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Page 54
besides other articles exceeding one hundred millions in value.
Rather than send abroad thirty or forty millions in gold annually, as we
have done of late years, let us dispense with foreign woollen goods,
silk and cotton goods, laces, &c., and encourage our own mills, at least
until the war and its debt are over.
Mr. Madison said much in a few words, when he said:
'The theory of '_let us alone_' supposes that all nations concur in
a perfect freedom of commercial intercourse. Were this the case,
they would, in a commercial view, be but one nation, as much as the
several districts composing a particular nation; and the theory
would be as applicable to the former as the latter. But this golden
age of free trade has not yet arrived, nor is there a single nation
that has set the example. No nation can, indeed, safely do so,
until a reciprocity, at least, be insured to it. * * A nation,
leaving its foreign trade, in all cases, to regulate itself, might
soon find it regulated by other nations into subserviency to a
foreign interest.'
There is much good sense, too, in the views promulgated by another
president, who said, in relation to our independence of other nations:
'The tariff bill before us, embraces the design of fostering,
protecting, and preserving within ourselves the means of national
defence and independence, _particularly in a state of war_. * *
*The experience of the late war (1812) taught us a lesson, and one
never to be forgotten. If our liberty and republican form of
government, procured for us by our Revolutionary fathers, are worth
the blood and treasure at which they were obtained, it surely is
our duty to protect and defend them. * * * What is the real
situation of the agriculturist? Where has the American farmer a
market for his surplus product? Except for cotton, he has neither a
foreign nor home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is
no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much labor
employed in agriculture, and that the channels of labor should be
multiplied? Common sense points out the remedy. Draw from
agriculture the superabundant labor; employ it in mechanism and
manufactures; thereby creating a home-market for your
bread-stuffs, and distributing labor to the most profitable account
and benefits to the country. Take from agriculture in the United
States six hundred thousand men, women and children, and you will
at once give a home-market for more bread-stuffs than all Europe
now furnishes us. In short, sir, _we have been too long subject to
the policy of British merchants_. It is time that we should become
a little more Americanized; and, instead of feeding the paupers and
laborers of England, feed our own; or else, in a short time, by
continuing our present policy, we shall be rendered paupers
ourselves.'
Mr. Bigelow, in his late and highly valuable work on the tariff, says
truly (p. 103):
'Can any one question that our home production far outweighs in
importance all other material interests of the nation? * * * It is
the nation of great internal resources, of vigorous productive
power and self-dependent strength, which is always best prepared
and most able, not only to defend itself, but to lend others a
helping hand.'
If our people would maintain their own national integrity, their own
individual independence, and their true status in the great family of
nations of the earth, they will [at least until the present rebellion is
crushed, and until the public debt thereby created shall be
extinguished] pursue a strict course of public and private economy. Let
us encourage and support our own manufactures, and thereby contribute to
the subsistence and wealth of our own laborers instead of contributing
millions annually to the pauper labor of European nations; especially of
those nations that have failed to give us countenance in the present
struggle and that have, on the contrary, given both direct and indirect
aid to the rebels of the South.
The United States have within themselves, in great abundance,
contributed by a bountiful Providence, the leading products of the
earth. In metals and in agricultural products, we exceed any and all
other countries of the earth. If we encourage the labor of our own
people in the development of the great resources of the country, we
shall not only preserve our own commercial independence, but we shall
soon be, as we ought to be in view of such advantages, the creditor
nation of the world, and compel other countries to resort to us for the
raw materials for their own manufacturing districts.
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