Almost the only fact in relation to the tariff that I never heard disputed is that it was, under one aspect, a measure of retaliation. Rendering evil for evil answers no better in economical than in moral affairs; even if it take the name of self-defence. Because the British are foolish and wrong in refusing to admit American corn, the Americans excluded British cottons and woollens. More was said, and I believe sincerely, about self-defence than about retaliation: but it is very remarkable that men so clear-headed, inquiring, and sagacious as the authors of the American system, should not have seen further into the condition of their own country, and learned more from the unhappy experience of Europe, than to imagine that they could neutralise the effects of the bad policy of England by adopting the same bad policy themselves. It is strange that they did not see that if British cottons and woollens found easy entrance into their country, it must have been in exchange for something, though that something was not corn. It was strange that they did not see that if the apparent facilities for manufactures in the northern States were really great enough to justify manufactures, individual enterprise would be sure to find it out; and all the more readily for the deficiency in the resources of New England, which is assigned as the reason for offering her legislative protection. There was not even the excuse for interference which exists in old countries; that by intricate complexities of mismanagement, economical affairs have been perverted from their natural course. Here, in America, a new branch of industry was to be instituted. The skill was ready; the material was ready; the capital was procurable, if the object was good; and ought not to be, if the object was unsound. The interests of the people might have been trusted in their own hands. They would of themselves have taken less of British cotton goods, and more of something else which they could not get at home, if cotton goods could be made better and cheaper at home than in England; which it is proved that, for the most part, they can be. It is anticipated that when the Compromise method expires, the home manufacture of some kinds of fine cotton goods will diminish; but that the bulk of the manufacture is beyond the reach of accident. The effect of the tariff has been to over-stimulate a natural process, and thus to cause over-manufacture, panic, and ruin to many. It is said, and with truth, that America can afford to try experiments; that America is the very country that should learn by experience; and so forth. But it should be remembered that those who suffer are not always those who should be the learners. In New England, there is a large class of very poor women,—ladies; some working; some unable to work. I knew many of these; and was struck with the great number of them who assigned as the cause of their poverty the depreciation of factory stock, or the failure in other ways of factory schemes, in which their parents or other friends had, beguiled by the promises of the tariff, invested what should have been their maintenance.
No more need be said on the policy of the tariff. The truth is now very extensively acknowledged; and though some of those who are answerable for the American system continue to assume that manufactures could not have been instituted without its assistance, I believe it is pretty generally understood that no more infant manufactures will be burdened with this cruel kind of protection.
A far more important question than that of the policy is that of the principle of a protective system in the United States.
It is known that the strongest resistance was made to the American system on the ground of its being unconstitutional. Its advocates relied, for the necessary sanction, on the clauses which provide that "Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, and duties, imposts, and excises;"——and "to regulate commerce with foreign nations." With regard to the first of these clauses, both parties seem, more or less, in the right. By the tariff, Congress proposed "to lay and collect duties and imposts," as the constitution gives it express leave to do. Yet it is clear to those who view the constitution in the light of the sun of the revolution, that, such permission was given solely with a view to the collection of the revenue. No one of the framers of the constitution could have foreseen that any proposal would be made to lay duties for the protection of the productive interests of a section of the Union. Such a use of the clause is forbidden in spirit, though not in the letter, by the clause which ordains, "but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." This clause is, in its spirit, wholly condemnatory of partial legislation by Congress.
Remarks somewhat analogous may be made respecting the other clause, which empowers Congress "to regulate commerce with foreign nations." By the letter of this clause, Congress may appear to a superficial observer authorised so to regulate its commerce with Great Britain as to cause an arbitrary distribution of property and industry within her own boundaries; but such a double action could never have been in contemplation of the framers of the instrument. What they had in view was obviously the guardianship of the national commercial rights, and the promotion of the national commercial, not sectional manufacturing, interests.
Where the letter and the spirit of the constitution are made, by lapse of time and change of circumstance, to bear out opposite modes of conduct, there is an appeal which every man must make, for his individual satisfaction and conviction. He must appeal to the fundamental republican principles, out of which grew both the spirit and the letter of the constitution.
By these the tariff is hopelessly condemned. It is contrary to all sound republican principle that the general government of a nation, widely spread over regions, and separated into sections diversified in their productions, occupations, and interests, should use its power of legislating for the whole to provide for the particular interests of a part. The principle of perfect political and social equality is violated when the general government takes cognisance of local objects so far as to do a deed which must materially affect the distribution of private property; so far as to lay a tax on the whole of the nation for the avowed object of benefiting a part. The government of a republic has no business with distinctions among its subjects. It is to have no respect of classes, more than of individuals. Its functions are to be discharged for the common interest; and it is to entertain no fancies as to what new institutions or arrangements will be beneficial or the contrary to the nation.
All such institutions and arrangements must be made within the several States, or by an agreement of States; subject, of course, to the permissions and prohibitions of the constitution. If one State, or several States, should be pleased to decree bounties on their own manufactures, let them do so. Whether the measure were wise or unwise, no one out of the limits of such State or States would have a right to complain. This could not be said under the tariff. It was a just complaint which was urged by many States, that the federal representation was made useless to the minority, from the moment that the federal government applied itself to favour local and particular interests. The case is not altered by the possible result being highly beneficial to the whole country; which is the plea industriously advanced by the advocates of the tariff. Whatever direction and application of industry and capital may be ultimately most beneficial, Congress has, on principle, no more business with it than with the support of what may prove in the end to be the purest religious doctrine.
If America had been as free, from the beginning, in all respects, as a young country ought to be,—free to run her natural course of prosperity, subject only to the faithful laws which regulate the economy of society as beneficially as another set of laws regulates the seasons, we might never have heard of the American system. The poisonous anomaly which has caused almost all the diseases that have afflicted the republic, appears to be the original infection here also. If labour in the southern States had been free long ago, the deterioration of southern property would not have caused the southern planters to clamour for legislative protection. The arbitrary tenure of labour made them desire an arbitrary distribution of capital. They desired it for the north, as eagerly as for themselves, expecting the result to be that the cotton-growers would be protected by heavy import duties on cotton; and that the prosperity of the north, depending, as they supposed, wholly on its commerce, would be crippled by the same means; and thus, something like an equality between north and south be restored. The effect was different from what had been anticipated. The deterioration of the south went on; and manufactures first replaced, and then renovated, the commerce of the north. The next consequence was natural enough. The south became infuriated against the tariff, not only on the reasonable ground of its badness of principle, but on the allegation that it was the cause of all the woes of the south,[6] and all the prosperity, diversified with woes, of the north. It has always been the method of slaveholders to lay the blame of their sufferings upon everything but the real cause. Any one who reads the history of slavery in the book of events, will find slave-holders of every country complaining bitterly and incessantly of the want of legislative protection to themselves, or of its being granted to others. In the present instance, it was a device of the slave-holders, to renovate their falling fortunes, turned against themselves.