SECTION I. SECTION I. 
IF I were to go into anything like a detailed account of whatI heard about the tariff, during my travels, no room would beleft for more interesting affairs. The recrimination on thesubject is endless. With all this we have nothing to do, now thatit is over. The philosophy and fact of the transaction, and notthe changes of opinion and inconsistency of conduct of publicmen, are now of importance. It would be well now to leave thepersons, and look at the thing.
Almost the only fact in relation to the tariff that I neverheard disputed is that it was, under one aspect, a measure ofretaliation. Rendering evil for evil answers no better ineconomical than in moral affairs; even if it take the name ofself-defence. Because the British are foolish and wrong inrefusing to admit American corn, the Americans excluded Britishcottons and woollens. More was said, and I believe sincerely,about self-defence than about retaliation: but it is veryremarkable that men so clear-headed, inquiring, and sagacious asthe authors of the American system, should not have seen furtherinto the condition of their own country, and learned more fromthe unhappy experience of Europe, than to imagine that they couldneutralise the effects of the bad policy of England by adoptingthe same bad policy themselves. It is strange that they did notsee that if British cottons and woollens found easy entrance intotheir country, it must have been in exchange for something,though that something was not corn. It was strange that they didnot see that if the apparent facilities for manufactures in thenorthern States were really great enough to justify manufactures,individual enterprise would be sure to find it out; and all themore readily for the deficiency in the resources of New Englandwhich is assigned as the reason for offering her legislativeprotection. There was not even the excuse for interference whichexists in old countries; that by intricate complexities ofmismanagement, economical affairs have been perverted from theirnatural course. Here, in America, a new branch of industry was tobe instituted. The skill was ready; the material was ready;the capital was procurable, if the object was good; andought not to be, if the object was unsound. The interests of thepeople might have been trusted in their own hands. They would ofthemselves have taken less of British cotton goods, and more ofsomething else which they could not get at home, if cotton goodscould be made better and cheaper at home than in England; whichit is proved that, for the most part, they can be. It isanticipated that when the Compromise method expires, the homemanufacture of some kinds of fine cotton goods will diminish; butthat the bulk of the manufacture is beyond the reach of accident.The effect of the tariff has been to over-stimulate a naturalprocess, and thus to cause over-manufacture, panic, and ruin tomany. It is said, and with truth, that America can afford to tryexperiments; that America is tbe very country that should learnby experience; and so forth. But it should be remembered thatthose 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 thecause of their poverty the depreciation of factory stock, or thefailure in other ways of factory schemes, in which their parentsor 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 isnow very extensively acknowledged; and though some of those whoare answerable for the American system continue to assume thatmanufactures could not have been instituted without itsassistance, I believe it is pretty generally understood that nomore infant manufactures will be burdened with this cruel kind ofprotection.
A far more important question than that of the policy is thatof the principle of a protective system in the United States.
It is known that the strongest resistance was made to theAmerican system on the ground of its being unconstitutional. Itsadvocates relied, for the necessary sanction, on the clauseswhich provide that "Congress shall have power to lay andcollect taxes, and duties, imposts, and excises;" -- and"to regulate commerce with foreign nations." Withregard to the first of these clauses, both parties seem, more orless, in the right. By the tariff, Congress proposed "to layand collect duties and imposts," as the constitution givesit express leave to do. Yet it is clear to those who view theconstitution in the light of the sun of the revolution, that suchpermission was given solely with a view to the collection of therevenue. No one of the framers of the constitution could haveforeseen that any proposal would be made to lay duties for theprotection of the productive interests of a section of the Union.Such a use of the clause is forbidden in spirit, though not inthe letter, by the clause which ordains, "but all duties,imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the UnitedStates." This clause is, in its spirit, wholly condemnatoryof partial legislation by Congress.
Remarks somewhat analogous may be made respecting the otherclause, which empowers Congress "to regulate commerce withforeign nations." By the letter of this clause, Congress mayappear to a superficial observer authorised so to regulate itscommerce with Great Britain as to cause an arbitrary distributionof property and industry within her own boundaries; but such adouble action could never have been in contemplation of theframers of the instrument. What they had in view was obviouslythe guardianship of the national commercial rights, and thepromotion of the national commercial, not sectionalmanufacturing, interests.
Where the letter and the spirit of the constitution are made,by lapse of time and change of circumstance, to bear out oppositemodes of conduet, there is an appeal which every man must make,for his individual satisfaction and conviction. He must appeal tothe fundamental republican principles, out of which grew both thespirit and the letter of the constitution.
By these the tariff is hopelessly condemned. It is contrary toall sound republican principle that the general government of anation, widely spread over regions, and separated into sectionsdiversified in their productions, occupations, and interests,should use its power of legislating for the whole to provide forthe particular interests of a part. The principle of perfectpolitical and social equality is violated when the generalgovernment takes cognisance of local objects so far as to do adeed which must materially affect the distribution of privateproperty; so far as to lay a tax on the whole of the nation forthe avowed object of benefiting a part. The government of arepublic has no business with distinctions among its subjects. Itis to have no respect of classes, more than of individuals. Itsfunctions are to be discharged for the common interest; and it isto entertain no fancies as to what new institutions orarrangements will be beneficial or the contrary to the nation.
All such institutions and arrangements must be made within theseveral States, or by an agreement of States; subject, of course,to the permissions and prohibitions of the constitution. If oneState, or several States, should be pleased to decree bounties ontheir own manufactures, let them do so. Whether tbe measure werewise or unwise, no one out of the limits of such State or Stateswould have a right to complain. This could not be said under thetariff. 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 tofavour local and particular interests. The case is not altered bythe possible result being highly beneficial to the whole country;which is the plea industriously advanced by the advocates of thetariff. Whatever direction and application of industry andcapital may be ultimately most baneficial, Congress has, onprinciple, no more business with it than with the support of whatmay prove in the end to be the purest religious doctrine.
If America had been as free, from the beginning, in allrespects, as a young country ought to be,--free to run hernatural course of prosperity, subject only to the faithful lawswhich regulate the economy of society as beneficially as anotherset of laws regulates the seasons, we might never have heard ofthe American system. The poisonous anomaly which has causedalmost all the diseases that have afflicted the republic, appearsto be the original infection here also. If labour in the southernStates had been free long iago, the deterioration of southernproperty vould not have caused the southern planters to clamourfor legislative protection. The arbitrary tenure of labour madethem desire an arbitrary distribution of capital. They desired itfor the north, as eagerly as for themselves, expecting the resultto be that the cotton-growers would be protected by heavy importduties on cotton; and that the prosperity of the north,depending, as they supposed, wholly on its commerce, would becrippled by the same means; and thus, something like an equalitybetween north and south be restored. The effect was differentfrom what had been anticipated. The deterioration of the southwent on; and manufactures first replaced, and then renovated, thecommerce of the north. The next consequence was natural enough.The south became infuriated against the tariff, not only on thereasonable ground of its badness of principle, but on theallegation that it was the cause of all the woes of the south,*and all the prosperity, diversified with woes, of the north. Ithas always been the method of slaveholders to lay the blame oftheir sufferings upon everything but the real cause. Any one whoreads the history of slavery in the book of events, will findslave-holders of every country complaining bitterly andincessatntly of the want of legislative protection to themselves,or of its being granted to others. In the present instance, itwas a device of the slave-holders, to renovate theirfalling fortunes, turned against themselves.
The true dignity of America would have been, had circumstancesallowed of it, to have followed out her own republicanprinciples, instead of adopting the false principles andinjurious policy of older and less favoured nations. If she hadleft labour and commerce, and capital free; disdaininginterference at home and retaliation abroad; showing her faith inthe natural laws of social economy by calmly committing to themthe external interests of her people, she would by this time havebeen the pattern and instructress of the civilised world, in thephilosophy of production and commerce. But she had not theknowledge nor the requisite faith; nor was it to be reasonablyexpected that she should. Her doctrine was, and I fear still is,that she need not study political economy while she is soprosperous as at present: that political economy is for those whoare under adversity. If in other eases she allows that preventionis better than cure, avoidance than reparation, why not in this?It may not yet be too late for her to be in the van of all theworld in economical as in political philosophy. The old worldwill still be long in getting above its bad institutions. IfAmerica would free her servile class by the time the provisionsof the Compromise Bill expire, and start afresh in pureeconomical freedom, she might yet be the first to show, by hertranscendent peace and prosperity, that democratic principles arethe true foundation of economical, as well as political, welfare.
ENDNOTES:
* The following sketch of the aspect of tbe south-easternStates is a very faithful one. The error of the writer is insupposing that such a condition could be brought about by thetariff, rather tban by the necessary operation of the slaverysystem, by which the children of tbe third and fourth generationsare always reduced to sigh for the comparative prosperity oftheir fathers.
"These views of the degradation of tbe soutbern Statesreceive a melancholy and impressive confirmation from the generalaspect and condition of the country, viewed in contrast with itsformer prosperity. If tbe ancestors of this generation could risefrom the grave, and revisit the scenes of their formerusefulness, they would not hesitate to pronounce that tbe hand ofoppression had fallen heavily upon tbe inheritance of theirchildren. They would be utterly at a loss to account for thecharge everywhere exhibited, upon any other supposition.
"With natural advantages more bountiful than were everdispensed by a kind Providence to any other people upon the faceof the globe, they would behold, from the mountains of thesea-coast, one unbroken scene of cheerless stagnation andpremature decay. With one of tbe most valuable staples that everblessed the laboure of the husbandman, and swelled tbe sails of aprosperous and enriching commerce, they would find that ourestates are, with a steady and fatal proclivity, depreciating invalue, our fields becoming waste, and our cities desolate. Withhabits of industry and economy which have no example in ourformer history, they would find the heirs of the largestinheritances generally involved in embarrassments, and many ofthem irretrievably ruined. Wherever they might cast their eyes,they would find melancholy evidences that the withering blasts ofan unsparing despotism had passed over the land, blighting thechoicest bounties of Providence, and leaving scarcely a solitarymemorial of our former prosperity. They would look in vain forthe animating scenes of successful industry, for tbe wealth andcomforts of a thriving population, and for those mansions ofhospitality which were once the seats of elegance, and tbe abodesof cheerfulness."--Southern Review, Nov. 1828. p.613.
From Harriet Martineau, Society in America, VolumeII, Part II, Chapter III, Section I, - "The Tariff."London: Saunders and Otley, 1837, pp. 231-241.
Forward to Society in America, Vol II,Part II, Chapter III, Section II, - "ManufacturingLabour."
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