In respect to the personal motive and circumstances of those combining to frame such legal interferences with the natural liberty of their contemporaries, and the inevitable results of them, we will quote first from Sir Thomas More, a man of men, in his Utopia, written in 1516. "The rich are ever striving to pare away something further from the daily wages of the poor by private fraud, and even by public laws; so that the wrong already existing, for it is a wrong that those from whom the State derives most benefit should receive least reward, is made yet greater by means of the law of the State. It is nothing but a conspiracy of the rich against the poor. The rich devise every means by which they may in the first place secure to themselves what they have amassed by wrong, and then take to their own use and profit at the lowest possible price the work and labor of the poor. And so soon as the rich decide on adopting these devices in the name of the public, then they become law. The life of the labor-class becomes so wretched in consequence that even a beast's life seems enviable."
The utter folly of supposing that a Parliament or a Congress or a Committee of either is fit to determine, or to have any voice in deciding, what shall or what shall not be manufactured or grown, what shall or what shall not be exported and imported, was never more happily exposed than by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. "The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but would assume an authority which could be safely trusted not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it."
Alexander Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury, and in some respects the most brilliant of all our statesmen, has often been claimed and referred to as a protectionist by those unfamiliar with his writings; but the paragraph of those writings, or the phrase of any authenticated conversation of his, has never been quoted and never can be, because they do not exist, which proves him to have been a "protectionist" in the modern, or any other proper, sense of that word. On the contrary, his deliberate and well-founded opinion in the premises is given at length in number XXXV of the Federalist, this number printed early in 1788: "Exorbitant duties on imported articles serve to beget a general spirit of smuggling; which is always prejudicial to the fair trader, and eventually to the revenue itself: they tend to render other classes of the community tributary, in an improper degree, to the manufacturing classes, to whom they give a premature monopoly of the markets: they sometimes force industry out of its most natural channels into which it flows with less advantage; and in the last place, they oppress the merchant, who is often obliged to pay them himself without any retribution from the consumer. When the Demand is equal to the quantity of goods at market, the consumer generally pays the duty; but when the markets happen to be overstocked, the great proportion falls upon the merchant, and sometimes not only exhausts his profits, but breaks in upon his capital. I am apt to think, that a division of the duty between the seller and the buyer more often happens than is commonly imagined. There is no part of the administration of the Government that requires extensive information, and a thorough knowledge of the principles of Political Economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best, will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or to sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome."[12]
Shrewd old Benjamin Franklin, impersonation of common sense and common honesty, ridicules in his sly way the whole wretched business in the columns of the "Pennsylvania Gazette" in 1789. "I am a manufacturer, and was a petitioner for the act to encourage and protect the manufacturers of Pennsylvania. I was very happy when the act was obtained, and I immediately added to the price of my manufacture as much as it would bear, so as to be a little cheaper than the same article imported and paying the duty. By this addition I hoped to grow richer. But as every other manufacturer, whose wares are under the protection of the act, has done the same, I begin to doubt whether, considering the whole year's expenses of my family, with all these separate additions which I pay to other manufacturers, I am at all the gainer. And I confess, I cannot but wish that, except the protecting duty on my own manufacture, all duties of the kind were taken off and abolished."
In the first congressional debate on the Tariff after the new Government went into operation, that is, in 1789, Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, who had just before made the strongest plea against the Molasses Tax, the raw material of New England rum, became also the strongest stickler there for the protectionist view, that artificial manufactures may properly enough fasten and fatten upon Agriculture, like shell-fish upon ship-bottoms, and went to the root of the whole matter of that inevitable antagonism in a few frank and radical words, the best because the most truthful words that can be found upon that side in the century that has followed. "From the different situation of the manufacturers in Europe and America, encouragement is necessary. In Europe, the artisan is driven to labor for his bread. Stern necessity, with her iron rod, compels his exertion. In America, invitation and encouragement are needed. Without them, the infant manufacture droops, and those who might be employed in it seek with success a competency from our cheap and fertile soil."
Gouverneur Morris, one of the youngest and among the most gifted of the Revolutionary statesmen, had a clear insight into Economic realities. "Whatever saves Labor rewards Labor." "Those who will give the most for money, in other words, those who will sell cheapest, will have the most money." "Taxes can be raised only from revenue: push the matter further, and their nature is changed: it is no longer taxation, it is confiscation."