the most conspicuous; and associated with him were Richard Henry Lee, Theodorick Bland, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Rufus King, George Clymer, Oliver Ellsworth, Elias Boudinot, Fisher Ames, Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, Jonathan Trumbull, Lambert Cadwalader, Thomas Fitzsimons, the two Muhlenbergs, Thomas Tudor Tucker, Hugh Williamson, Abraham Baldwin, Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, and many other leading men, both from the North and the South.

It is a circumstance of curious interest that nearly, if not quite, all the arguments used by the supporters and opponents of a protective system were presented at that time and with a directness and ability which have not been surpassed in any subsequent discussion. The "ad valorem" system of levying duties was maintained against "specific" rates in almost the same language employed in the discussions of recent years. The "infant manufactures," the need of the "fostering care of the government" for the protection of "home industry," the advantages derived from "diversified pursuits," the competition of "cheap labor in Europe," were all rehearsed with a familiarity and ease which implied their previous and constant use in the legislative halls of the different States before the power to levy imposts was remitted to the jurisdiction of Congress. A picture of the industrial condition of the country at that day can be inferred from the tariff bill first passed; and the manufactures that were deemed worthy of encouragement are clearly outlined in the debate. Mr. Clymer of Pennsylvania asked for a protective duty on steel, stating that a furnace in Philadelphia "had produced three hundred tons in two years, and with a little encouragement would supply enough for the consumption of the whole Union." The Pennsylvania members at the same time strenuously opposed a duty on coal which they wished to import as cheaply as possible to aid in the development of their iron ores. The manufacture of glass had been started in Maryland, and the members from that State secured a duty on the foreign article after considerable discussion, and with the significant reservation, in deference to popular habits, that "black quart-bottles" should be admitted free.

Mr. Madison opposed a tax on cordage, and "questioned the propriety of raising the price of any article that entered materially into the structure of vessels," making in effect the same argument on that subject which has been repeated without improvement so frequently in later years. Indigo and tobacco, two special products of the South, were protected by prohibitory duties, while the raising of cotton was encouraged by a duty of three cents per pound on the imported article. Mr. Burke of South Carolina said the culture of cotton was contemplated on a large scale in the South, "if good seed could be procured." The manufacture of iron, wool, leather, paper, already in some degree developed, was stimulated by the bill. The fisheries were aided by a bounty on every barrel caught; and the navigation interest received a remarkable encouragement by providing that "a discount of ten per cent on all duties imposed by this Act shall be allowed on such goods, wares, and merchandise as shall be imported in vessels built in the United States, and wholly the property of a citizen or citizens thereof." The bill throughout was an American measure, designed to promote American interests; and as a first step in a wide field of legislation, it was characterized in an eminent degree by wisdom, by moderation, and by a keen insight into the immediate and the distant future of the country. The ability which framed the Constitution was not greater than that displayed by the first generation of American statesmen who were called to legislate under its generous provisions and its wise restrictions.

These great statesmen proceeded in the light of facts which taught them that, though politically separated from the mother country, we were still in many ways dependent upon her, in as large a degree as when we were Colonies, subject to her will and governed for her advantage. The younger Pitt boasted that he had conquered the Colonies as commercial dependencies, contributing more absolutely and in larger degree to England's prosperity than before the political connection was severed. He treated the States, after the close of the peace of 1783, with a haughty assumption of superiority, if not indeed with contempt—not even condescending to accredit a diplomatic representative to the country, though John Adams was in London as Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary from the United States. English laws of protection under the Pitt administration were steadily framed against the development of manufactures and navigation in America, and the tendency when the Federal Constitution was adopted had been, in the planting States especially, towards a species of commercial dependence which was enabling England to absorb our trade.

TARIFF ACT APPROVED BY WASHINGTON.

The first tariff Act was therefore in a certain sense a second Declaration of Independence; and by a coincidence which could not have been more striking or more significant, it was approved by President Washington on the fourth day of July, 1789. Slow as were the modes of communicating intelligence in those days, this Act of Congress did, in a suggestive way, arouse the attention of both continents. The words of the preamble were ominous. The duties levied were exceedingly moderate, scarcely any of them above fifteen per cent, the majority not higher than ten. But the beginning was made; and the English manufacturers and carriers saw that the power to levy ten per cent. could at any time levy a hundred per cent. if the interest of the new government should demand it. The separate States had indeed possessed the power to levy imposts, but they had never exercised it in any comprehensive manner, and had usually adapted the rate of duty to English trade rather than to the protection of manufacturing interests at home. The action of the Federal Government was a new departure, of portentous magnitude, and was so recognized at home and abroad.

It was not the percentage which aroused and disturbed England. It was the power to levy the duty at all. In his famous speech on American taxation in the House of Commons fifteen years before, Mr. Burke asserted that it was "not the weight of the duty, but the weight of the preamble, which the Americans were unable and unwilling to bear." The tax actually imposed was not oppressive, but the preamble implied the power to levy upon the Colonies whatever tax the British Government might deem expedient, and this led to resistance and to revolution. The force of the preamble was now turned against Great Britain. She saw that the extent to which the principle of protective duties might be carried was entirely a matter of discretion with the young Republic whose people had lately been her subjects and might now become her rivals. The principle of protecting the manufactures and encouraging the navigation of America had been distinctly proclaimed in the first law enacted by the new government, and was thus made in a suggestive and emphatic sense the very corner-stone of the republican edifice which the patriots of the Revolution were aiming to construct.

The opinions of Mr. Madison as thus shown in the first legislation by Congress are the more significant from the fact that he belonged in the Jeffersonian school, believed in the strictest construction of granted power, was a zealous Republican in the partisan divisions of the day, and was always opposed to the more liberal, or, as he would regard them, the more latitudinarian views of the Federal party. In regard to the protection and encouragement of manufactures there seemed to be no radical difference between parties in the early period of the government. On that issue, to quote a phrase used on another occasion, "they were all Federalists and all Republicans." Mr. Hamilton's celebrated report on Manufactures, submitted in answer to a request from the House of Representatives of December, 1790, sustained and elaborated the views on which Congress had already acted, and brought the whole influence of the Executive Department to the support of a Protective Tariff. Up to that period no minister of finance among the oldest and most advanced countries of Europe had so ably discussed the principles on which national prosperity was based. The report has long been familiar to students of political economy, and has had, like all Mr. Hamilton's work, a remarkable value and a singular application in the developments of subsequent years.

MR. HAMILTON'S PROTECTION VIEWS.

Mr. Hamilton sustained the plan of encouraging home manufactures by protective duties, even to the point in some instances of making those "duties equivalent to prohibition." He did not contemplate a prohibitive duty as the means of encouraging a manufacture not already domesticated, but declared it "only fit to be employed when a manufacture has made such a progress, and is in so many hands, as to insure a due competition and an adequate supply on reasonable terms." This argument did not seem to follow the beaten path which leads to the protection of "infant manufactures," but rather aimed to secure the home market for the strong and well-developed enterprises. Mr. Hamilton did not turn back from the consequences which his argument involved. He perceived its logical conclusions and frankly accepted them. He considered "the monopoly of the domestic market to its own manufacturers as the reigning policy of manufacturing nations," and declared that "a similar policy on the part of the United States in every proper instance was dictated by the principles of distributive justice, certainly by the duty of endeavoring to secure to their own citizens a reciprocity of advantages." He avowed his belief that "the internal competition which takes place, soon does away with every thing like monopoly, and by degrees reduces the price of the article to the minimum of a reasonable profit on the capital employed. This accords with the reason of the thing and with experience." He contended that "a reduction has in several instances immediately succeeded the establishment of domestic manufacture." But even if this result should not follow, he maintained that "in a national view a temporary enhancement of price must always be well compensated by a permanent reduction of it." The doctrine of protection, even with the enlarged experience of subsequent years, has never been more succinctly or more felicitously stated.

Objections to the enforcement of the "protective" principle founded on a lack of constitutional power were summarily dismissed by Mr. Hamilton as "having no good foundation." He had been a member of the convention that formed the Constitution, and had given attention beyond any other member to the clauses relating to the collection and appropriation of revenue. He said the "power to raise money" as embodied in the Constitution "is plenary and indefinite," and "the objects for which it may be appropriated are no less comprehensive than the payment of the public debts, the providing for the common defense and the general welfare." He gives the widest scope to the phrase "general welfare," and declares that "it is of necessity left to the discretion of the national Legislature to pronounce upon the objects which concern the general welfare, and for which under that description an appropriation of money is requisite and proper." Mr. Hamilton elaborates his argument on this head with consummate power, and declares that "the only qualification" to the power of appropriation under the phrase "general welfare" is that the purpose for which the money is applied shall "be general, and not local, its operation extending in fact throughout the Union, and not being confined to a particular spot." The limitations and hypercritical objections to the powers conferred by the Constitution, both in the raising and appropriating of money, originated in large part after the authors of that great charter had passed away, and have been uniformly stimulated by class interests which were not developed when the organic law was enacted.

Some details of Mr. Hamilton's report are especially interesting in view of the subsequent development of manufacturing enterprises. "Iron works" he represents as "greatly increasing in the United States," and so great is the demand that "iron furnished before the Revolution at an average of sixty-four dollars per ton" was then sold at "eighty." Nails and spikes, made in large part by boys, needed further "protection," as 1,800,000 pounds had been imported the previous year. Iron was wholly made by "charcoal," but there were several mines of "fossil coal" already "worked in Virginia," and "a copious supply of it would be of great value to the iron industry." Respecting "cotton" Mr. Hamilton attached far more consideration to its manufacture than to its culture. He distrusted the quality of that grown at home because so far from the equator, and he wished the new factories in Rhode Island and Massachusetts to have the best article at the cheapest possible rate. To this end the repeal of the three-cent duty on cotton levied the preceding year was "indispensable." He argued that "not being, like hemp, an universal production of the country, cotton affords less assurance of an adequate internal supply." If the duty levied on glass should not prove sufficient inducement to its manufacture, he would stimulate it "by a direct bounty."

Mr. Hamilton's conceptions of an enlarged plan of "protection" included not only "prohibitive duties," but when necessary a system of "bounties and premiums" in addition. He was earnestly opposed to "a capitation-tax," and declared such levies as an income-tax to be "unavoidably hurtful to industry." Indirect taxes were obviously preferred by him whenever they were practicable. Indeed upon any other system of taxation he believed it would prove impossible for the Republic of 1790 to endure the burden imposed upon the public treasury by the funding of the debt of the Revolution. More promptly than any other financier of that century he saw that ten dollars could be more easily collected by indirect tax than one dollar by direct levy, and that he could thus avoid those burdensome exactions from the people which had proved so onerous in Europe, and which had just aided in precipitating France into bloody revolution.

THE WAR TARIFF ENACTED IN 1812.

Important and radical additions to the revenue system promptly followed Mr. Hamilton's recommendations. From that time onward, for a period of more than twenty years, additional tariff laws were passed by each succeeding Congress, modifying and generally increasing the rate of duties first imposed, and adding many new articles to the dutiable list. When the war of 1812 was reached, a great but temporary change was made in the tariff laws by increasing the entire list of duties one hundred per cent.—simply doubling the rate in every case. Not content with this sweeping and wholesale increase of duty, the law provided an additional ten per cent. upon all goods imported in foreign vessels, besides collecting an additional tonnage-tax of one dollar and a half per ton on the vessel. Of course this was war-legislation, and the Act was to expire within one year after a treaty of peace should be concluded with Great Britain. With the experience of recent days before him, the reader does not need to be reminded that, under the stimulus of this extraordinary rate of duties, manufactures rapidly developed throughout the country. Importations from England being absolutely stopped by reason of the war, and in large part excluded from other countries by high duties, the American market was for the first time left substantially, or in large degree, to the American manufacturers.

With all the disadvantages which so sudden and so extreme a policy imposed on the people, the progress for the four years of these extravagant and exceptional duties was very rapid, and undoubtedly exerted a lasting influence on the industrial interests of the United States. But the policy was not one which commanded general support. Other interests came forward in opposition. New England was radically hostile to high duties, for the reason that they seriously interfered with the shipping and commercial interest in which her people were largely engaged. The natural result moreover was a sharp re-action, in which the protective principle suffered. Soon after the Treaty of Ghent was signed, movements were made for a reduction of duties, and the famous tariff of 1816 was the result.

In examining the debates on that important Act, it is worthy of notice that Mr. Clay, from an extreme Western State, was urging a high rate of duties on cotton fabrics, while his chief opponent was Daniel Webster, then a representative from Massachusetts. An additional and still stranger feature of the debate is found when Mr. Calhoun, co-operating with Mr. Clay, replied to Mr. Webster's free-trade speech in an elaborate defense of the doctrine of protection to our manufactures.

Mr. Calhoun spoke with enthusiasm, and gave an interesting résumé of the condition of the country as affected by the war with Great Britain. He believed that the vital deficiency in our financial condition was the lack of manufactures, and to supply that deficiency he was willing to extend the protecting arm of the government. "When our manufactures are grown to a certain perfection, as they soon will be under the fostering care of the government, we shall no longer experience these evils. The farmer will find a ready market for his surplus products, and, what is almost of equal consequence, a certain and cheap supply for all his wants. His prosperity will diffuse itself through every class in the community." Not satisfied with this unqualified support of the protective system, Mr. Calhoun supplemented it by declaring that "to give perfection to this state of things, it will be necessary to add as soon as possible a system of internal improvements." Mr. Webster's opposition to protection was based on the fact that it tended to depress commerce and curtail the profits of the carrying-trade.

The tariff of 1816 was termed "moderately protective," but even in that form it encountered the opposition of the commercial interest. It was followed in the country by severe depression in all departments of trade, not because the duties were not in themselves sufficiently high, but from the fact that it followed the war tariff, and the change was so great as to produce not only a re-action but a revolution in the financial condition of the country. All forces of industry languished. Bankruptcy was wide-spread, and the distress between 1817 and 1824 was perhaps deeper and more general than at any other period of our history. There was no immigration of foreigners, and consequently no wealth from that source. There was no market for agricultural products, and the people were therefore unable to indulge in liberal expenditure. Their small savings could be more profitably invested in foreign than in domestic goods, and hence American manufactures received little patronage. The traditions of that period, as given by the generation that lived through it, are sorrowful and depressing. The sacrifice of great landed estates, worth many millions could they have been preserved for the heirs of the next generation, was a common feature in the general distress and desolation. The continuance of this condition of affairs had no small influence on the subsequent division of parties. It naturally led to a change in the financial system, and in 1824 a tariff Act was passed, materially enlarging the scope of the Act of 1816.

THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF OF 1824.

The Act of 1824 was avowedly protective in its character and was adopted through the influence of Mr. Clay, then Speaker of the House of Representatives. His most efficient ally on the floor was Mr. Buchanan of Pennsylvania who exerted himself vigorously in aid of the measure. Mr. Webster again appeared in the debate, arguing against the "obsolete and exploded notion of protection," and carrying with him nearly the whole vote of Massachusetts in opposition. Mr. Clay was enabled to carry the entire Kentucky delegation for the high protective tariff, and Mr. Calhoun's views having meanwhile undergone a radical change, South Carolina was found to be unanimous in opposition, and cordially co-operating with Massachusetts in support of free-trade. The effect of that tariff was undoubtedly favorable to the general prosperity, and during the administration of John Quincy Adams every material interest of the country improved. The result was that the supporters of the protective system, congratulating themselves upon the effect of the work of 1824, proceeded in 1828 to levy still higher duties. They applied the doctrine of protection to the raw materials of the country, the wool, the hemp, and all unmanufactured articles which by any possibility could meet with damaging competition from abroad.

It was indeed an era of high duties, of which, strange as it may seem to the modern reader, Silas Wright of New York and James Buchanan of Pennsylvania appeared as the most strenuous defenders, and were personally opposed in debate by John Davis of Massachusetts and Peleg Sprague of Maine. To add to the entanglement of public opinion, Mr. Webster passed over to the side of ultra-protection and voted for the bill, finding himself in company with Martin Van Buren of New York, and Thomas H. Benton of Missouri. It was an extraordinary commingling of political elements, in which it is difficult to find a line of partition logically consistent either with geographical or political divisions. Mr. Webster carried with him not more than two or three votes of the Massachusetts delegation. His colleague in the Senate, Nathaniel Silsbee, voted against him, and in the House such personal adherents as Edward Everett and Isaac C. Bates recorded themselves in the negative. There was a great deal of what in modern phase would be called "fencing for position" in the votes on this test question of the day. The names of no less than five gentlemen who were afterwards Presidents of the United States were recorded in the yeas and nays on the passage of the bill in the two Houses,—Mr. Van Buren, General Harrison, John Tyler, in the Senate, and Mr. Polk and Mr. Buchanan in the House.

There was a general feeling that the Act of 1828 marked a crisis in the history of tariff discussion, and that it would in some way lead to important results in the fate of political parties and political leaders. Mr. Calhoun was this year elected Vice-President of the United States, with General Jackson as President, and Mr. Van Buren was transferred from the Senate to the State Department as the head of Jackson's cabinet. When by his address and tact he had turned the mind of the President against Calhoun as his successor, and fully ingratiated himself in executive favor, the quarrel began which is elsewhere detailed at sufficient length. In this controversy, purely personal at the outset, springing from the clashing ambitions of two aspiring men, the tariff of 1828, especially with the vote of Mr. Van Buren in favor of it, was made to play an important part. The quarrel rapidly culminated in Mr. Calhoun's resignation of the Vice-Presidency, his leadership of the Nullification contest in South Carolina, and his re-election to the Senate of the United States some time before the expiration of the Vice-Presidential term for which he had been chosen. The result was a reduction of duties, first by the Act of July, 1832, and secondly by Mr. Clay's famous compromise Act of March 2, 1833, in which it was provided that by a sliding-scale all the duties in excess of twenty per cent. should be abolished within a period of ten years. It was this Act which for the time calmed excitement in the South, brought Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay into kindly relations, and somewhat separated Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay,—at least producing one of those periods of estrangement which, throughout their public career, alternated with the cordial friendship they really entertained for each other.

THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF OF 1842.

During the operation of this Act,—which was really an abandonment of the protective principle,—the financial crisis of 1837 came upon the country, and a period of distress ensued, almost equal to that which preceded the enactment of the tariff of 1824. Many persons, still in active business, recall with something of horror the hardships and privations which were endured throughout the country from 1837 to 1842. The long-continued depression produced the revolution against the Democratic party which ended in the overthrow of Mr. Van Buren and the election of General Harrison as President of the United States in 1840. The Whig Congress that came into power at the same time, proceeded to enact the law popularly known as the tariff of 1842, which was strongly protective in its character though not so extreme as the Act of 1828. The vote in favor of the bill was not exclusively Whig, as some of the Northern Democrats voted for it and some of the Southern Whigs against it. Conspicuous among the former were Mr. Buchanan of Pennsylvania and Mr. Wright of New York, who maintained a consistency with their vote for the tariff of 1828. Conspicuous among Southern Whigs against it were Berrien of Georgia, Clayton of Delaware, Mangum of North Carolina, Merrick of Maryland, and Rives of Virginia. The two men who above all others deserve honor for successful management of the bill were George Evans, the brilliant and accomplished senator from Maine, and Thomas M. T. McKennan, for many years an able, upright, and popular representative from Pennsylvania. John Quincy Adams, in a public speech delivered in 1843 in the town of Mr. McKennan's residence, ascribed to that gentleman the chief credit of carrying the Protective Tariff Bill through the House of Representatives. The vote showed, as all tariff bills before had, and as all since have shown, that the local interest of the constituency determines in large measure the vote of the representative; that planting sections grow more and more towards free-trade and manufacturing sections more and more towards protection.

The friends of home industry have always referred with satisfaction to the effect of the tariff of 1842 as an explicit and undeniable proof of the value of protection. It raised the country from a slough of despond to happiness, cheerfulness, confidence. It imparted to all sections a degree of prosperity which they had not known since the repeal of the tariff of 1828. The most suggestive proof of its strength and popularity was found in the contest of 1844 between Mr. Polk and Mr. Clay, where the Democrats in the critical Northern States assumed the advocacy of the tariff of 1842 as loudly as the supporters of Mr. Clay. Other issues overshadowed the tariff, which was really considered to be settled, and a President and Congress were chosen without any distinct knowledge on the part of their constituents as to what their action might be upon this question. The popular mind had been engrossed with the annexation of Texas and with the dawn of the free-soil excitement; hence protection and free-trade were in many States scarcely debated from lack of interest, and, in the States where interest prevailed, both parties took substantially the same side.

A deception had however been practiced in the manufacturing States of the North, and when the administration of Mr. Polk was installed, the friends of protection were startled by the appointment of a determined opponent of the tariff of 1842, as Secretary of the Treasury. Robert J. Walker was a senator from Mississippi when the Act was passed, and was bitterly opposed to it. He was a man of great originality, somewhat speculative in his views, and willing to experiment on questions of revenue to the point of rashness. He was not a believer in the doctrine of protection, was persuaded that protective duties bore unjustly and severely upon the planting section with which he was identified; and he came to his office determined to overthrow the tariff Act, which he had been unable to defeat in the Senate. Mr. Walker was excessively ambitious to make his term in the Treasury an era in the history of the country. He had a difficult task before him,—one from which a conservative man would have shrunk. The tariff was undoubtedly producing a valuable revenue; and, as the administration of Mr. Polk was about to engage in war, revenue was what they most needed. Being about to enter upon a war, every dictate of prudence suggested that aggressive issues should not be multiplied in the country. But Mr. Walker was not Secretary of War or Secretary of State, and he was unwilling to sit quietly down and collect the revenue under a tariff imposed by a Whig Congress, against which he had voted, while Buchanan in directing our foreign relations, and Marcy in conducting a successful war, would far outstrip him in public observation and in acquiring the elements of popularity adapted to the ambition which all three alike shared.

Mr. Walker made an elaborate report on the question of revenue, and attacked the tariff of 1842 in a manner which might well be termed savage. He arraigned the manufacturers as enjoying unfair advantages,—advantages held, as he endeavored to demonstrate, at the expense and to the detriment of the agriculturist, the mechanic, the merchant, the ship-owner, the sailor, and indeed of almost every industrial class. In reading Mr. Walker's report a third of a century after it was made, one might imagine that the supporters of the tariff of 1842 were engaged in a conspiracy to commit fraud, and that the manufacturers who profited by its duties were guilty of some crime against the people. But extreme as were his declarations and difficult as were the obstructions in his path, he was able to carry his point. Mr. Buchanan, the head of the Cabinet, had voted for the tariff of 1842, and Mr. Dallas, the Vice-President, had steadily and ably upheld the doctrine of protection when a member of the Senate. It was the position of Buchanan and Dallas on the tariff that won the October election of 1844 for Francis R. Shunk for governor of Pennsylvania, and thus assured the election of Mr. Polk. The administration of which Buchanan and Dallas were such conspicuous and influential members could not forswear protection and inflict a free-trade tariff on Pennsylvania, without apparent dishonor and the abandonment of that State to the Whigs. It was therefore regarded not only as impracticable but as politically impossible.

THE FREE-TRADE TARIFF OF 1846.

It was soon ascertained however that Mr. Polk sympathized with Mr. Walker, and Mr. Buchanan was silenced and overridden. The free- trade tariff of 1846 was passed; and Mr. Dallas, who had been nominated because of his record as a protectionist, was subjected to the humiliation of giving his casting vote as Vice-President in favor of a tariff which was execrated in Pennsylvania, and which was honestly believed to be inimical in the highest degree to the interest of the American manufacturer and the American mechanic. The Act had no small influence in the overthrow of the Polk administration at the elections for the next ensuing Congress, and in the defeat of General Cass for the Presidency in 1848. As senator from Michigan, General Cass had voted for the bill, influenced thereto by his Southern associates, for whom he always did so much, and from whom he always received so little. Pennsylvania was at that time really a Democratic State, but she punished General Cass for his free-trade course by giving her electoral vote to Taylor. If she had given it to Cass he would have been chosen President.

It was in connection with the tariff agitation of 1846 that Simon Cameron originally obtained his strong hold upon the popular sympathy and support of Pennsylvania. He was a Democrat; had long been confidential adviser to Mr. Buchanan, and had supported Mr. Polk. But he was a believer in the doctrine of protection; and as he had aided in carrying Pennsylvania by declaring himself a friend to the tariff of 1842, he maintained his faith. When the Polk administration was organized, a vacancy was created in the Senate by Mr. Buchanan's appointment as Secretary of State. George W. Woodward was the regular nominee of the Democratic party for the place. But Cameron bolted, and with the aid of Whig votes was chosen senator. He resisted the passage of the tariff of 1846, stood firmly and consistently for the industrial interests of his State, cultivated an alliance with the Whigs in the Senate, and by their aid thwarted all the attempts of the Polk administration to interfere with his plans and purposes in Pennsylvania. The President endeavored to heal Judge Woodward's wounds by placing him on the bench of the Supreme Court as the successor of the eminent Henry Baldwin. Cameron induced the Whigs to reject him, and then forced the administration to nominate Robert C. Grier whose appointment was personally acceptable and agreeable to him. In the successful tactics then employed by Cameron may be found the secret of his remarkable career as a party manager in the field in which, for a full half-century, he was an active and indefatigable worker.

The Whig victory of 1848 was not sufficiently decisive to warrant any attempt, even had there been desire, to change the tariff. General Taylor had been elected without subscribing to a platform or pledging himself to a specific measure, and he was therefore in a position to resist and reject appeals of the ordinary partisan character. Moreover the tariff of 1846 was yielding abundant revenue, and the business of the country was in a flourishing condition at the time his administration was organized. Money became very abundant after the year 1849; large enterprises were undertaken, speculation was prevalent, and for a considerable period the prosperity of the country was general and apparently genuine. After 1852 the Democrats had almost undisputed control of the government, and had gradually become a free-trade party. The principles embodied in the tariff of 1846 seemed for the time to be so entirely vindicated and approved that resistance to it ceased, not only among the people but among the protective economists, and even among the manufacturers to a large extent. So general was this acquiescence that in 1856 a protective tariff was not suggested or even hinted by any one of the three parties which presented Presidential candidates.

THE FREE-TRADE TARIFF OF 1857.

It was not surprising therefore that with a plethoric condition of the National Treasury for two or three consecutive years, the Democratic Congress, in the closing session of Pierce's administration, enacted what has since been known as the tariff of 1857. By this law the duties were placed lower then they had been at any time since the war of 1812. The Act was well received by the people, and was indeed concurred in by a considerable proportion of the Republican party. The Senate had a large Democratic majority, but in the House three parties divided the responsibility,—no one of them having an absolute majority. The Republicans had a plurality and had chosen Mr. Banks Speaker, but the American party held the balance of power in the House and on several of the leading committees. Some prominent Republicans, however, remaining true to their old Whig traditions, opposed the reduction of duties. Mr. Seward voted against it, but his colleague, Mr. Hamilton Fish, voted for it. Mr. Seward represented the protective tendencies of the country districts of New York, and Mr. Fish the free-trade tendencies of the city. Mr. Sumner and Mr. Wilson both voted for it, as did also Senator Allen of Rhode Island, the direct representative of the manufacturers of that State. Mr. Bell of New Hampshire voted for it, while Senators Collamer and Foote of Vermont voted against it. Mr. Fessenden did not oppose it, but his colleague, Mr. Nourse, voted against it. The Connecticut senators, Foster and Toucey, one of each party, supported the measure.

In the House, the New-England representatives generally voted for the bill, but Mr. Morrill of Vermont opposed it. The Pennsylvania delegation, led by James H. Campbell and John Covode, did all in their power to defeat it. The two Washburns, Colfax, and George G. Dunn headed a formidable opposition from the West. Humphrey Marshall and Samuel F. Swope of Kentucky were the only representatives from slave States who voted in the negative; though in the Senate three old and honored Whigs, John Bell of Tennessee, John B. Thompson of Kentucky, and Henry S. Geyer of Missouri maintained their ancient faith and voted against lowering the duties. It was an extraordinary political combination that brought the senators from Massachusetts and the senators from South Carolina, the representatives from New England and the representatives from the cotton States, to support the same tariff bill,—a combination which had not before occurred since the administration of Monroe. This singular coalition portended one of two results: Either an entire and permanent acquiescence in the rule of free-trade, or an entire abrogation of that system, and the revival, with renewed strength, of the doctrine of protection. Which it should be was determined by the unfolding of events not then foreseen, and the force of which it required years to measure.

The one excuse given for urging the passage of the Act of 1857 was that under the tariff of 1846 the revenues had become excessive, and the income of the government must be reduced. But it was soon found to be a most expensive mode of reaching that end. The first and most important result flowing from the new Act was a large increase in importations and a very heavy drain in consequence upon the reserved specie of the country, to pay the balance which the reduced shipments of agricultural products failed to meet. In the autumn of 1857, half a year after the passage of the tariff Act, a disastrous financial panic swept over the country, prostrating for the time all departments of business in about the same degree. The agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing interests were alike and equally involved. The distress for a time was severe and wide-spread. The stagnation which ensued was discouraging and long continued, making the years from 1857 to 1860 extremely dull and dispiriting in business circles throughout the Union. The country was not exhausted and depleted as it was after the panic of 1837, but the business community had no courage, energy was paralyzed, and new enterprises were at a stand-still.

It soon became evident that this condition of affairs would carry the tariff questions once more into the political arena, as an active issue between parties. Thus far, the new Republican organization had passively acquiesced in existing laws on the subject; but the general distress caused great bodies of men, as is always the case, to look to the action of the Government for relief. The Republicans found therefore a new ground for attacking the Democracy,—holding them responsible for the financial depression, initiating a movement for returning to the principle and practice of protection, and artfully identifying the struggle against slavery with the efforts of the workingmen throughout the North to be freed from injurious competition with the cheapened labor of Europe. This phase of the question was presented with great force in certain States, and the industrial classes, by a sort of instinct of self- preservation as it seemed to them, began to consolidate their votes in favor of the Republican party. They were made to see, by clever and persuasive speakers, that the slave labor of the South and the ill-paid labor of Europe were both hostile to the prosperity of the workingman in the free States of America, and that the Republican party was of necessity his friend, by its opposition to all the forms of labor which stood in the wy of his better remuneration and advancement.

REPUBLICAN PARTY FAVORS PROTECTION.

The convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln met when the feeling against free-trade was growing, and in many States already deep- rooted. A majority of those who composed that convention had inherited their political creed from the Whig party, and were profound believers in the protective teachings of Mr. Clay. But a strong minority came from the radical school of Democrats, and, in joining the Republican party on the anti-slavery issue, had retained their ancient creed on financial and industrial questions. Care was for that reason necessary in the introduction of new issues and the imposition of new tests of party fellowship. The convention therefore avoided the use of the word "protection," and was contented with the moderate declaration that "sound policy requires such an adjustment of imposts as will encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country." A more emphatic declaration might have provoked resistance from a minority of the convention, and the friends of protection acted wisely in accepting what was offered with unanimity, rather than continue the struggle for a stronger creed which would have been morally weakened by party division. They saw also that the mere form of expression was not important, so long as the convention was unanimous on what theologians term the "substance of doctrine." It was noted that the vast crowd which attended the convention cheered the tariff resolution as lustily as that which opposed the spread of slavery into free territory. From that hour the Republican party gravitated steadily and rapidly into the position of avowed advocacy of the doctrine of protection. The national ticket which they presented was composed indeed of an original Whig protectionist and an original Democratic free-trader; but the drift of events, as will be seen, carried both alike into the new movement for a protective system.

A review of the tariff legislation in the period between the war of 1812 and the political revolution of 1860 exhibits some sudden and extraordinary changes on the part of prominent political leaders in their relation to the question. The inconsistency involved is however more apparent than real. Perhaps it would be correct to say that the inconsistency was justifiable in the eyes of those who found it necessary to be inconsistent. Mr. Webster was a persistent advocate of free-trade so long as Massachusetts was a commercial State. But when, by the operation of laws against the enactment of which he had in vain protested, Massachusetts became a manufacturing State, Mr. Webster naturally and inevitably became a protectionist. Mr. Calhoun began as a protectionist when he hoped for the diffusion and growth of manufactures throughout all sections alike. He became a free-trader when he realized that the destiny of the South was to be purely agricultural, devoted to products whose market was not, in his judgment, to be enlarged by the tariff, and whose production was enhanced in cost by its operation. Colonel Benton's change was similar to Mr. Calhoun's, though at a later period, and not so abrupt or so radical. Mr. Van Buren's shifting of position was that of a man eagerly seeking the current of popular opinion, and ready to go with the majority of his party. Of all the great lights, but one burned steadily and clearly. Mr. Clay was always a protectionist, and, unlike Mr. Van Buren, he forced his party to go with him. But as a whole, the record of tariff legislation, from the very origin of the government, is the record of enlightened selfishness; and enlightened selfishness is the basis of much that is wisest in legislation.

It is natural that both sides to the tariff controversy should endeavor to derive support for their principles from the experience of the country. Nor can it be denied that each side can furnish many arguments which apparently sustain its own views and theories. The difficulty in reaching a satisfactory and impartial conclusion arises from the inability or unwillingness of the disputants to agree upon a common basis of fact. If the premises could be candidly stated, there would be not trouble in finding a true conclusion. In the absence of an agreement as to the points established, it is the part of fairness to give a succinct statement of the grounds maintained by the two parties to the prolonged controversy,—grounds which have not essentially changed in a century of legislation and popular contention.

It is maintained by free-traders that under the moderate tariff prevailing from the origin of the government to the war of 1812 the country was prosperous, and manufactures were developing as rapidly as was desirable or healthful. Protectionists on the other hand aver that the duty levied in 1789 was the first of uniform application throughout all the States, and that, regardless of its percentage, its influence and effect were demonstrably protective; that it was the first barrier erected against the absolute commercial supremacy of England, and that it effectually did its work in establishing the foundation of the American system. In the absence of that tariff, they maintain that England, under the influence of actual free-trade, had monopolized our market and controlled our industries. Finally they declare that the free-traders yield the whole case in acknowledging that the first tariff imparted an impetus to manufactures and to commercial independence wholly unknown while the States were under the Articles of Confederation and unable to levy uniform duties on imports.

COMPARISON OF REVENUE SYSTEMS.

The free-traders point to the destructive effect of the war tariff of 1812, which unduly stimulated and then inevitably depressed the country. They assume this to be a pregnant illustration of a truth, otherwise logically deduced by them, as to the re-action sure to follow an artificial stimulus given to any department of trade. The protectionists declining to defend the war duties as applicable to a normal condition, find in the too sudden dropping of war rates the mistake which precipitated the country into financial trouble. Depression, they say, would naturally have come; but it was hastened and increased by the inconsiderate manner in which the duties were lowered in 1816. From that time onward the protectionists claim that the experience of the country has favored their theories of revenue and financial administration. The country did not revive, or prosperity re-appear, until the protective tariff of 1824 was enacted. The awakening of all branches of industry by that Act was further promoted by the tariff of 1828, to which the protectionists point as the perfected wisdom of their school. Mr. Clay publicly asserted that the severest depression he had witnessed in the country was during the seven years preceding the tariff of 1824, and that the highest prosperity was during the seven years following that Act.

The free-traders affirm that the excitement in the South and the sectional resistance to the tariff of 1828 show the impossibility of maintaining high duties. The protectionists reply that such an argument is begging the question, and is simply tantamount to admitting that protection is valuable if it can be upheld. The protectionists point to the fact that their system was not abandoned in 1832 upon a fair consideration of its intrinsic merits, but as a peace-offering to those who were threatening the destruction of the government if the duties were not lowered. Many protectionists believe that if Mr. Clay had been willing to give to General Jackson the glory of an absolute victory over the Nullifiers of South Carolina, the revenue system of the country would have been very different. They think however that the temptation to settle the question by compromise instead of permitting Jackson to settle it by force was perhaps too strong to be resisted by one who had so many reasons for opposing and hating the President.

A more reasonable view held by another school of protectionists is that Mr. Clay did the wisest possible thing in withdrawing the tariff question from a controversy where it was complicated with so many other issues,—some of them bitter and personal. He justly feared that the protective principle might be irretrievably injured in the collision thought to be impending. He believed moreover that the best protective lesson would be taught by permitting the free-traders to enforce their theories for a season, trusting for permanent triumph to the popular re-action certain to follow. There was nothing in the legislation to show that Mr. Clay or his followers had in any degree abandoned or changed their faith in protective duties of their confidence in the ultimate decision of the public judgment. The protectionists aver that the evils which flowed from the free-trade tariff of 1833, thus forced on the country by extraneous considerations, were incalculably great, and negatively established the value of the tariff of 1828 which had been so unfairly destroyed. They maintain that it broke down the manufacturing interest, led to excessive importations, threw the balance of trade heavily against us, drained us of our specie, and directly led to the financial disasters of 1837 and the years ensuing. They further declare that this distressing situation was not relieved until the protective tariff of 1842 was passed, and that thenceforward, for the four years in which that Act was allowed to remain in force, the country enjoyed general prosperity,—a prosperity so marked and wide-spread that the opposing party had not dared to make an issue against the tariff in States where there was large investment in manufacturing.

The free-traders consider the tariff of 1846 to be a conclusive proof the beneficial effect of low duties. They challenge a comparison of the years of its operation, between 1846 and 1857, with any other equal period in the history of the country. Manufacturing, they say, was not forced by a hot-house process to produce high-priced goods for popular consumption, but was gradually encouraged and developed on a healthful and self-sustaining basis, not to be shaken as a reed in the wind by every change in the financial world. Commerce, as they point out, made great advances, and our carrying trade grew so rapidly that in ten years from the day the tariff of 1846 was passed our tonnage exceeded the tonnage of England. The free-traders refer with especial emphasis to what the term the symmetrical development of all the great interests of the country under this liberal tariff. Manufactures were not stimulated at the expense of the commercial interest. Both were developed in harmony, while agriculture, the indispensable basis of all, was never more flourishing. The farmers and planters at no other period of our history were in receipt of such good prices, steadily paid to them in gold coin, for their surplus product, which they could send to the domestic market over our own railways and to the foreign market in our own ships.

COMPARISON OF REVENUE SYSTEMS.

Assertions as to the progress of manufactures in the period under discussion are denied by the protectionists. While admitting the general correctness of the free-trader's statements as to the prosperous condition of the country, they call attention to the fact that directly after the enactment of the tariff of 1846 the great famine occurred in Ireland, followed in the ensuing years by short crops in Europe. The prosperity which came to the American agriculturist was therefore from causes beyond the sea and not at home,—causes which were transient, indeed almost accidental. Moreover an exceptional condition of affairs existed in the United States in consequence of our large acquisition of territory from Mexico at the close of the war and the subsequent and almost immediate discovery of gold in California. A new and extended field of trade was thus opened in which we had the monopoly, and an enormous surplus of money was speedily created from the products of the rich mines on the Pacific coast. At the same time Europe was in convulsion from the revolutions of 1848, and production was materially hindered over a large part of the Continent. This disturbance had scarcely subsided when three leading nations of Europe, England, France, and Russia, engaged in the wasteful and expensive war of the Crimea. This struggle began in 1853 and ended in 1856, and during those years it increased consumption and decreased production abroad, and totally closed the grain-fields of Russia from any competition with the United States.

The protectionists therefore hold that the boasted prosperity of the country under the tariff of 1846 was abnormal in origin and in character. It depended upon a series of events exceptional at home and even more exceptional abroad,—events which by the doctrine of probabilities would not be repeated for centuries. When peace was restored in Europe, when foreign looms and forges were set going with renewed strength, when Russia resumed her export of wheat, and when at home the output of the gold-mines suddenly decreased, the country was thrown into distress, followed by a panic and by long years of depression. The protectionists maintain that from 1846 to 1857 the United States would have enjoyed prosperity under any form of tariff, but that the moment the exceptional conditions in Europe and in America came to an end, the country was plunged headlong into a disaster from which the conservative force of a protective tariff would in large part have saved it. The protectionists claim moreover that in these averments they are not wise after the fact. They show a constant series of arguments and warnings from leading teachers of their economic school, especially from Horace Greeley and Henry C. Carey, accurately foretelling the disastrous results which occurred at the height of what was assumed to be our solid and enduring prosperity as a nation. These able writers were prophets of adversity, and the inheritors of their faith claim that their predictions were startlingly verified.

The free-traders, as an answer to this arraignment of their tariff policy, seek to charge responsibility for the financial disasters to the hasty and inconsiderate changes made in the tariff in 1857, for which both parties were in large degree if not indeed equally answerable. The protectionists will not admit the plea, and insist that the cause was totally inadequate to the effect, considering the few months the new tariff had been in operation. They admit that the low scale of duties in the new tariff perhaps may have added to the distress, by the very rapid increase of importations which it invited; but they declare that its period of operation was entirely too brief to create a result so decided, if all the elements of disaster had not been in existence, and in rapid development, at the time the Act was passed. The tariff of 1846 therefore under which there had been a very high degree of prosperity, was, in the judgment of the protectionists, successfully impeached, and a profound impression in consequence made on the public mind in favor of higher duties.

PROTECTION IN PENNSYLVANIA.

The question of the tariff was of especial significance and influence in Pennsylvania. Important in that State, it became important everywhere. Pennsylvania had been continuously and tenaciously held by the Democratic party. In the old political divisions she had followed Jefferson and opposed Adams. In the new divisions she had followed Jackson and opposed Clay. She was Republican as against the Federalists, she was Democratic as against the Whigs. From the election of Jackson in 1828 to the year 1860,—a period that measured the lifetime of a generation,—she had, with very few exceptions, sustained the Democratic party. Joseph Ritner was elected governor by the Whigs in 1835, in consequence of Democratic divisions. Harrison, in the political convulsion of 1840, triumphed in the State by the slight majority of three hundred. Taylor received her electoral vote, partly in consequence of dissensions between Cass and Van Buren, and partly in consequence of the free- trade opinions of Cass. In 1854 James Pollock was chosen governor by the sudden uprising and astounding development of the Native- American excitement as organized by the Know-Nothing party. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise aided the canvass of Pollock, but that alone would not have loosened the strong moorings of the Pennsylvania Democracy. Mr. Buchanan recovered the State two years afterwards, and would have held it firmly in his grasp but for the financial revulsion and the awakened demand for a protective tariff.

Dissociated from the question of protection, opposition to the extension of slavery was a weak issue in Pennsylvania. This was conclusively shown in the gubernatorial contest of 1857, when David Wilmot, the personal embodiment of Free-soil principles, was the Republican candidate for governor. Besides the general strength of the Territorial issue, Mr. Wilmot had the advantage of all the anti-slavery zeal which was aroused by the announcement of the Dred Scott decision, with the censurable connection therewith of President Buchanan. Thus an angry element was superadded for personal prejudice and effective agitation. Yet Mr. Wilmot was disastrously beaten by the Democratic candidate, Governor Parker, the adverse majority reaching indeed tens of thousands.

The crushing Republican defeat received in the person of Wilmot occurred on the very eve of the financial distress of 1857. The Democratic canvass had been made while there was yet no suspicion of impending panic and revulsion,—made indeed with constant boasts of the general prosperity and with constant ascription of that prosperity to the well-defined and long-continued policy of the Democratic party. From that time the Democratic party became embarrassed in Pennsylvania. With a tariff of their own making, with a President of their own choice, with both branches of Congress and every department of the government under their control, a serious disaster had come upon the country. The promises of Democratic leaders had failed, their predictions had been falsified, and as a consequence their strength was shattered. The Republicans of Pennsylvania, seeing their advantage, pressed it by renewed and urgent demands for a protective tariff. On the other issues of the party they had been hopelessly beaten, but the moment the hostility to slave-labor in the Territories became identified with protected labor in Pennsylvania, the party was inspired with new hopes, received indeed a new life.

It was this condition of public opinion in Pennsylvania which made the recognition of the protective system so essential in the Chicago platform of 1860. It was to that recognition that Mr. Lincoln in the end owed his election. The memorable victory of Andrew G. Curtin, when he was chosen governor by a majority of thirty-two thousand, was largely due to his able and persuasive presentation of the tariff question, and to his effective appeals to the laboring- men in the coal and iron sections of the State. But for this issue there was in fact no reason why Curtin should have been stronger in 1860 than Wilmot was in 1857. Indeed, but for that issue he must have been weaker. The agitation over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had somewhat subsided with the lapse of years: the free- State victory in Kansas was acknowledged and that angry issue removed; while the Dred Scott decision, failing to arouse popular resentment at the time it was pronounced, could hardly be effective for an aggressive canvass three years later. If Governor Curtin could have presented no other issue to the voters of Pennsylvania, he would undoubtedly have shared the fate which Wilmot met when he had these anti-slavery questions as his only platform. Governor Curtin gave a far greater proportion of his time to the discussion of the tariff and financial issues than to all others combined, and he carried Pennsylvania because a majority of her voters believed that the Democratic party tended to free-trade, and that the Republican party would espouse and maintain the cause of protection.

PENNSYLVANIA'S INFLUENCE IN 1860.

Had the Republicans failed to carry Pennsylvania, there can be no doubt that Mr. Lincoln would have been defeated. An adverse result in Pennsylvania in October would certainly have involved the loss of Indiana in November, besides California and Oregon and the four votes in New Jersey. The crisis of the national campaign was therefore reached in the triumph of Governor Curtin in the State election which preceded by four weeks the direct choice of President. It would be difficult to compute the possible demoralization in the Republican ranks if Pennsylvania had been lost in October. The division among the Democrats was a fruitful source of encouragement and strength to the Republicans, but would probably have disappeared with the positive assurance of success in the national struggle. Whether in the end Douglas or Breckinridge would have been chosen President is matter of speculation, but it is certain that Mr. Lincoln would have been defeated. The October election of Pennsylvania was for so long a period an unerring index to the result of the contest for the Presidency, that a feeling almost akin to superstition was connected with it. Whichever party carried it was sure, in the popular judgment, to elect the President. It foretold the crushing defeat of John Quincy Adams in 1828; it heralded the disaster to Mr. Clay in 1844; it foredoomed General Cass in 1848. The Republicans, having elected their candidate for governor in 1854 by a large majority, confidently expected to carry the State against Mr. Buchanan in 1856. But the Democratic party prevailed in the October election, and the supporters of Frémont at once recognized the hopelessness of their cause. The triumph of Governor Curtin was the sure precursor of Mr. Lincoln's election, and that very fact added immeasurably to his popular strength in the closing month of the prolonged and exciting struggle.

In reviewing the agencies therefore which precipitated the political revolution of 1860, large consideration must be given to the influence of the movement for Protection. To hundreds of thousands of voters who took part in that memorable contest, the tariff was not even mentioned. Indeed this is probably the fact with respect to the majority of those who cast their suffrages for Mr. Lincoln. It is none the less true that these hundreds of thousands of ballots, cast in aid of free territory and as a general defiance to the aggressions of the pro-slavery leaders of the South, would have been utterly ineffectual if the central and critical contest in Pennsylvania had not resulted in a victory for the Republicans in October. The tariff therefore had a controlling influence not only in deciding the contest for political supremacy but in that more momentous struggle which was to involve the fate of the Union. It had obtained a stronger hold on the Republican party than even the leaders of that organization were aware, and it was destined to a larger influence upon popular opinion than the most sagacious could foresee.

In the foregoing summary of legislation upon the tariff, the terms Free-trade and Protection are used in their ordinary acceptation in this country,—not as accurately defining the difference in revenue theories, but as indicating the rival policies which have so long divided political parties. Strictly speaking, there has never been a proposition by any party in the United States for the adoption of free-trade. To be entirely free, trade must encounter no obstruction in the way of tax, either upon export or import. In that sense no nation has ever enjoyed free-trade. As contradistinguished from the theory of protection, England has realized freedom of trade by taxing only that class of imports which meet no competition in home production, thus excluding all pretense of favor or advantage to any of her domestic industries. England came to this policy after having clogged and embarrassed trade for a long period by the most unreasonable and tyrannical restrictions, ruthlessly enforced, without regard to the interests or even the rights of others. She had more than four hundred Acts of Parliament, regulating the tax on imports, under the old designations of "tonnage and poundage," adjusted, as the phrase indicates, to heavy and light commodities. Beyond these, she had a cumbersome system of laws regulating and in many cases prohibiting the exportation of articles which might teach to other nations the skill by which she had herself so marvelously prospered.

When by long experiment and persistent effort England had carried her fabrics to perfection; when by the large accumulation of wealth and the force of reserved capital she could command facilities which poorer nations could not rival; when by the talent of her inventors, developed under the stimulus of large reward, she had surpassed all other countries in the magnitude and effectiveness of her machinery, she proclaimed free-trade and persuasively urged it upon all lands with which she had commercial intercourse. Maintaining the most arbitrary and most complicated system of protection so long as her statesmen considered that policy advantageous, she resorted to free-trade only when she felt able to invade the domestic markets of other countries and undersell the fabrics produced by struggling artisans who were sustained by weaker capital and by less advanced skill. So long as there was danger that her own marts might be invaded, and the products of her looms and forges undersold at home, she rigidly excluded the competing fabric and held her own market for her own wares.

FREE-TRADE POLICY OF ENGLAND.

England was however neither consistent nor candid in her advocacy and establishment of free-trade. She did not apply it to all departments of her enterprise, but only to those in which she felt confident that she could defy competition. Long after the triumph of free-trade in manufactures, as proclaimed in 1846, England continued to violate every principle of her own creed in the protection she extended to her navigation interests. She had nothing to fear from the United States in the domain of manufacturers, and she therefore asked us to give her the unrestricted benefit of our markets in exchange for a similar privilege which she offered to us in her markets. But on the sea we were steadily gaining upon her, and in 1850-55 were nearly equal to her in aggregate tonnage. We could build wooden vessels at less cost than England and our ships excelled hers in speed. When steam began to compete with sail she saw her advantage. She could build engines at less cost than we, and when, soon afterward, her ship-builders began to construct the entire steamer of iron, her advantages became evident to the whole world.

England was not content however with the superiority which these circumstances gave to her. She did not wait for her own theory of Free-trade to work out its legitimate results, but forthwith stimulated the growth of her steam marine by the most enormous bounties ever paid by any nation to any enterprise. To a single line of steamers running alternate weeks from Liverpool to Boston and New York, she paid nine hundred thousand dollars annually, and continued to pay at this extravagant rate for at least twenty years. In all channels of trade where steam could be employed she paid lavish subsidies, and literally destroyed fair competition, and created for herself a practical monopoly in the building of iron steamers, and a superior share in the ocean traffic of the world. But every step she took in the development of her steam marine by the payment of bounty, was in flat contradiction of the creed which she was at the same time advocating in those departments of trade where she could conquer her competitors without bounty.

With her superiority in navigation attained and made secure through the instrumentality of subsidies, England could afford to withdraw them. Her ships no longer needed them. Thereupon, with a promptness which would be amusing if it did not have so serious a side for America, she proceeded to inveigh through all her organs of public opinion against the discarded and condemned policy of granting subsidies to ocean steamers. Her course in effect is an exact repetition of that in regard to protection of manufactures, but as it is exhibited before a new generation, the inconsistency is not so readily apprehended nor so keenly appreciated as it should be on this side of the Atlantic. Even now there is good reason for believing that many lines of English steamers, in their effort to seize the trade to the exclusion of rivals, are paid such extravagant rates for the carrying of letters as practically to amount to a bounty, thus confirming to the present day (1884) the fact that no nation has ever been so persistently and so jealously protective in her policy as England so long as the stimulus of protection is needed to give her the command of trade. What is true of England is true in greater or less degree of all other European nations. They have each in turn regulated the adoption of free-trade by the ratio of their progress towards the point where they could overcome competition. In all those departments of trade where competition could overcome them, they have been quick to interpose protective measures for the benefit of their own people.

The trade policy of the United States at the foundation of the government had features of enlightened liberality which were unknown in any other country of the world. The new government was indeed as far in advance of European nations in the proper conception of liberal commerce as it was on questions relating to the character of the African slave-trade. The colonists had experienced the oppression of the English laws which prohibited export from the mother country of the very articles which might advance their material interest and improve their social condition. They now had the opportunity, as citizens of a free Republic, to show the generous breadth of their statesmanship, and they did so by providing in their Constitution, that Congress should never possess the power to levy "a tax or duty on articles exported from any State."

At the same time trade was left absolutely free between all the States of the Union, no one of them being permitted to levy any tax on exports or imports beyond what might be necessary for its inspection laws. Still further to enforce this needful provision, the power to regulate commerce between the States was given to the General Government. The effect of these provisions was to insure to the United States a freedom of trade beyond that enjoyed by any other nation. Fifty-five millions of American people (in 1884), over an area nearly as large as the entire continent of Europe, carry on their exchanges by ocean, by lake, by river, by rail, without the exactions of the tax-gatherer, without the detention of the custom house, without even the recognition of State lines. In these great channels, the domestic exchanges represent an annual value perhaps twenty-five times as great as the total of exports and imports. It is the enjoyment of free-trade and protection at the same time which has contributed to the unexampled development and marvelous prosperity of the United States.

OPERATION OF PROTECTIVE LAWS.

The essential question which has grown up between political parties in the United States respecting our foreign trade, is whether a duty should be laid upon any import for the direct object of protecting and encouraging the manufacture of the same article at home. The party opposed to this theory does not advocate the admission of the article free, but insists upon such rate of duty as will produce the largest revenue and at the same time afford what is termed "incidental protection." The advocates of actual free-trade according to the policy of England—taxing only those articles which are not produced at home—are few in number, and are principally confined to doctrinaires. The instincts of the masses of both parties are against them. But the nominal free- trader finds it very difficult to unite the largest revenue from any article with "incidental protection" to the competing product at home. If the duty be so arranged as to produce the greatest amount of revenue, it must be placed at that point where the foreign article is able to undersell the domestic article and thus command the market to the exclusion of competition. This result goes beyond what the so-called American free-trader intends in practice, but not beyond what he implies in theory.

The American protectionist does not seek to evade the legitimate results of his theory. He starts with the proposition that whatever is manufactured at home gives work and wages to our own people, and that if they duty is even put so high as to prohibit the import of the foreign article, the competition of home producers will, according to the doctrine of Mr. Hamilton, rapidly reduce the price to the consumer. He gives numerous illustrations of articles which under the influence of home competition have fallen in price below the point at which the foreign article was furnished when there was no protection. The free-trader replies that the fall in price has been still greater in the foreign market, and the protectionist rejoins that the reduction was made to compete with the American product, and that the former price would probably have been maintained so long as the importer had the monopoly of our market. Thus our protective tariff reduced the price in both countries. This has notably been the result with respect to steel rails, the production of which in America has reached a magnitude surpassing that of England. Meanwhile rails have largely fallen in price to the consumer, the home manufacture has disbursed countless millions of money among American laborers, and has added largely to our industrial independence and to the wealth of the country.

While many fabrics have fallen to as low a price in the United States as elsewhere, it is not to be denied that articles of clothing and household use, metals and machinery, are on an average higher than in Europe. The difference is due in large degree to the wages paid to labor, and thus the question of reducing the tariff carries with it the very serious problem of a reduction in the pay of the artisan and the operative. This involves so many grave considerations that no party is prepared to advocate it openly. Free-traders do not, and apparently dare not, face the plain truth—which is that the lowest priced fabric means the lowest priced labor. On this point protectionists are more frank than their opponents; they realize that it constitutes indeed the most impregnable defense of their school. Free-traders have at times attempted to deny the truth of the statement; but every impartial investigation thus far has conclusively proved that labor is better paid, and the average condition of the laboring man more comfortable, in the United States than in any European country.

An adjustment of the protective duty to the point which represents the average difference between wages of labor in Europe and in America, will, in the judgment of protectionists, always prove impracticable. The difference cannot be regulated by a scale of averages because it is constantly subject to arbitrary changes. If the duty be adjusted on that basis for any given date, a reduction of wages would at once be enforced abroad, and the American manufacturer would in consequence be driven to the desperate choice of surrendering the home market or reducing the pay of workmen. The theory of protection is not answered, nor can its realization to attained by any such device. Protection, in the perfection of its design as described by Mr. Hamilton, does not invite competition from abroad, but is based on the controlling principle that competition at home will always prevent monopoly on the part of the capitalist, assure good wages to the laborer, and defend the consumer against the evils of extortion.