CHAPTER XI.
DUTIES AND TARIFFS.
1. Duty is a term used to designate a sum paid by foreign merchandise coming to our country for sale, for the privilege of entering and being offered to purchasers. Tariff is a rate, or scale, of duties.
2. Ever since intercourse has become frequent between different nations commerce has been occupied in effecting interchanges of the products and industries of each country with others. Each country has peculiarities that specially fit it for the production or manufacture of some article, or list of articles, which others would be unable to produce, or would produce at greater inconvenience and expense, and which is of high value to all, or many of the others. The social principle has proved to be of extreme value to the improvement of men, and to their happiness; and we might say that, in this unequal distribution of capacities in the lands, and the races who inhabit them, the exercise of the social principle, on a broad scale, was made, by nature, indispensable.
3. Each nation, then, devotes itself to its special features of production, and exchanges its surplus with others for what it wants of their different surplus, to mutual profit. Just as A is a farmer, and raises grain, while B is a mechanic. Each has a natural adaptation to the business he pursues, and each needs what the other produces. So they exchange, and each has the full benefit of the success and different genius and resources of the other. Commerce is the same in principle, and interchange becomes constantly more extensive.
4. Government naturally regulates commerce because it is one of the general interests of the country. It finds an indefinite amount of foreign merchandise waiting to enter to be put on sale. It was long ago discovered that here was a convenient mode of producing a government income without disturbing the people with a constant demand for money to pay its expenses. Whatever foreign goods had to pay for permission to enter, was quietly added to the price afterward, and so the people paid their taxes to the government in an indirect way in the form of a Duty. They pay the price asked, if it be within their means, without knowledge, or thought, of what part goes to the government, unless they study the subject carefully.
It has always been the case, then, that a government could get all the money it wanted, from this source, in ordinary times, with very little trouble. That mode is naturally a favorite with them. Whether it is the best way for the people is another question, which has been, at different times, very warmly debated in our government. It is not our place here to take up the argument, but it is worthy of a careful study by the people.
5. A Tariff of duties is established to carry on the government. There is another object that has had many advocates, and has quite commonly exerted an influence to raise the tariff on some things. It is stated in the preamble, or introduction, to the first act passed by the first Congress, on this subject, July 4th, 1789, “Whereas, it is necessary for the support of the government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and the encouragement and protection of manufactures, that duties be laid on goods, wares, and merchandise imported.” It was considered important to protect and encourage our manufactures, by putting so high a price on the same kind of foreign goods that ours would have the advantage and sell at a less price or greater profit.
This might have been a wise measure, in the early days of the country, when there were few manufactures. Whether it has been so since, or is so now, is not so clear.