CHAPTER IX. WHAT FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE HAS DONE FOR THIS COUNTRY.

With respect to this country, the object of Great Britain has been to make us tributary to British wealth and greatness; to enslave us, by confining us to agriculture alone and to prevent our establishing manufactures or to destroy them when established. This policy commenced in the colonial period, and has continued to the present day, as we will now prove. A British author, Joshua Gee, writing in 1750, thus sets forth the policy, Manufactures in American colonies should be discouraged, prohibited.

Great Britain with its dependencies is doubtless as well able to subsist within itself as any nation in Europe. We have an enterprising people, fit for all the arts of peace or war. We have provisions in abundance, and those of the best sort, and we are able to raise sufficient for double the number of inhabitants. We have the very best materials for clothing, and want nothing either for use or luxury, but what we have at home, or might have from our colonies; so that we might make such an intercourse of trade among ourselves, or between us and them, as would maintain a vast navigation. But we ought always to keep a watchful eye over our colonies, to keep them from setting up any of the manufactures which are carried on in Cheat Britain; and any such attempt should be crushed in the beginning, for if they are suffered to grow up to maturity it will be difficult to suppress them.”

Our colonies are much in the same state as Ireland was in when they began the woollen manufacture, and as their numbers increase, will fall upon manufactures for clothing themselves, if due care be not taken to find employment for them in raising such productions as may enable them to furnish themselves with all the necessaries from us.

This is the British doctrine of free trade, set forth in its native deformity by a British writer. It was very faithfully carried out during the colonial period. During the revolutionary war, the people were too fully occupied to establish manufactures effectually. After the peace, Great Britain had still a strong party in this country, and her free trade policy was so effectually imposed upon us, that, up to the breaking out of the war of 1812, we still imported nearly all our manufactures of iron and cloth from that country. The greatest service which the war of 1812 effected for the United States was to compel its people to establish manufactories for themselves.

A contemporary* whom we shall take the liberty of quoting at some length, thus follows the course of events, from that time forward.

* North American, January, 1855.

The war of 1812 found the country so nearly destitute of the means of clothing itself, that the government was unable to procure blankets or woollen cloth for its soldiers, or for the Indians to whom such commodities were due. How great was the difficulty experienced by reason of the colonial condition in which the nation had so long been kept, may be judged from the fact that the Administration was obliged to take possession of Amelia Island, then held by Spain, for the purpose of enabling certain cargoes of cotton and woollen goods owned by Mr. Girard and others, and then at that island, to get within the Union, in defiance of the non-importation laws. Such were the straits to which we had been reduced by the constant maintenance of a policy that looked to having among us none but farmers, planters, and traders, almost entirely excluding the manufacturers.

The war gave efficient protection to manufacturers; and four years later, as we learn from a recent report of a Committee of the House of Representatives, the quantity of cotton consumed within the Union, amounted to no less than ninety thousand bales, or one-third as much as was exported to foreign ports. The woollen manufacturers, too had largely grown, and employed a capital of twelve millions of dollars; while iron and other branches of manufacture had made great progress; and so completely had the domestic market for food, that had been thus created, made amends for our total exclusion from the market of Europe, that the prices of flour in this market in the years 1813 and 1814 ranged from six to ten dollars, and of pork from thirteen and a half to seventeen dollars.

The peace came, and our farmers found opened to them the markets of the world, by which they were to be enriched, and by way of preparation therefore the domestic market was sacrificed. Until 1818, certain branches of manufacture continued to enjoy protection; in that year it was resolved that the duties of Congress were limited to securing a sufficient amount of revenue, and cotton and iron were condemned to suffer the fate to which had already been subjected the manufacturers of woollen cloths and hardware. The revenue, as the people were then told, was superabundant, the years 1816 and 1817 having yielded no less than eighty millions, and having enabled the treasury to make payments on account of the public debt, amounting to little short of fifty millions. It was a free trade millennium, and protection was then, as now, to be regarded as ‘ a blight.’ If the artisans of the country could not live without protection let them die, and die they did. Manufactures of all kinds, of cotton, woollen and iron, almost entirely disappeared.

As a consequence, there existed throughout the towns and cities of the Union the most intense distress. In Philadelphia alone, with its then small population, it was found, on examination, that nearly eight thousand workmen were wholly without employment. In Pittsburgh there were found two thousand; and as all these people were deprived of the means of purchasing food, the prices of food of all kinds rapidly declined as the necessity for dependence on foreign markets became more fully established. Flour that, in this city, had in 1817 and 1818 commanded ten dollars, fell in 1819 to six dollars and a half, and in 1820 to four dollars and thirty cents; and cotton and tobacco participated in the fall. In many parts of the country, wheat was sold at twenty-five, thirty and thirty-seven cents per bushel, and at a later period prices declined to a still lower point, and, as a natural consequence, the farmers were every where nearly, when even not quite, ruined; and yet they were then almost entirely free from the ‘ blight’ of protection, and in the almost perfect enjoyment of that which is regarded by the Union among the first of blessings, free trade!

As a natural consequence, the power to pay for foreign merchandize passed away, and the consumption which, in 1817 and 1818, had averaged ninety millions, fell in the five years from 1720 to 1824 both inclusive, to an average of fifty millions; and yet, small as was this amount, a constant drain of the little specie that was in the country was required to pay for it, as is shown by the following figures:

We have here an excess export of nearly ten millions, and if to this be added, for wear and tear, for loss, and for consumption in the arts, only a million and a half a year, we have, in the short period of four years, a diminution of the precious metals in the country amounting to no less than sixteen millions, and yet the whole quantity had been estimated in 1818 at about thirty millions. Under such circumstances, we need feel no surprise that sheriff’s sales were numerous — that the rich were made richer and the poor poorer — nor that the latter, in the effort to avoid ruin, should in many of the States, have invoked the intervention of the Legislature for the passage of stay-laws, by which the sales of property were prohibited except under such circumstances as placed the creditor almost entirely at the mercy of the debtor. Such laws, as we shall have occasion to show, have always, thus far followed in the wake of free trade.

As a consequence of all this, the revenue fell off greatly, and new loans were required for the expenses of government. The amount of debt contracted in this free trade period was no less than thirteen millions, and this for a support of government in a time of profound peace, when the total expenditure, excluding that on account of the public debt, was, in some of the years under ten millions, and averaged only twelve millions.

Protection had delivered over to free trade a country in a state of high prosperity, with an overflowing revenue, and diminishing national debt. Six years of free trade, however, were sufficient to change the scene, and to present to the world a ruined people; a declining commerce, requiring a steady export of specie to pay the balance of trade; an exhausted treasury, and an increased national debt.”

We have shown that the war of 1812, by excluding British manufactures from this country, acted in the same way as a protective tariff, teaching the people the value of their own resources, and compelling them to establish manufactures of their own. To use the language of the authority last quoted,

We have shown that soon after the war of 1812, protection had handed the country over to the guardianship of free trade, in a state of high prosperity, and that it had required but six years of this latter government to produce the almost total destruction of the manufactures of the country. We have also shown that this had been accompanied by so great a diminution of the power to pay for foreign merchan- dize as to compel the Treasury to have resorted to loans to enable it to meet the current demands upon it, and that, too, in a period of profound peace! This state of things it was that caused the passage of the act of 1824, the first tariff act framed especially with reference to protection. It was very imperfect, and it required, of course, time to make itself felt; and the drain of specie continued throughout the fiscal year of its passage, the exports in that year having exceeded the imports by more than two and a half millions of dollars. In the following year, however, a change was produced, and the imports of the four succeeding years exceeded the exports by about four millions of dollars. It was small in amount, but considerable in its effect, for in place of an excess export of two millions a year, there was obtained an excess import of one, making a difference of three millions a year. The people be- came again able to pay for foreign merchandize, and the revenue, which for five years had averaged only eighteen millions, rose to an average of twenty-four millions. The Treasury ceased to have occasion to resort to loans, and the payments on account of the public debt in the three years ending in 1828, averaged eleven millions a year, with large diminution in the amount of principal.

Such were the results of the very imperfect measure of 1824, and by them its friends were encouraged to the far more perfect act of 1828, the first really and thoroughly protective tariff ever given to the country. Under it there was a rapid increase in the supply of gold and silver, the imports of the five years that fol- lowed its passage, having exceeded the exports by eleven millions of dollars, or about as much as the ex- ports had exceeded the imports in the free trade period. The value of domestic exports now grew rapidly, and presented a striking contrast with the facts of that period in which the community had enjoyed the bless- ings of free trade; as is shows by the following figures.

As a consequence of the increased ability to pay for foreign merchandize, the revenue grew rapidly, each year in succession greater than its predecessor, thus proving how steadily the people were improving in their condition, though subjected to what the Union is pleased to style ‘ the blight’ of protection. The year 1828-29 gave twenty-five millions, and so did the following one, but 1830-31 gave twenty-nine millions, and 1831—32 no less than thirty-two millions, or as much as had, under the free trade system, been obtained from the two years ending in September, 1821. The payments on account of the public debt rose to seventeen millions in 1832, and left at the close of that year so small an amount unpaid, that it became necessary to establish entire freedom of trade in reference to coffee, teas, wines, silks, and other articles that could not be, or, at least, were not, produced at home. The revenue, however, still increased, and the receipts of the Treasury for 1833-34 reached the then enormous amount of thirty-four millions, and thus provided for the total extinction of the public debt, by the payment of the three per cents, all of which were held abroad, as had been a large portion of the other stocks that had been paid since the passage of the act of 1824. That year had terminated the borrowings of the Treasury, and it had required but nine years of protection to bring about the final payment of the debts of the Revolution, of the war of 1812, and of the free trade period from 1818 to 1824.

Under free trade, as our readers have seen, the debt was increased, and, as much of it probably went abroad, our foreign debt grew, while we were at the same time exporting more gold and silver than we imported, to the extent of two and a half millions a year. In the ten years that followed the passage of the act of 1824, no debt was contracted, while the payments on account of principal and interest amounted to a hundred millions of dollars, by which our indebtedness to foreigners was diminished probably thirty millions, while the excess import of gold and silver exceeded thirty millions. Such was the ‘blight’ of protection.

As a consequence, there existed throughout the country a degree of prosperity that had never before been known, and such was the preparation that had been made by protection for delivering the people over to the enjoyment of the blessings of free trade, promised them by the Compromise Act that came into existence at the close of 1833. By the provisions of that Act, one-tenth of the excess duty over twenty per cent., was to be reduced at that date — another tenth at the close of 1835 — another in each of the years 1837 and 1839— and the balance in 1841 and 1842. The reduction was, as our readers perceive, very gradual, and scarcely to be felt before 1835, except in so far as it tended to prevent the extension of manufactures, that had gone on so rapidly from 1829 to 1833. This, however, was almost unfelt, for the rapid increase in the domestic market had greatly diminished the necessity for going abroad to sell either food or cotton, and hud tended much towards raising the prices to be obtained for what was sent; and thus the amount of exports, which had risen from fifty millions in 1828 to seventy in 1833, grew in 1834, ’35 and ’36 to eighty-one, one hundred and one, and one hundred and six millions. Thus was free trade enabled to profit by the protection that had been granted from 1824 to ’34. Never before had the country presented such a reality of prosperity as existed in 1834, when the ‘ blight’ of protection was in part removed, and when the farmers and the planters of the country were handed over to the ‘tender mercies’ of the free traders. Upon that prosperity the latter traded for several years. The credit of the country was high, for we had done what had never before been done by any other nation, having paid off the national debt, and having to a great extent accomplished that object in the brief period that had elapsed since the passage of the protective tariff of 1824 — and having in the same period rapidly and greatly increased our stock of the precious metals. Never before had free trade had so fair an opportunity for displaying its powers — for never before had any people enjoyed the same advantages that were then enjoyed by our own — and yet, at the close of another period of seven years, we find it leaving a people hopelessly indebted abroad and broken down under demands for payment that could not be complied with, and a government deeply indebted, and without the means of supporting itself without the creation of further debt.

From 1829 to 1834, under protection, we had imported twenty-seven millions more gold and silver than we had exported, and had paid a vast amount of foreign debt. From 1839 to 1842, under free trade, we exported eight millions more than we imported, and contracted, a hundred millions of private foreign debt, and the amount of public debt contracted, most of which must have gone abroad, exceeded thirty-six millions. The power to pay for merchandize that had, in 1832— 33, enabled us to consume to the extent of eighty-eight millions, and that continued to grow so long as the tariff continued to afford protection, until in 1834-35 it reached one hundred and twenty-nine millions, declined, thereafter so much, that in three years ending in 1842 it averaged only ninety-six millions. In the last of these years it was only eighty-eight millions, with steady tendency to still farther decline, as the increasing demands for specie to pay the balance between exports and imports tended steadily to destroy all confidence between man and man, and confidence in the present or future value of property. Banks were every where in a state of suspension, and governments in a state of repudiation. The Federal government was driven to the use of an irredeemable paper currency, and even with that, found itself so totally unable to meet the demands upon it, that the President himself was unable to obtain his salary at the Treasury, and forced to seek accommodation from the neighboring brokers.

The domestic market for food and cotton had been destroyed, and, with the increasing necessity for dependence on foreign markers, there had been a decline of prices so great that it required almost twice the quantity that would hare sufficed six years before to pay the same amount of debt. Cotton fell to fire and nine cents: pork and beef to eight dollars a barrel; wheat to one dollar and a quarter a bushel, and hams, lard and butter to from six to seven and a half a pound. The farmers and planters were unable to pay their debts, and now, as before in free trade times, stay- laws were required to protect the debtor against his creditor. Sheriffs sales were universal, where such protection was not afforded. Merchants and manufactures were every where ruined, and laborers and artisans of every kind, by hundreds of thousands, were unable to sell their labor, and consequently unable to procure food for their families or themselves.

Free trade had delivered the country up to protection in 1824, with a commerce requiring a steady export of specie, and producing a steady decline of credit within and without its limits — and protection had accepted the gift. Ten years after, the latter was called upon to resign her charge, and that which she did resign was a country in the highest prosperity. Only eight years afterwards free trade had dissipated her great inheritance, and had nothing to transfer but a country overwhelmed with debt — a treasury bankrupt, and seeking everywhere for loans at the highest rate of interest — a commerce ruined — and a people disgraced and beggared.”

This was the termination of the second period during which the opposite efforts of protection in enriching the country, and British free trade in impoverishing it were respectively exhibited. One would naturally suppose that two such lessons might have sufficed for us; and that we might have learned wisdom from experience. But foreign influence is strong in this country, because it works under ground, in secret. British influence in particular is cunning and unscrupulous. The British aristocracy are veterans in diplomatic craft. Their diplomatists are trained to their business, while ours are all green hands; those we have abroad now, particularly green. The British overreach us in all treaties, especially reciprocity treaties.

Besides this, the British manufacturers understand their own interest, and are willing to spend money for the purpose of forcing their system of free trade on foreign nations. They raised a fund of half a million of dollars ostensibly to diffuse information in the United States on the advantages of free trade, — really to bribe presses and Legislatures. How successfully it was employed, will appear in what is now to be said respecting the third and last period of British free trade as applied to this country.

(To be continued)

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