A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky / Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

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Eighth. But if the policy of protection be wise, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Barbour) has made some ingenious calculations, to prove that the measure of protection, already extended, has been sufficiently great. With some few exceptions, the existing duties, of which he has made an estimate, were laid with the object of revenue, and without reference to that of encouragement to our domestic industry; and although it is admitted that the incidental effect of duties, so laid, is to promote our manufactures, yet, if it falls short of competent protection, the duties might as well not have been imposed, with reference to that purpose. A moderate addition may accomplish this desirable end; and the proposed tariff is believed to have this character.

Ninth. The prohibitory policy, it is confidently asserted, is condemned by the wisdom of Europe, and by her most enlightened statesmen. Is this the fact? We call upon gentlemen to show in what instance a nation that has enjoyed its benefits has surrendered it. [Here Mr. Barbour rose (Mr. Clay giving way) and said, that England had departed from it in the China trade, in allowing us to trade with her East India possessions, and in tolerating our navigation to her West India colonies.] With respect to the trade to China, the whole amount of what England has done, is, to modify the monopoly of the East India company, in behalf of one and a small part of her subjects, to increase the commerce of another and the greater portion of them. The abolition of the restriction, therefore, operates altogether among the subjects of England; and does not touch at all the interests of foreign powers. The toleration of our commerce to British India, is for the sake of the specie, with which we mainly carry on that commerce, and which, having performed its circuit, returns to Great Britain in exchange for British manufactures. The relaxation from the colonial policy, in the instance of our trade and navigation with the West Indies, is a most unfortunate example for the honorable gentleman; for in it is an illustrious proof of the success of our restrictive policy, when resolutely adhered to. Great Britain hadprescribed the terms on which we were to be graciously allowed to carry on that trade. The effect of her regulations was, to exclude our navigation altogether, and a complete monopoly, on the part of the British navigation, was secured. We forbade it, unless our vessels should be allowed a perfect reciprocity. Great Britain stood out a long time, but finally yielded, and our navigation now fairly shares with hers in the trade. Have gentlemen no other to exhibit than these trivial relaxations from the prohibitory policy, which do not amount to a drop in the bucket, to prove its abandonment by Great Britain? Let them show us that her laws are repealed which prohibit the introduction of our flour and provisions; of French silks, laces, porcelain, manufactures of bronze, mirrors, woollens; and of the manufactures of all other nations; and then, we may be ready to allow that Great Britain has really abolished her prohibitory policy. We find there, on the contrary, that system of policy in full and rigorous operation, and a most curiously interwoven system it is, as she enforces it. She begins by protecting all parts of her immense dominions against foreign nations. She then protects the parent country against the colonies; and, finally, one part of the parent country against another. The sagacity of Scotch industry has carried the process of distillation to a perfection, which would place the art in England on a footing of disadvantageous competition, and English distillation has been protected accordingly. But suppose it were even true that Great Britain had abolished all restrictions upon trade, and allowed the freest introduction of the produce of foreign labor, would that prove it unwise for us to adopt the protecting system? The object of protection is the establishment and perfection of the arts. In England it has accomplished its purpose, fulfilled its end. If she has not carried every branch of manufacture to the same high state of perfection that any other nation has, she has succeeded in so many, that she may safely challenge the most unshackled competition in exchanges. It is upon this very ground that many of her writers recommend an abandonment of the prohibitory system. It is to give greater scope to British industry and enterprise. It is upon the same selfish principle. The object of the most perfect freedom of trade, with such a nation as Britain, and of the most rigorous system of prohibition, with a nation whose arts are in their infancy, may both be precisely the same. In both cases, it is to give greater expansion to native industry. They only differ in the theatres of their operation. The abolition of the restrictive system by Britain, if by it she could prevail upon other nations to imitate her example, would have the effect of extending the consumption of British produce in other countries, where her writers boldly affirm it could maintain a fearless competition with the produce of native labor. The adoption of the restrictive system, on the part of the United States, by excluding the produce of foreignlabor, would extend the consumption of American produce, unable, in the infancy and unprotected state of the arts, to sustain a competition with foreign fabrics. Let our arts breathe under the shade of protection; let them be perfected, as they are in England, and we shall then be ready, as England now is said to be, to put aside protection, and to enter upon the freest exchanges. To what other cause, than to their whole prohibitory policy, can you ascribe British prosperity? It will not do to assign it to that of her antiquity; for France is no less ancient; though much less rich and powerful, in proportion to the population and natural advantages of France. Hallam, a sensible and highly approved writer on the middle ages, assigns the revival of the prosperity of the north of Europe to the success of the woollen manufactories of Flanders, and the commerce of which their fabrics became the subject; and the commencement of that of England to the establishment of similar manufactures there under the Edwards, and to the prohibitions which began about the same time. As to the poor-rates, the theme of so much reproach without England, and of so much regret within it, among her speculative writers, the system was a strong proof, no less of her unbounded wealth than of her pauperism. What other nation can dispense, in the form of regulated charity, the enormous sum, I believe, of ten or twelve millions sterling? [Mr. Barbour stated it was reduced to six; to which Mr. Clay replied, that he entertained no doubt, but that the benign operation of British protection of home industry, had greatly reduced it within the last few years, by the full employment of her subjects, of which her flourishing trade bore evidence.] The number of British paupers was the result of pressing the principle of population to its utmost limits, by her protecting policy, in the creation of wealth, and in placing the rest of the world under tribute to her industry. Doubtless the condition of England would be better, without paupers, if in other respects it remained the same. But in her actual circumstances, the poor system has the salutary effect of an equalizing corrective of the tendency to the concentration of riches, produced by the genius of her political institutions and by her prohibitory system.

But is it true, that England is convinced of the impolicy of the prohibitory system, and desirous to abandon it? What proof have we to that effect? We are asked to reject the evidence deducible from the settled and steady practice of England, and to take lessons in a school of philosophical writers, whose visionary theories are no where adopted; or, if adopted, bring with them inevitable distress, impoverishment, and ruin. Let us hear the testimony of an illustrious personage, entitled to the greatest attention, because he speaks after the full experiment of the unrestrictive system made in his own empire. I hope I shall give no offence in quoting from a publication issued from ‘the mint of Philadelphia;’ from a workof Mr. Carey, of whom I seize, with great pleasure, the occasion to say, that he merits the public gratitude, for the disinterested diligence with which he has collected a large mass of highly useful facts, and for the clear and convincing reasoning with which he generally illustrates them. The emperor of Russia, in March, 1822, after about two years trial of the free system, says, through count Nesselrode:

‘To produce happy effects, the principles of commercial freedom must be generally adopted. The state which adopts, whilst others reject them, must condemn its own industry and commerce, to pay a ruinous tribute to those of other nations.’

‘From a circulation exempt from restraint, and the facility afforded by reciprocal exchanges, almost all the governments at first resolved to seek the means of repairing the evil which Europe had been doomed to suffer; but experience, and more correct calculations, because they were made from certain data, and upon the results already known of the peace that had just taken place, forced them soon to adhere to the prohibitory system.

‘England preserved hers. Austria remained faithful to the rule she had laid down, to guard herself against the rivalship of foreign industry. France, with the same views, adopted the most rigorous measures of precaution. And Prussia published a new tariff in October last, which proves that she found it impossible not to follow the example of the rest of Europe.’

‘In proportion as the prohibitory system is extended and rendered perfect in other countries, that state which pursues the contrary system, makes, from day to day, sacrifices more extensive and more considerable. * * * It offers a continual encouragement to the manufactures of other countries, and its own manufactures perish in the struggle which they are, as yet, unable to maintain.

‘It is with the most lively feelings of regret we acknowledge it is our own proper experience which enables us to trace this picture. The evils which it details have been realized in Russia and Poland, since the conclusion of the act of the seventh and nineteenth of December, 1818. Agriculture without a market, industry without protection, languish and decline. Specie is exported, and the most solid commercial houses are shaken. The public prosperity would soon feel the wound inflicted on private fortunes, if new regulations did not promptly change the actual state of affairs.

‘Events have proved, that our agriculture and our commerce, as well as our manufacturing industry, are not only paralysed, but brought to the brink of ruin.’

The example of Spain has been properly referred to, as affording a striking proof of the calamities which attend a state that abandons the care of its own internal industry. Her prosperitywas the greatest when the arts, brought there by the Moors, flourished most in that kingdom. Then she received from England her wool, and returned it in the manufactured state; and then England was least prosperous. The two nations have reversed conditions. Spain, after the discovery of America, yielding to an inordinate passion for the gold of the Indies, sought in their mines that wealth which might have been better created at home. Can the remarkable difference in the state of the prosperity of the two countries be otherwise explained, than by the opposite systems which they pursued? England, by a sedulous attention to her home industry, supplied the means of an advantageous commerce with her colonies. Spain, by an utter neglect of her domestic resources, confided altogether in those which she derived from her colonies, and presents an instance of the greatest adversity. Her colonies were infinitely more valuable than those of England; and, if she had adopted a similar policy, is it unreasonable to suppose that, in wealth and power, she would have surpassed that of England? I think the honorable gentleman from Virginia does great injustice to the catholic religion, in specifying that as one of the leading causes of the decline of Spain. It is a religion entitled to great respect; and there is nothing in its character incompatible with the highest degree of national prosperity. Is not France, the most polished, in many other respects the most distinguished state, of christendom, catholic? Is not Flanders, the most populous part of Europe, also catholic? Are the catholic parts of Switzerland and of Germany less prosperous than those which are protestant?