“The people that can not make their own implements of industry must be content to take a very humble and subordinate place in the family of nations. The people that can not, at any time, by their own previous training, arm and equip themselves for war, must be content to exist by the sufferance of others.
“I do not say that no rates in this group are too high. Some of them can safely be reduced. But I do say these industries could not have attained their present success without the national care; and to abandon them now will prevent their continued prosperity.
“In the third group I place wines, spirits, and tobacco in its various forms which come from abroad. On these, rates of duty range from eighty-five to ninety-five per cent. ad valorem; and from them we collected last year $10,000,000 of revenue. The wisdom of this tax will hardly be disputed by any one.
“In the fourth group I have placed imported provisions which come in competition with the products of our own fields and herds, including breadstuffs, salt, rice, sugar, molasses, and spices. On these provisions imported into this country we collected last year a revenue of $42,000,000, $37,000,000 of which was collected on sugar. Of the duty on the principal article of this group I shall speak further on in the discussion.
“On the fifth group, comprising leather and manufactures of leather, we received about $3,000,000 of revenue.
“On the imports included in the five groups I have mentioned, which comprise the great manufacturing industries of the country, we collect $119,000,000—more than ninety per cent. of all our customs revenue. I ask if it be not an object of the highest national importance to keep alive and in vigorous health and growth the industries included in these groups? What sort of people should we be if we did not keep them alive? Suppose we were to follow the advice of the distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] when he said:
“‘Why should me make pig-iron when with Berkshire pigs raised upon our farms we can buy more iron pigs from England than we can get by trying to make them ourselves? We can get more iron pigs from England for Berkshire pigs than we can from the Pennsylvania manufacturers. Why, then, should I not be permitted to send there for them?...
“‘What a market for our raw material, for our products, if we only would take the hand which Great Britain extends to us for free-trade between us!’
“For a single season, perhaps, his plan might be profitable to the consumers of iron; but if his policy were adopted as a permanent one, it would reduce us to a merely agricultural people, whose chief business would be to produce the simplest raw materials by the least skill and culture, and let the men of brains of other countries do our thinking for us, and provide for us all products requiring the cunning hand of the artisan, while we would be compelled to do the drudgery for ourselves and for them.
“The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] is too good a logician not to see that the theory he advocates can only be realized in a state of universal peace and brotherhood among the nations; and, in developing his plan, he says: