The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

“What are these functions? The Constitution authorizes Congress to regulate and control this great motive power, the power to levy and collect duties; and the objects for which duties are to be levied and collected are summarized in three great groups: First, ‘to pay debts.’ By this, the arm of the Government sweeps over all its past history and protects its honor by discharging all obligations that have come down from former years. Second, is ‘to provide for the common defense.’ By this, the mailed arm of the Government sweeps the great circle of the Union to defend it against foes from without and insurrection within. And, third, is to ‘promote the general welfare.’ These are the three great objects to which the Constitution applies the power of taxation. They are all great, beneficent, national objects, and can not be argued out of existence.

“The fifteen specifications following in the eighth section of the same article—such as the power to raise armies, to maintain a navy, to establish courts, to coin money, to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, to promote science and the useful arts by granting patents and copyrights—are all specifications and limitations of the methods by which this great central power of taxation is to be applied to the common defense and the general welfare. And it is left to the discretion of Congress to determine how these objects shall be secured by the use of the powers thus conferred upon it.

“The men who created this Constitution also set it in operation, and developed their own idea of its character. That idea was unlike any other that then prevailed upon the earth. They made the general welfare of the people the great source and foundation of the common defense. In all the nations of the Old World the public defense was provided for by great standing armies, navies, and fortified posts, so that the nation might every moment be fully armed against danger from without or turbulence within. Our fathers said: ‘Though we will use the taxing power to maintain a small army and navy sufficient to keep alive the knowledge of war, yet the main reliance for our defense shall be the intelligence, culture, and skill of our people; a development of our own intellectual and material resources, which will enable us to do every thing that may be necessary to equip, clothe, and feed ourselves in time of war, and make ourselves intelligent, happy, and prosperous in peace.’

“To lay the foundation for the realization of these objects was a leading motive which led to the formation of the Constitution, and was the earliest and greatest object of solicitude in the First Congress.

“Two days after the votes for president were counted, and long before Washington was inaugurated, James Madison rose in the first House of Representatives, and for the first time moved to go into the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, for the express purpose of carrying out the theory of the Constitution to provide for the common defense and the general welfare, both by regulating commerce and protecting American manufactures. Thus, on the 8th of April, 1789, he opened a debate which lasted several weeks, in which was substantially developed every idea that has since appeared save one, the notion that it was unconstitutional to protect American industry. All other phases of the subject were fully and thoroughly handled in that great debate.

“Our fathers had been disciplined in the severe school of experience during the long period of colonial dependence. The heavy hand of British repression was laid upon all their attempts to become a self-supporting people. The navigation laws and commercial regulations of the mother country were based upon the theory that the colonies were founded for the sole purpose of raising up customers for her trade. They were allowed to purchase in British markets alone any manufactured article which England had to sell. In short, they were compelled to trade with England on her own terms; and whether buying or selling, the product must be carried in British bottoms at the carrier’s own price. In addition to this, a revenue tax of 5 per cent. was imposed on all colonial exports and imports.

“The colonists were doomed to the servitude of furnishing, by the simplest forms of labor, raw materials for the mother country, who arrogated to herself the sole right to supply her colonies with the finished product. To our fathers, independence was emancipation from this servitude. They knew that civilization advanced from the hunting to the pastoral state, from the pastoral to the agricultural, which has such charms for the distinguished gentleman from Virginia. But they also knew that no merely agricultural people had ever been able to rise to a high civilization and to self-supporting independence. They determined, therefore, to make their emancipation complete by adding to agriculture the mechanic arts, which in their turn would carry agriculture and all other industries to a still higher development, and place our people in the front rank of civilized and self-supporting nations. This idea inspired the legislation of all the earlier Congresses. It found expression in the first tariff act of 1789; in the higher rates of the act of 1790; and in the still larger schedule and increased rates of the acts of 1797 and 1800.

“In 1806 the non-importation act forbade the importation of British manufactures of silk, cloth, nails, spikes, brass, tin, and many other articles; and the eight years of embargo witnessed a great growth in American manufactures. When the non-importation act was repealed in 1814, John C. Calhoun assured the country that Congress would not fail to provide other adequate means for promoting the development of our industries; and, under his lead, the protective tariff of 1816 was enacted.

“I have given this brief historical sketch for the purpose of exhibiting the ideas out of which the tariff legislation of this country has sprung. It has received the support of the most renowned names in our early history; and, though the principle of protection has sometimes been carried to an unreasonable extreme, thus bringing reproach upon the system, it has nevertheless borne many of the fruits which were anticipated by those who planted the germ.

“Gentlemen who oppose this view of public policy tell us that they favor a tariff for revenue alone. I therefore invite their attention to the revenue phase of the question. The estimated expenditures for the next fiscal year are two hundred and eighty and one-half million dollars, including interest on the public debt and the appropriations required by law for the sinking fund. The Secretary of the Treasury estimates the revenues which our present laws will furnish at $269,000,000; from customs, one hundred and thirty-three millions; from internal revenue, one hundred and twenty millions; and from miscellaneous sources, sixteen millions. He tells us that it will be necessary to cut down the expenditures eleven millions below the estimates in order to prevent a deficit of that amount. The revenues of the last fiscal year failed by three and a quarter millions to meet the expenditures required by law.