I 734 
 
 mhm 
 
 \j9f i >! « .-il
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE 
 
 FRENCH AND AMERICAN TARIFFS COMPARED; 
 
 SERIES OF LETTERS 
 
 ADDRESSED TO 
 
 MoNS. MICHEL CHEVALIEK, 
 
 MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE, ETC. ETC. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY C. CAREY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 COLLINS, PRINTER, 705 JAYNE STREET, 
 
 1861.
 
 • / ' 
 
 
 LETTERS TO 3I0XS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 LETTER FIRST. 
 
 My dear sir : 
 
 At the close of our last interview, now little more than two 
 years since, you did me the favor of presenting me with two 
 reports which had just then been made to the Council of State, 
 in reference to a proposed consolidation, in the form of law, of 
 sundry decrees by which changes had been made in the conditions 
 upon which foreign merchandise might be received in France — 
 the two subjects therein specially referred to being the duties on 
 long wools, and upon iron pipes. The committees had been com- 
 posed of gentlemen distinguished by their familiarity with the 
 needs of agriculture and of commerce, and with those of the pub- 
 lic works. At their head had been placed the most confidential 
 of all the advisers of the emperor, the government thus manifest- 
 ing its sense of the extreme importance of the questions to whose 
 examination their attention had been invited. On his part that 
 sense was manifested by his constant presence, and by his own 
 most careful examination of witnesses with a view to satisfy him- 
 self in regard to the one great question which appears to have 
 been ever present in his mind — that of the absolute necessity for 
 maintaining the duties at such rates as should be fully and com- 
 pletely protective of that great domestic industry which, under a 
 system even more thoroughly protective than that of Great 
 Britain had ever been, had given to France a foreign commerce 
 four times greater than had existed thirty years before, and had 
 added so largely to the value of the land and labor of the em- 
 pire. At every stage of tlie examination, the views of the com- 
 mittees, and most especially those of their presiding officer, 
 ai)pear to have been in entire accordance with those so well 
 expressed by yourself in one of your most recent works — your 
 readers having there been told — 
 
 That "every nation owed it to itself to seek the establishment 
 of diversification in the pursuits of its people, as Gt;rmany and 
 England had already done in regard to cottons and woollens. 
 
 8368(in
 
 4 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 and as France herself had done in reference to so many, ai(d so 
 widely different departments of industry :" 
 
 Tliat " when it failed to do so it made a great mistake :" 
 
 That "combination of varied effort was not only promotive of 
 general prosperity, but was the one and only condition of national 
 progress ;" and. 
 
 That to favor the production of such combination was not only 
 "not an abuse of power on the part of the government," but 
 was, on the contrary, the mere "accomplishment of that positive 
 duty which required it so to act, at each epoch in the progress of 
 the nation, as to favor the taking possession of all the branches 
 of industry whose acquisition was authorized by the nature of 
 things;" governments being, in your view, "only the personifica- 
 tion of nations, and it being required of them that they should 
 exercise their influence in the direction indicated by the general 
 interest properly studied and fully appreciated."' 
 
 Than this, nothing as I conceive could be more accurate, it being 
 a full indorsement of the views of that first of all the statesmen the 
 world has yet produced, your countryman Colbert. Hume urged 
 upon the nation the necessity for such a course of action as should 
 "preserve its people and its manufactures." The essential object 
 of Adam Smith's great work was the enforcement upon his coun- 
 trymen of the idea, that development of the domestic commerce 
 was the necessary prelude to an advantageous foreign trade. J. B. 
 Say taught his hearers that " protection granted with a view to 
 promote the profitable application of labor and capital, might be 
 productive of universal benefit." Blanqui assured his readers that 
 past experience had proved " that a people ought never to deliver 
 over to the chances of foreign trade the fate of its manufactures." 
 Rossi held it to be undeniable that there were exceptions to 
 the free trade principle, and that "in the conduct of a nation," as 
 in that of a family, sacrifices needed to be made in the hope of 
 thereby opening " new roads to affluence." Following in the same 
 direction, Mr. J. S. Mill arrived at the conclusion, that indivi- 
 duals should not be expected at their own risk, or rather certain 
 loss, to introduce new branches of manufacture, or " to bear 
 the burden of carrying them on until workmen should have been 
 educated to the level of those with whom the processes had be- 
 come traditional ;" and that, therefore, protective duties might be 
 resorted to as the least inconvenient mode of trying such experi- 
 ments. So far, all these distinguished teachers have been certainly 
 in the right, but in the enunciation of their views there has gene- 
 rally been exhibited a timidity which contrasts most unfavorably 
 with your own frank and manly indorsement of the idea, that " in 
 
 ' Examen 'du Systeme Commerciale connu sous lo noin du Systeme 
 Protecteur. Paris, 1852, pp. 34 to 38.
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 every country, the day of maturity having arrived, there arises a 
 necessity in the interests even of civilization for acclimating among 
 its people the principal branches of manufacture," and that its 
 government is then " well inspired when seeking the establish- 
 ment, among its people, of diversity in the demand for human 
 service" — that diversity being " favorable to the advancement of 
 knowledge," and altogether in harmony with the capabilities of 
 widely extended territories like those of France, Germany, and 
 the United States. 
 
 French practice, as shown in the proceedings of the Council of 
 State, of which you are yourself so influential a member, and your 
 own teachings, as well as those of the distinguished economists to 
 whom I have referred, being thus in such perfect harmony with 
 each other, it was with great surprise I read, shortly after the 
 interview above referred to, that you were then arranging the terms 
 of a treaty with Great Britain in which the free trade doctrines, 
 so pertinaciously urged by that country on the world's acceptance, 
 were to be reduced to practice. That such should prove to be the 
 ease appeared to me to be entirely incredible, and glad was I, 
 when the treaty came, to find that I had been right, its essential 
 characteristics having then proved to be: — 
 
 I. A resolute assertion of efficient and complete protection, at 
 whatsoever cost of revenue : 
 
 II. A nicety of discrimination with a view to meet the actual 
 needs of French industry, such as is almost without a parallel 
 in the world : 
 
 III. A determination to render the collection of those duties 
 certain, manifested by the almost universal rejection of the ad- 
 valorem system provided for in the former free trade treaty with 
 Great Britain, when France was flooded with British manufactures, 
 invoiced at a third or even a fourth of their real value ; and 
 
 IV. A determination to secure to French industry a full sup- 
 ply of raw materials, manifested by a great reduction of the 
 duties upon them, even where they had not been entirely abol- 
 ished. 
 
 To call a tariff so distinguished a free trade one, in the British 
 sense of the word, would be a manifest absurdity — there being no 
 single part of it that is not in perfect accordance with the assur- 
 ance given to his countrymen, some few years since, by Mons, 
 Baroche, then President of the Council, that while it was i)roposed 
 to abolish " anti((uated prohibitions," the government had de- 
 termined that the principle of protection should be firmly and 
 steadily maintained. That of free trade, as he further told them, 
 had been formally rejected, as incompatible with the independ- 
 ence and security of the nation, and as likely to be destructive 
 of its noblest manufactures. The decision of the Council then 
 announced, has now, as we sec, taken the form of law, by means
 
 6 LETTERS TO MONS MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 of a treaty to which your name is not attached, but which is said 
 to have been mainly negotiated by yourself, and in which your 
 own princii)les are so fully carried into practice as to warrant the 
 admiration of all who believe in the necessity for bringing the 
 plough, the loom, and the anvil, to work together. 
 
 Under a system of protection more efficient and more steadily 
 maintained than any other the world had seen, your countrymen 
 had placed themselves at the head of the commercial communities 
 of the world, their exports having grown from an average of 
 500,000,000, in the period from 1825 to 1836, to 1,900,000,000 
 in 1856, and five-sixths probably of that vast amount being com- 
 posed of the products of their own soil, so condensed in form, 
 agreeably to the ideas so admirably propounded by Adam Smith, 
 as to enable the food, the wool, the rags, the silk, the fuel, and 
 the ore, to travel cheaply and freely to the remotest corners of the 
 world.' Under that system land and laljor had much increased in 
 value, while the government had greatly increased in strength, 
 power, and influence. Nevertheless, firm as were the founda- 
 tions upon which then rested the whole of that industrial system 
 for which the country had been indebted to the protective policy 
 inaugurated by Colbert, you, my dear sir, had deemed it neces- 
 sary still to maintain protection at such a point as would give 
 to your own people the entire control of their domestic market. 
 Such having been the case, the friends of protection here had 
 reason, as they thought, for supposing that our recent re-adoption 
 of the iH'otective principle, would meet with your entire approval, 
 as a measure calculated to increase the productiveness of our agri- 
 culture — to give value to American land and labor — and to increase 
 our power to contribute to the comfort, convenience, and pros- 
 perity of your countrymen. So much the reverse of this, how- 
 ever, has beeii the case, that we find in recent journals, in the 
 report of proceedings at the Dublin meeting of the Social Science 
 Association, a denunciation of the tariff of the present year, in the 
 following words : — 
 
 " As you ai'e all here practical men, seeing with pleasure and thank- 
 fulness the good which appears, but not shutting your eyes to avoid 
 perceiving the evil, by the side of those happy changes which are under 
 accomiilishment or in preparation, you will not fail to observe the facts 
 which are taking place in the opposite direction. It is thus that by the 
 side of the treaty of commerce between France and England your glance 
 is arrested with pain by the Morrill tariff, which the Northern IJnited 
 States have recently adopted. But the Morrill tariff is born of the war. 
 
 ' The exports of what is called British merchandise are larger in 
 amount, but they are almost entirely composed of food and other 
 raw materials brought from other parts of the world, to be converted. 
 Great Britain stands at the head of trading nations, but France is chief 
 of the commercial ones.
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER, 7 
 
 It is the cllild of discord. It will not live. The atmosphere of the nine- 
 teenth century will stifle it ; for the atmosphere of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury only suits products of another nature, of a more regular character, 
 more conformable to the laws of harmony,,and to the unconquerable 
 want which the nations feel to interchange the fruits of their labor. One 
 of the finest sciences that man has formed, Geology, teaches and proves 
 to us that in proportion as during the series of the ages of the earth the 
 atmosphere purified itself and was tempered, there were seen to appear 
 more perfect creatures. The animals of the first times, those monstrous 
 and hideous beings of which the forms, recovered and described by 
 learned men, astonish and terrify us, gave place to animals less strange 
 and more beautiful, of an organization more elegant and more refined. 
 The Morrill tarift' is like one of those ugly beasts, such as the Anoplothe- 
 rium, or the Plesiosaurus, which one should attempt to rear iipon the 
 earth such as it is to-day. Vain attempt ! Powerless effort ! The Mor- 
 rill tariS" is destined soon to perish in the midst of the confusion of its 
 authors." 
 
 That you fully believed all this, no one, my dear sir, who has 
 had the pleasure of knowing you, can even for a moment doubt. 
 That, however, you have wholly misconceived the character of the 
 measure thus denounced — that it is far less protective, and there- 
 fore far less in accordance with your own most excellent teachings, 
 than is that one of which you are said to be the author — that it is 
 far more of a mere revenue measure than you yourself might wish 
 it should be — that it totally fails in that nicety of discrimination 
 by which your own is so much distinguished — that it, therefore, 
 throws far less difficulty in the way of international exchanges — 
 that it abounds in those ad valorem duties by which protection 
 is rendered less efficient — that that efficiency is still further dimi- 
 nished by the retention of more and heavier duties on raw ma- 
 terials — I propose to show, in another letter, fully convinced 
 that, as a lover of truth, you will gladly receive the correction, and 
 as gladly aid in disabusing the public mind of Europe in reference 
 to the charge so often made, that the North had sought to profit 
 of the present disturbances by giving to the world a tariff monster 
 of which it had reason to feel ashamed. 
 
 Meantime, my dear sir, I pray you to accept the assurance of 
 the sincere respect with which I remain, 
 
 Yours, faithfully, 
 
 HENRY C. CAREY. 
 MoNS. Michel Chevalier. 
 
 Philadelphia, October 26, 1861.
 
 K 
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 LETTER SECOND. 
 
 Dear Sir : 
 
 As preparatory to the examination above proposed, I now 
 ask your attention to the following comparative view of the duties 
 payable under the Morrill tariff — the character of which you have 
 so exceedingly misconceived — and that Reciprocity tariff, which 
 you regard as likely so much to " benefit both France and the 
 United Kingdom," and as ultimately "destined to metamorphose 
 the custom-houses of the world." * 
 
 Quanti- 
 Names of Articles. ties. 
 
 Iron, pig, and old cast iron . ton. 
 Iron, old broken wrought . . ton. 
 Iron, bar ..... ton. 
 Iron, railroad .... ton. 
 Iron, sheet .... ton. 
 Iron manufactures ; pipes and 
 
 solid columns . . . ton. 
 Iron manufac. ; heavy wrought ton. 
 Iron manufactures ; small wares ton. 
 Iron manufactures ; cut nails . cwt. 
 Iron manufactures ; wr't nails cwt. 
 Iron manufactures ; anchors, 
 
 chains, cables 
 Iron manufactures ; tubes of 
 
 wrought iron, large 
 Iron manufactures ; tubes of 
 
 wrought iron, small 
 Steel in bars of all kinds . 
 Steel in sheets above l-12th of 
 
 an inch thick 
 Steel in sheets under l-12th of 
 
 an inch thick 
 Steel tools in pure steel . 
 Steel sewing needles 
 Steel pens 
 Steel cutlery 
 Steel firearms . 
 Tin, pure beaten and rolled 
 Tin, pots and pans . 
 Lead, pigs, bars, plates 
 Lead, in sheets 
 Plated manufactures of all kinds 
 
 ton. 
 lb. 
 
 lb. 
 
 lb. 
 
 lb. 
 
 lb. 
 
 lb. 
 
 lb. 
 
 lb. 
 ton. 
 ton. 
 ton. 
 ton. 
 ton. 
 
 French duties under 
 
 the Reciprocity U. S. duties under 
 treaty iu American the Morrm tariflF. 
 Money. 
 
 $4 39 $6 00 
 6 35 6 00 
 
 13 68 15 00 
 
 13 68 12 00 
 
 25 41 to $31 28 20 to $25 
 
 8 30 
 17 58 
 29 32 
 
 97|c. 
 1 46i 
 
 ton. 19 54 
 ton. 25 40 
 
 48 85 
 1 3-lOc. 
 
 2tc. 
 3.'.c. 
 8"i to 17Jc. 
 
 8''c. 
 
 20 ij> cent. 
 
 21c. 
 
 11 72 
 
 58 62 
 
 5 86 
 
 9 77 
 195 45 
 
 11 20 
 20 00 
 22 40 
 
 1 12 
 
 2 24 
 
 30 to $33 
 44 80 
 
 44 80 
 
 1 ^ and 2 c. 
 
 2 c. and 15-^0. 
 
 2* and l5 ^ c. 
 30 "^ cent. 
 20 Y' cent. 
 30 'p? cent. 
 30 "^ cent. 
 30 ir^ cent. 
 10 f? cent. 
 56 00 
 22 40 
 33 60 
 30 ^ cent. 

 
 LETTERS TO MONS MICHEL CHEVALIER, 
 
 Clocks and watches . 
 
 Clocks and movements 
 
 Ores, iron, copper, zinc, lead, tin, 
 
 nickel ..... 
 Locomotive engines . 
 Spinning machines . 
 Leather, prepared skins, morocco 
 Leather manufactures 
 Refined sugar .... 
 Molasses ..... 
 Linen, plain, unbleached, (7 
 
 grades) .... 
 
 Linen, bleached, dyed, or printed 
 
 (7 grades) .... 
 Cotton tissues, plain, twilled 1 
 
 ticks, unbleached, weigh- ylOOsq. yd 
 
 ing 31 oz. or more to sq. yd. J 
 Cotton tissues, weighing 2 to S.j 
 
 oz. to sq. yd. . . lOOsq. yd 
 
 Cotton tissues, weighing 1 to 2 
 
 oz. to sq. yd. . . lOOsq. yd 
 
 Cotton tissues, bleached, add to 
 
 
 French duties under 
 
 Quanti- 
 
 tlie Reciprocity- 
 
 U. S. duties under 
 
 ties. 
 
 treaty in American the Morrill tariff. 
 
 
 Money. 
 
 
 
 5 ~\jl cent. 
 
 30 ~^. cent. 
 
 lb. 
 
 9c. 
 free 
 
 15 ■%'cent. 
 
 ton. 
 
 $29 32 
 
 $33 60 
 
 ton. 
 
 29 22 
 
 30 It) cent. 
 
 lb. 
 
 22 
 
 10 to 30 ~t^ ct. 
 
 ad val 
 
 . 10 't^ cent. 
 
 30 t' cent. 
 
 lb. 
 
 3^ cts. 
 
 2 cts. 
 
 
 1 1-5 cts. 
 
 2 cts. 1j1 gal. 
 
 lb. 
 
 2^ to 35 cts. 
 
 25 'jJ cent. 
 
 lb. 
 
 3i to 47 cts. 
 
 30 "jj^ cent. 
 
 sq. yd 
 
 [.$1 
 
 $1 
 
 2 cts. 
 
 ct. 
 
 $2 to $3. 
 4 00 
 
 unbleached . . . . 
 
 
 15 "tj* cent. 
 
 
 add ^c. sq. yd. 
 
 Cotton tissue, printed 
 
 ad val, 
 
 , 15 t> cent. 
 
 
 f addtoblch'd 
 1 10 "t? ct. 
 
 Raw cotton .... 
 
 
 free 
 
 
 free 
 
 Flax and hemp 
 
 ton. 
 
 $9 77 
 
 
 $10, 815, & 835 
 
 Wool, unmanufaatured 
 
 
 free 
 
 
 3 and 9 cts. 
 f 25, 30 "P ct.. 
 
 Tissues of pure wool 
 
 ad Val. 
 
 15 ~^ cent. 
 
 
 \ 12c.%^lb., 
 (. and 25 "(^ ct. 
 
 Silk in cocoons 
 
 
 free 
 
 
 free 
 
 Silk tissues, hosiery, lace, pure 
 
 
 free 
 
 
 25 and 30 lt> ct. 
 
 India-rubber wearing apparel . 
 
 lb. 
 
 15 c. 
 
 
 20 and 25 t*- ct. 
 
 India-rubber boots and shoes . 
 
 lb. 
 
 7.'>c. 
 
 
 20 ^. cent. 
 
 Cordage, cables, fish-nets . 
 
 lb. 
 
 2|c. 
 
 
 2 and 3 cts. 
 
 Beer, in addition to internal tax 
 
 gal. 
 
 1 ,' c. 
 
 
 15 c. 
 
 Glassware and table glass 
 
 lb. 
 
 3.8 c. &10'i:^ 
 
 ct. 
 
 25 %^ cent. 
 
 Window glass, plain, plate, un- 
 
 
 
 
 
 polished . . . . 
 
 lb. 
 
 3.8 c. & 10%! 
 
 ct. 
 
 lto4c. sq. foot. 
 
 Glass, cut . . . . 
 
 lb. 
 
 3.8c. & 10 V 
 
 ct. 
 
 30 Ij] cent. 
 
 The British free-trade policy looks to maintainins: the Custom 
 House system as a permanent source of revenue. Your Council 
 of State, wholly rejecting the question of revenue, decided to have a 
 tariff that should, in accordance with lessons that you yourself 
 had taught, stimulate domestic commerce, and thereby give to 
 labor and land that increase of value to which alone they could 
 look for power to support the burden of direct taxation. Pre- 
 cisely such a tariff as that they asked for, is presented to us in 
 the one a portion of which is given above — the idea of revenue
 
 10 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER 
 
 being most rigidly excluded, and that of protection being never 
 in any manner allowed to be vitiated by it. Pig iron — which 
 has in France the character of a raw material, sufficient domestic 
 supplies of which can scarcely be obtained — and pipes — are ad- 
 mitted at a rate of duty rather lower than our own, whereas 
 on finished commodities into which the pigs can be converted, 
 they are materially higher. Thus, railroad bars pay $13.68 
 against our $12, while sheet iron, as employing more labor 
 than the bars, pays six times as much as pigs, and one-fourth 
 more than is paid under the Morrill tariff. On steel, generally, 
 the duties are about on a par with ours, while the raw material 
 required for its manufacture is admitted at a lower rate than here. 
 On cutlery 20 per cent, appears to have been regarded as sufficient, 
 whereas .30 per cent, has been so regarded here. Tin is lower 
 than with us, but manufactures of tin are higher — the protective 
 principle being every where most eflectually carried out. Plated 
 wares are in effect prohibited. The charge on locomotives 
 nearly resembles our own. Linen manufactures are higher, while 
 flax and hemp are admitted at greatly lower rates of duty. The 
 Morrill tariff increases the rates on cotton directly in the ratio of 
 their fineness, which properly meets the condition of the manufac- 
 ture here; whereas you, my dear sir, to meet a very different 
 condition of things, put a duty of one cent per square yard upon 
 the coarsest unbleached, and only one-seventieth of a cent per 
 square yard on the very finest. This, of course, is because your 
 countrymen can safely defy competition in the most delicate tex- 
 tures, and need only to resist the English importations of the 
 coarsest. Again : in the matter of printed cottons, histead of 
 running up an arithmetical climax of duties upon the unbleached, 
 colored, and printed, of all grades of fineness and labor cost, as 
 is the case in our tariff, yours fits your own industrial conditions 
 by heavy duties on the lowest and the highest in our scale, while 
 guarding the prints, as it does the coarse unbleached, by an amply 
 protective rate, but leaving the finer intermediate unprinted goods, 
 in which England cannot rival them, nearly exempt from duty — 
 protection ruling the rates everywhere, without regard to valuation. 
 On glassware, mirrors, and plate, S 8-10 cents per pound and 
 10 per cent, must give the most complete protection against Eng- 
 land, notwithstanding her late improvements. Glass showing 
 its qualities clearly, the fine products of France are in no danger 
 of being matched in market price by inferior goods. As in the 
 ease of cutlery, the purchaser can judge of what he buys, and the 
 best article of the kind will hold the market against all rivalry. 
 Again, on cordage and cables — the average of duties in your 
 tariff is as high as in ours — the rates of duty here, as throughout 
 the schedules, being in the measure of the threatened competition — 
 always protective, and never turning aside for any other object.
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 1 1 
 
 Having; studied all these facts, you will, as I feel assured, admit 
 that you have beeu entirely misled in reji^ard to the Morrill tariff, 
 and that it is, so far as refj:ards the sacrifice of revenue to protec- 
 tion, infinitely less perfect than is your own. 
 
 Coming, now, to the second point to which I have desired to 
 invite your attention — that of the nicety of classification required 
 for giving to each and every branch of manufacture the jjrecise 
 protection that it needs — we find the only case of the kind in the 
 Morrill tariff to he that of cottons, and that even there the discrimi- 
 nations iare absolutely as nothing when compared to those of the 
 one to which you point as likely to produce a revolution in the 
 commercial system of the world. Linens are by us disposed of in 
 two short lines, and both of these are ad valorem. Woollen 
 yarns have three lines where you have' no less than thii'ty-six ; and 
 the only counting of threads that is required by us is that of four 
 qualities of cotton, with a variety of duties as easy of calculation 
 as is the counting of your fingers. Our whole tariff is, indeed, 
 simplicity itself when compared with the classification of your own, 
 in which there are no less than one hiuidred and forty kinds of 
 cotton yarn, each ivith its separate rate of duty! Flax and hemp 
 yarns, single unbleached, single bleached or dyed, and twisted un- 
 bleached, twisted bleached or dyed, are put into twenty-four classes, 
 and under as many different rates of duty. Linens have twenty- 
 four descriptions, determined by the number of threads, ranging 
 from 8 to 24 threads to five square millimetres — these varieties 
 being run through the several conditions of unbleached, bleached, 
 printed, and figured, with the duties varied in every case; the lowest 
 at 30 francs and the highest at 535 francs per 100 kilogrammes 
 (220 pounds avoirdupois). Jute yarns and tissues stand in the 
 tables in equally numerous descriptions and varied duties; and in 
 cottons the classification is carried to the extent of providing dif- 
 ferent rates for fifteen qualities of single unbleached yarns, fifteen 
 of bleached, fifteen of dyed, forty-five kinds or qualities of twisted 
 in two strands, two kinds of yarn of three threads, and forty-five 
 kinds of warped yarns, with the duties varied, according to fine- 
 ness, as has been already said, no less than 140 times — beginning 
 with ten centimes and rising to no less than three francs per kilo- 
 gramme, or about one-quarter of a dollar per i)ound. Of the cotton 
 tissues, I have given in the table only the coarsest, the medium, 
 and the finest qualities. In the schedule there are eight (puilities, 
 the description of one of which will serve as a specimen of the 
 whole. It reads thus: "Cotton tissues weighing 11 kilogrammes 
 or more the 100 square metres, of 35 threads or less to the 5 square 
 millimetres, 50 centimes per kilogramme." Had any such dis- 
 crimination been attempted here, we should have been assured that 
 the object of the framers of our tariff iiad been the utter anniliila- 
 tion of international intercourse, and there would have been a howl
 
 12 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 among our British free traders such as could have found no parallel 
 in the history of the world since the establishment of the first 
 custom-house. 
 
 The great superiority of your tariff in regard to the careful dis- 
 crimination required for rendering thoroughly efficient the protec- 
 tion proposed to be accorded, being thus established, we may now, 
 for a moment, turn to the third point of difference to which I have 
 invited your attention. There, too, we find protection more com- 
 plete, wool being admitted free, while with us it is subjected to 
 duties of three and nine cents per pound — and flax and hemp pay- 
 ing less than ten dollars per ton, while by the Morrill tariff they 
 are subjected to duties ranging from ten to thirty-five dollars per 
 ton. 
 
 In all this there is surely nothing of the free trade so strongly 
 commended to the world by our British friends. On the contrary, it 
 is most efficiently protective throughout its schedules, every part 
 of which is varied in precise accordance with the conditions and 
 requirements of French industry, and in accordance with the pre- 
 vious assurances of Mons. Baroche, when speaking as the organ 
 of the Council of State, and of the Emperor himself It is called 
 the Cobden treaty, but it should assuredly, my dear sir, bear your 
 name, my deliberate opinion of it being that it is more perfectly 
 in accordance with your previous assertion of the duties of a 
 government than any treaty that had ever before been negotiated. 
 The history of the world presents no record of the existence of 
 any customs tariff conforming so exactly to the wants of a com- 
 munity, maintaining legitimate protection with such entire and 
 absolute efficiency. Would to Heaven that we had statesmen who 
 could give us precisely such an one ! Compared with it the Mor- 
 rill tariff is a construction of a kind so rude, that we have al- 
 most reason to feel ashamed of having presented it to the world 
 as a protective measure. 
 
 Believing, my dear sir, that you must now be quite convinced 
 that the great error of the Morrill tariff, when compared with your 
 own, is to be found in its mistaken liberality towards foreign na- 
 tions, I now propose to ask, for a moment, your attention to a 
 brief comparison of some of its provisions with those of that 
 general tariff which long has governed, and, as I believe, still 
 governs, the intercourse between this country and your own. The 
 one says to the people of France — "Bring us all the products of 
 your soil, or of those of any other country of the world. Put 
 upon them as much labor as you please — change their form in 
 whatsoever manner may be most agreeable to you — and we will 
 admit them all on the payment of duties rarely exceeding thirty 
 per cent. — those duties, too, ))eing charged on the ad vaJorem 
 principle, by means of which you have generally been able to 
 reduce them to little more than twenty per cent."
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 13 
 
 The other says to the people of this country — "Brmg us 
 wheat and cotton, coal and ores, rags or hemp, pipe clay, wool, 
 hides, and all other of the rudest products of your soil and labor, 
 and we will accept them at nominal rates of duty ; but be- 
 ware of doing anything whatsoever towards changing them in 
 form. Labor abounds with us, and it is our first duty to find 
 employment for it, and thus make a market on the land for all the 
 products of the farm. On no condition whatsoever will we 
 admit your cotton, after you shall have converted it into cloth, 
 or your hides, after you shall have changed them into leather — 
 there being a determination on our part that you shall not follow 
 the advice of Adam Smith in converting food and wool, or food 
 and hides, with a view to facilitation of their transport to any 
 part of France. Should you undertake to send us your food and 
 rags in the form of paper, the product shall be admitted only 
 on payment of eight or ten cents per pound. Should you send 
 food and clay in the form of stone ware, the tax shall be eight 
 or ten cents per pound ; and, further, if you send your food, lime- 
 stone, coal, and iron ore, in the form of a railroad bar, you shall 
 pay from twenty to thirty dollars per ton for the privilege of 
 selling it in any of our domestic markets. The first duty of a 
 government is to provide employment for its people, and that duty 
 we mean shall fully be performed. 
 
 " Further even than this, should you send us tobacco, we pray 
 you to recollect that we limit you to a single great purchaser, 
 with the express desire to buy it as cheaply as possible, and to 
 sell it at the highest prices. The higher we sell it, the larger 
 must be our profits, but the smaller must be the demand for the 
 raw commodity, and the lower must be the price at which you 
 will be required to sell it. In this manner we shall add very 
 many millions to our public revenue, no small portion of which 
 you will be required to pay, and thus shall we compel you to con- 
 tribute to the support of the Ueets and armies required I'or our 
 defence." 
 
 Such, my dear sir, is the language of France to America, and 
 it is to such dictation as this that the latter has to this hour 
 submitted. That it should so have done is, as you must admit, 
 most wonderful. That such submission, altogether at war, as it 
 is, with the teachings of Adam Smith, and with those of all the 
 eminent men to whom I have referred, yourself included, should 
 have resulted in discord among our people, is only what might 
 naturally have been expected, and what I have for many years 
 predicted. Let us hope for better things, now that we have 
 made one slight step, and a very slight one indeed it is, towards 
 re-establishing among ourselves a policy more in accordance with 
 that estaljlished for France by the treaty recently so well concluded.
 
 14 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 As regards the objects sought to be attained, there is not even 
 a shadow of difference between this latter and its predecessor. 
 Both look carefully to the one great end of promoting diversifica- 
 tion in the employment of your people, regarding it as necessary 
 to the development of that great internal commerce in the absence 
 of which there can be none of that continuity in the demand for 
 human service which is so essential to growth in wealth, civiliza- 
 tion, power, and influence. Widely different, however, are they in 
 their modes of operation — the one accomplishing by means of care- 
 ful discrimination more than previously had been obtained by aid 
 of prohibition. Such, however, are the changes everywhere ob- 
 served — the skilful surgeon of our day accomplishing, by little more 
 than the turn of his finger, operations that to Ambrose Fare, 
 great as he certainly was, but working with the poorest instru- 
 ments, were wholly impracticable without severe exertion of mere 
 brute force. Your tariff is on a level with the surgery of the 
 present day, w^hereas the one of which you have now complained 
 is so defective when compared with it, as scarcely to be above the 
 level of that of the days of Fare and the League. 
 
 Believing, my dear sir, that you can scarcely fail to find, in the 
 facts that have been submitted for your consideration, conclusive 
 evidence that you have been seriously misled in your estimate of 
 our recent course of action, and that you will be disposed to agree 
 with me in the idea that better to suit our tariff to " the atmo- 
 sphere of the nineteenth century," we should follow your example 
 in making it more, and not less, protective of the land and labor 
 of the country, I remain, with great regard. 
 
 Yours, faithfully, 
 
 HENRY C. CAREY. 
 MoNS. Michel Chevalier. 
 
 Philadelphia, October 28, 1860.
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 15 
 
 LETTER THIRD, 
 
 Dear Sir : — 
 
 As has been seen, j^our tariff is, in most respects, far more in 
 accordance than is onr own, with the ideas you have so well ex- 
 pressed in regard to "the positive duty of governments so to act 
 at each epoch of the nation's progress as to favor the taking pos- 
 session of all the branches of industry whose acquisition is autho- 
 rized I)y the nature of things" — there being, as I conceive, no case 
 on record, in which an economist, become a statesman, has so 
 completely reduced to practice the theories he before had taught. 
 In one most important respect, however, our tariff is greatly more 
 defensible, upon the principles you have so well enunciated, than 
 is your own, as I propose now to show you. 
 
 The essential object of protection is that of bringing about 
 such combination of action as will make demand for all the va- 
 rieties of human power, both physical and mental, and for all the 
 rude products of the earth — "agriculture alone," to use your 
 own words, " being insufficient," and there arising in every country 
 a necessity, in the interests of human progress, for adding thereto 
 all the principal branches of industry, from the making of cottons 
 and woollens to the working of metals and of mines, and to the 
 arts of navigation. "To that point," in your view, "the pro- 
 gramme is certainly right ;" but " Nature," as you have further 
 said — 
 
 "Has herself determined the limits beyond which this diversification 
 may not be carried. It would be absurd for England, or for Northern 
 Germany, to endeavor to produce at home the wines tliey drink ; for us 
 to try to raise the cotton we spin, weave, and print ; for Italy to pretend 
 to draw from herself the ice with which she seeks, in the heat of summer, 
 to cool her thirst; for Western p]urope to impose upon itself a necessity 
 for drawing from its own poor mines its supplies of the precious metals ; 
 or for France to refuse to manufacture any tin, copper, or zinc, but tliose 
 yielded by its own particuhir mines. When nature, in her caprice, hag 
 refused to a country so extensive as our own an abundance of ores and 
 fuel, it would then be an absurdity for it to insist upon supplying all its 
 wants from the few little veins of coal, or meagre deposits of ores, that 
 have been scattered oyer it." 
 
 Such is the completion of your own programme, every part of 
 which has, as you may rest assured, the most hearty indorsement 
 of every friend of the system of which you have here shown your- 
 self the earnest advocate, from the shores of our northern lakes to
 
 16 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It would 
 be absurd for us of the North to attempt to raise our own cotton, 
 our spices, or our oranges. Equally alDsurd would it be for Cuba 
 or Louisiana to attempt to raise rye or wheat, for with every step 
 there would be an increase of difficulty in obtaining the supplies 
 required. Directly the reverse of this, however, must be the case 
 with those whose soils and climates are fitted for the production 
 of cotton or of wheat, or with those others who have fuel and ore 
 in great abundance — protection being there sought with a view to 
 facilitate the conversion of food and cotton into cloth, or fuel and 
 ore into iron, thercl)y creating demand for human power, physical 
 and intellectual, and producing that "combination of varied effort" 
 so properly regarded by yourself as not only "promotive of pros- 
 perity," but as being the one and only "condition of national pro- 
 gress." Protection, therefore, may with great propriety be resorted 
 to when it is in accordance with "the nature of things," but never 
 otherwise. Such, my dear sir, being the test you have yourself 
 established, we may now proceed to an examination of the ques- 
 tion whether your tariff or our own is most defensible when so 
 considered. 
 
 France has food, labor power, and intelligence, three of the raw 
 materials required for the production of cotton cloth, but she is 
 short of fuel and wholly deficient in the wool — no cotton being 
 there produced. Determined, however, to profit of those she has, 
 she protects the cotton manufacture, in the treaty that you are 
 said to have negotiated, by a series of provisions so elaborate as 
 to be a cause of wonder to all of us Americans who have had a 
 chance to study them, and by her general tariff actually prohibit- 
 ing the producers of cotton in India and America from sending 
 their product in any form but that in which it must be sure to 
 make a market for all the raw materials she herself can furnish. 
 Fully successful as she has been in securing to herself the control 
 of her own supplies, she yet maintains protection at its highest 
 point, and in its most perfect form, with a view to enable her to 
 supply the world with her own food and her own labor in the 
 shape of cloths and silks — doing this to such extent that she now 
 stands foremost in the list of nations as the largest exporter of 
 domestic food, domestic labor, and high intelligence. That she is 
 right in this, no one can doubt. That others are wrong in not 
 following her great example is a fact about which there can be as 
 little question. 
 
 Looking next to the country that has given to the world the 
 much-abused Morrill tariff, we find food in such abundance that a 
 bushel of corn may now be bought in Iowa for less money than is 
 required to pay for a single yard of the coarsest cotton cloth — in 
 which labor ])ower is so al)undant that more than half of it is 
 wasted in the absence of demand for its employment — in which
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 17 
 
 intelligence so much abounds that most of the great improve- 
 ments of recent times have there originated — in which fuel abounds 
 to an extent unknown elsewhere — and, finally, in which cotton 
 grows so freely that it might with ease be made to supply the 
 entii'e demand of the world — all the raw materials of cotton cloth 
 thus existing there to an extent to which the world affords no 
 parallel whatsoever. 
 
 Such being the condition of these two countries in regard to 
 cotton and its products, which of the two, my dear sir, is acting 
 most in accordance with your own principles in granting the pro- 
 tection required for taking possession of the cotton manufacture ? 
 Is it France that is so much deficient in fuel, and so wholly defi- 
 cient in cotton ? Or, is it this country, that has both, and that 
 has, in addition, all that France possesses ? As it seems to me, 
 you can scarcely fail to admit that it is the latter, and that you 
 have been much in error in denouncing as erroneous the feeble 
 attempt that has been made in the Morrill tariff to follow in your 
 footsteps. Should you desire any evidence of this, let me beg you 
 to turn to Adam Smith and re-peruse his admirable exhibit of the 
 advantages resulting from combining tons of food and hundred 
 weights of wool in the form of cloth — thereby enabling both to 
 travel freely and cheaply to the remotest corners of the world. 
 
 As regards iron, the case is, as I think, equally strong — France 
 being largely deficient in both fuel and ore, while this country 
 abounds in both to an extent unequalled in any portion of the 
 earth. By your own tariff, nevertheless, pig iron is loaded with a 
 protective duty seven-tenths as great as that complained of in the 
 Morrill tariff". Make it even ten times greater, and France could 
 not then supjjly herself; whereas, under even the present moderate 
 duty, this country' could, in a brief period, supply all the demands 
 of the thousand millions of the human race. 
 
 Passing upwards from the i)ig to the bar, and thence to the 
 various commodities made from iron, the case becomes yet stronger, 
 labor and fuel being the only raw materials then required to be 
 used. Of the last, France has but little, and yet, because she has 
 the first, you impose duties far higher than our own. Should not 
 the course of operation, my dear sir, be directly the reverse of this, 
 our government imposing high duties with a view to the develop- 
 ment of our vast internal wealth, and France opening her jtorts 
 for the reception of American labor, food, coal, and ore, wlienever 
 they took the form of iron ? That to do so would, with both our 
 nations, be quite in accordance with your own most excellent )»ro- 
 gramme, you must, I think, admit. If so, have you not been much 
 in error in denouncing the Morrill tariff" as " a child of discord" — 
 as a monster that "will not live" — as a thing that must be stilled in 
 the free "atmosphere of the nineteenth century, " and that "must 
 perish in the midst of the confusion of its authors" — and which 
 2
 
 18 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 is yet in an almost infinite degree less protective of the material 
 interests of the country than is your own ? The more you shall 
 study the subject, the more will you, I think, be disposed to arrive 
 at the conclusion, that our real error is to be found in the fact that 
 we have, in past times, so much failed to follow in the footsteps 
 of your countrymen, and that, even now, when we have professed 
 to re-adopt your system, we have failed to take as a model the 
 admirably protective treaty for which your country is understood 
 to have been so much indebted to yourself. 
 
 Why, however, if all the raw materials are so cheap and abund- 
 ant, should protection be here required ? For the same reason 
 that it has always been, and is now, after so very many years of 
 thorough protection, still needed in France, as a means of defence 
 against the barbarizing warfare described iu the following extract 
 from a report made to the British House of Commons, and printed 
 by its order, but a few years since : — 
 
 " The laboring classes generally, in the manufacturing districts of this 
 country, and especially in the iron and coal districts, are very little 
 aware of the extent to which they are often indebted for their being em- 
 ployed at all to the immense losses which their employers voluntarily 
 incur iu bad times, in order to destroy foreign competition, and to gain and 
 keep possession of foreign markets. Authentic instances are well known 
 of employers having in such times carried on their works at a loss 
 amounting in the aggregate to three or four hundred thousand pounds 
 iu the course of three or four years. If the efforts of those who encour- 
 age the combinations to restrict the amoiant of labor and to produce 
 strikes were to be successful for any length of time, the great accumu- 
 lations of capital could no longer be made ichich enable a fow of the most 
 wealthy capitalists to overwhelm all foreign competition in times of great de- 
 pression, and thus to clear the way for the whole trade to step in when 
 prices revive, and to carry on a great business before foreign capital can 
 again accumulate to such an extent as to be able to'establish a competi- 
 tion in prices with any chance of success. The large capitals of this 
 country are the great instruments of tear fare against the competing capital of 
 foreign countries, and are the most essential instruments now remaining 
 by which our manufacturing supremacy can be maintained ; the other 
 elements — cheap labor, abundance of raw materials, means of communi- 
 cation, and skilled labor — being rapidly in process of being equalized." 
 
 England seeks to have raw materials at low prices, while aim- 
 ing to have high prices for cloth and iron. That she may have 
 both, she makes the terrible war above described, and thus pre- 
 vents advance in civilization in all the countries subjected to her 
 control. France protects herself against it, and has done so 
 steadily, and your recent most excellent treaty furnishes proof con- 
 clusive that she means to do the same in all the future, knowing 
 well that diversification of pursuits is "the condition of national 
 progress" in strength, wealth, and civilization. The result is 
 seen in the wonderful growth of her commerce, and in her most 
 extraordinary advance in prosperity, power, and influence. This 
 country, on the contrary, has, for the last fifteen years, permitted
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 19 
 
 the subjugation of its farmers and planters to a system under 
 which they have been becoming daily more dependent upon British 
 traders, and with precisely the same result that has been realized 
 in every other country of the world that has been either unwilling 
 or unable to protect itself against this worst of tyrannies — destruc- 
 tion of internal commerce — increasing weakness — and growing 
 discord among the States, ending in civil war. 
 
 You, however, are disposed to look upon the Morrill tariff, 
 poor a copy as it is of your own most admirable one, as " a child 
 of discord." Further reflection will, as I think, satisfy you, that 
 the war now raging is but the legitimate child of that British 
 free trade system which is so well described in the passage above 
 presented for consideration. In proof that it is so, I venture 
 to trespass a little further upon your time, to ask your attention 
 to the following facts, without a knowledge of which it is scarcely 
 possible to arrive at a correct conception of the causes of the un- 
 fortunate contest now pending between that portion of our people 
 which does, and that which does not, believe in human slavery as 
 an institution given of God, and to be perpetuated throughout 
 the future. 
 
 The great backbone of the Union is found in the ridge of moun- 
 tains which commences in Alabama, but little distant from the 
 Gulf of Mexico, and extends northward, wholly separating the 
 people who inhabit the low lands of the Atlantic slope from those 
 who occupy such lands in the Mississippi valley, and itself con- 
 stituting a great free soil wedge, with its attendant free atmo- 
 sphere, created by nature herself in the very heart of slavery, and 
 requiring but a slight increase of size and strength to enable those 
 who now direct it to control the southern policy, and thus to 
 bring the entire South into perfect harmony with the North and 
 West, and with the world at large. That you may fully satisfy 
 yourself on this head, I will now ask you to take the map and 
 pass your eye down the Alleghany ridge, flanked as it is by the 
 Cumberland range on the west, and by that of the Blue Moun- 
 tains on the east, giving, in the very heart of the South itself, a 
 country larger than all Great Britain, in which the finest of cli- 
 mates is found, in connection with the laud abounding in coal, 
 salt, limestone, iron ore, gold, and almost every other material 
 required for the development of a varied industry, and for secur- 
 ing the attainment of the highest degree of agricultural wealth ; 
 and then to reflect that it is a region which must necessarily be 
 occupied by men who, with their own hands till their own lands, 
 and one in which slavery can never ))y any possibility have more 
 than a slight and transitory existence. That done, I will ask of 
 you here to reflect what would be now the condition of this country 
 had its policy for the last fifteen years been such as would have 
 tended towarch /illing t/>it< rireat free soil loedge with free ivhite
 
 20 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEyALIER. 
 
 northern men — miners, smelters, founders, machinists — workmen 
 of all descrijitions — who should have been raakinji; a market for 
 every product of the farm, with constant increase in the value of 
 land and labor, and as constantly growing tendency towards in- 
 crease of freedom for all men, whether black or white ? Would 
 not, under such circumstances, power have made its way to the 
 hills, and would not iron, coal, limestone, and copper have been 
 enabled to dictate law to the cotton kings? — to the men who live 
 on the river bottoms, and live in ease at the cost of those of their 
 fellow-men whom they buy and sell in the open market ? Could 
 we, by any possibility, have witnessed the present extraordinary 
 state of things, had the policy of the country in reference to do- 
 mestic and foreign commerce, in any manner resembled that admi- 
 rable one which finds its best exemplification in that treaty of 
 which you speak, and of which you are, to so great an extent, the 
 author? Most assuredly we should not To the British free 
 trade system, against which you, my dear sir, have sought so care- 
 fully to guard your fellow-citizens, we owe our present discord; 
 and that we do so owe it, you will, I feel assured, be prepared to 
 admit, when you shall have carefully studied the facts that have 
 been laid before you. 
 
 That it is in efficient protection we are to find the road towards 
 freedom of trade, freedom of man, wealth, strength, power, peace, 
 and civilization, is the lesson taught in those passages of your 
 own work to which I have referred ; and that it has proved to be 
 the certain road, is the one that is taught in a portion of your 
 recent address, to which, in another letter, I propose to invite 
 your attention, remaining, meanwhile, with great regard and 
 respect, Yours, very truly, 
 
 HENRY C. CAREY. 
 MoNS. Michel Chevalier. 
 
 Philadelphia, October 30, 1861.
 
 LETTERS TO MOXS. MICHEL CHEVALIER, 21 
 
 LETTER FOURTH. 
 
 Dear Sir : — 
 
 The following is the passage of your Address referred to in 
 my last, as furnishing proof conclusive that the policy of i)rotec- 
 tion initiated by Colljert, steadily pursued by France, recently so 
 ably advocated by yourself, and now so firmly established by the 
 treaty you have made, is the true and only road towards domestic 
 and foreign peace, towards the full development of human powys, 
 and towards au ultimate entire freedom of international inter- 
 course : — 
 
 " The treaty of commerce between the United Kingdom and France 
 has already given occasion to a treaty of commerce between Belgium and 
 France. In a few weeks probably it will have determined the signature 
 of a treaty of commerce between France and the ZoUverein, or at least 
 between France and Prussia ; for that treaty has already been for several 
 months under negotiation. In a short time, I think I can assure you of 
 it, we shall see concluded a treaty between France and that young king- 
 dom, called to so glorious a future, which the noble and intelligent sword 
 of the Emperor Napoleon the Third and the patriotic perseverance of Ca- 
 vour have raised from the tomb in Italy. Each one of the States which 
 has thus signed a treaty of commerce with France in consequence of the 
 English treaty, or which will sign one, becomes a focus of propagation 
 for free trade ; and in treating itself with other States it determines them 
 to propagate it around themselves. It is thus that the number of labor- 
 ers in the vineyard of the Lord is continually increasing." 
 
 Your countrymen, my dear sir, have a saying from which we 
 learn, that "whoso shall make of himself a sheep, will be sure to 
 find wolves ready to devour him," and all experience proves that 
 such is certainly the case with regard not only to men, but also 
 to communities of men. In the world of international commerce, 
 England has always i)layed the part of wolf, while seeking to 
 induce the other nations to take that of sheep — permitting her 
 to make of her little island the one and only "workshop of the 
 world," to which all other communities were to be compelled to 
 send their products in their rudest forms, to be there changed in 
 form, and there taxed. Foremost and firmest in resistance to 
 this oppressive system has been France. Other nations that 
 hitherto have been disposed to play the i)art of sheep, have re- 
 cently followed her good example, and with such ell'ect that they 
 appear now to be grouping themselves together for the purpose 
 
 2*
 
 22 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 of making that resistance more effectual; but that any snch action 
 on tlieir part can be construed into an admission of the truth of 
 the British free trade doctrine, neither you nor I can readily be- 
 lieve. The ends they have sought to attain have been — first, a 
 development of the power of association and combination among 
 their own people ; second, a development of agriculture consequent 
 upon the creation of a domestic market for the products of the 
 farm ; and third, an assertion of their right to determine for 
 themselves the form in which their products should be exported ; 
 and it has been for the purpose of carrying those views into 
 full effect that they have had recourse to protective measures. 
 British free trade, on the contrary, desires to prevent the growth 
 of association everywhere, while dictating to all the world the 
 forms in which their exports shall be made; and in the pursuit of 
 that policy England has exhibited a steadiness and determination 
 that is wholly without a pamllel in history. That she has re- 
 cently abandoned certain portions of her programme is very certain ; 
 but as I propose, my dear sir, to show you, not a single step in 
 that direction has ever yet been taken that has not been forced 
 upon her I^y the protective measures of other nations. 
 
 Prohibiting her colonists from bringing to her markets, except 
 in their rudest form, any of their products, she therel)y prohibited 
 them from combination among themselves, while subjecting them 
 to a taxation for transportation, for changes of form, for ex- 
 changes, and for the support of government, so oppressive as to 
 take from the poor producer, as then estimated by British mer- 
 chants, more than two-thirds of the total product of his land and 
 labor. Prohibiting them from converting their rude products 
 into commodities required for even their own especial use, she 
 thus increased the quantity requiring to be transported to her 
 markets, to be there converted, exchanged, and taxed. Prohibiting 
 them from the use of any ships except her own, she thus com- 
 pelled them to pay to her, and to her alone, the enormous amount 
 required for the transport of so much bulky freight. Prohibiting 
 the export of machinery, and the emigration of artisans, she 
 thus denied to them, and to the world at large, the power to 
 profit of the great discoveries in regard to steam, and to other 
 of the great natural forces, that had then been made. Prohibiting, 
 to the utmost extent of her ability, combination everywhere, she 
 compelled Germany to send her wool — Russia to send her hemp and 
 flax — India and Carolina to send rice and cotton — Jamaica and 
 Brazil to send their sugar in its rudest state — each and every of 
 these commodities being subjected to the payment of heavy duties 
 on their entry into her ports, i)reparatory to their re-exportation 
 in a finished form to the countries in which they had been pro- 
 duced. Occasionally, and only occasionally, her tributaries were 
 permitted to feed some slight portion of the artisans she thus
 
 \ 
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 23 
 
 employed. Taxes on the food tliey sent were added to tliose 
 on raw materials of niannfiictnre, and the enormous amount tlius 
 raised was then appropriated to the maintenance of fleets and 
 armies employed in coercing the producers of food and raw mate- 
 rials into submission to a system more tyrannical, more destructive 
 of morals, more antagonistic to civilization, and more in ojjposi- 
 tion to all the teachings of Adam Smith, than any other that had 
 existed from the creation of the world. 
 
 "With time, however, there came resistance — this country setting 
 the example of a determination to compel the recognition of 
 equality on the ocean ; a movement that was followed l)y re])eal 
 of the obnoxious provisions of the Navigation Laws. Following 
 in the same direction, we find our protective tariff of 1828 com- 
 pelling the disappearance of the tax on cotton — that of Russia, 
 of 1825, doing the same by the taxes on flax and hemp — that of 
 Germany, doing it in regard to wool — and our own highly pro- 
 tective tariff" of 1842 giving the coup de grace to the restriction 
 on the import of food. Thenceforth, all foreign nations were to 
 be permitted to bring the raw products of their various soils, and 
 to have them so changed in form as to fit them for consumption, 
 without the payment of any direct tax for the support of the 
 British government — the indirect taxation to which they were sub- 
 jected, enormous as it was, being held to be entirely sufficient. 
 
 Such is the history of the rise and progress of British free trade 
 — every step in that direction having been forced upon the people 
 of England by the adoption of measures of resistance, in the form 
 of tariffs adopted with the view of carrying into effect your own 
 grand idea of acclimating among the nations of the earth each 
 and all the various branches of manufacture, and thus familiariz- 
 ing them "with the working of metals and of mines, with the 
 various departments of mechanics, and with the art of navigation." 
 For the accomplishment of that great object, the governments of 
 those several countries had not been forced to resort to any "abuse 
 of power." On the contrary, they had, my dear sir, to use your 
 own words, only "performed a positive duty in seeking to take 
 possession of all the various branches of industry whose acquisi- 
 tion was authorized by the nature of things," and they were being 
 in part rewarded by the emancipation of their people from a taxa- 
 tion of the most oppressive kind. Having jirotected their jieople, 
 they had ceased to "make of themselves sheep," and the danger 
 of becoming a prey to wolves had almost disapi)eared. 
 
 That protection is the one and only road towards freedom of 
 international intercourse, is proved l)y all the occurrences of the last 
 thirty years. Were further proof of this here required, it would 
 be found in the fact that the idea of reciprocity is found in none 
 of the arrangements of England with those states which are either
 
 24 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 unable or unwilling to protect themselves — those which furnish 
 siip'ar and tea, coffee and tobacco. 
 
 Of the amount paid by the people of England for sugar, no less 
 than £5,000,000 is taken by the public treasury. Were there no 
 such claim, the quantity of money expended on sugar would not 
 be in any manner diminished — the consumption growing with a 
 reduction of price that would enable both producer and consumer 
 to profit of the change. The effect of this would soon exhibit 
 itself in a rise in the price of the whole crop, giving to the whole 
 body of producers probably six, eight, or even ten millions of 
 pounds per annum more than they now obtain. Such being the 
 case, does England, in her anxiety for reciprocity, propose to accept 
 sugar from its producers at the same low rate of duties at which 
 she desires them to receive her cloth and iron ? Not at all ! On 
 the contrary, one of the essential objects of that war which is so 
 well described in the public document given in my last, is that of 
 compelling the people of the tropics to devote their exclusive 
 attention to the sugar culture — to increase the quantity thrown 
 upon her market — to diminish the price and increase the consump- 
 tion — and thus to enable her to take a constantly increasing pro- 
 portion of the product for the maintenance of her government. 
 Anxious to sell cloths, she makes a war upon China which 
 closes with a treaty providing for the admission of cottons and 
 woollens at very low duties, but without the slightest suggestion 
 of remission of any part of that enormous proportion of the price 
 paid by the British public for tea (£5,000,000) which is now re- 
 quired for public purposes. So, too, with tobacco, which pays 
 another £5,000,000, nearly every shilling of which comes from 
 the pockets of men who are surrounded by great deposits of coal 
 and iron ore which they cannot work, because of the " determina- 
 tion of British iron-masters to destroy competition, and to gain 
 and keep foreign markets;" and who are, therefore, compelled to 
 devote their labor to the raising of rude products for the British 
 market. Professedly anxious for freedom of trade, she so dis- 
 criminates — or quite recently has so discriminated — against refined 
 sugar from her colonies, as to compel her own subjects to send 
 their products to her ports in their rudest state. Anxious, too, 
 for reciprocity, when it suits her purpose, she urges with all her 
 force a treaty between this country and Canada, and yet refuses 
 to permit the formation of a treaty of reciprocity between her 
 colonists of the West Indies and those of her possessions on this 
 continent. Such, my dear sir, is the character of British free 
 trade practice — each and every step toward any real freedom 
 having been forced upon the government by the adoption by other 
 luitions of policies closely resembling that which France has so 
 long i)ursued, and to which you have affixed your seal in the 
 treaty so lately made. Such being its character, and there being
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 25 
 
 now — as always heretofore — a manifest determination to "over- 
 whelm all forei.sn com])etition," and to accom|)li.sh this by means 
 of a warfare of the most destructive kind, can we rejrard Great 
 Britain, with all her free trade jn'ofessions, as any other than the 
 wolf she always has been, although now appearinir in the clothing 
 of the sheep ? As it apjjears to me, it is (juite impossible that 
 we should do so. 
 
 By Englishmen generally this suggestion may be regarded as 
 most unjust, and for the reason, that they have so long been ac- 
 customed to judge of every measure by its ])robable effect upon 
 their own trade, their own ])rofits, their own manufactures, and 
 their own power, as to have become almost entirely incajiable of 
 occupying any other stand ])oint whatsoever. As a consequence 
 of this it is, that, to use the words of your most distinguished 
 countryman, De Tocqueville : — 
 
 " In tlie eyes of the English, that which is most useful to England is 
 always the cause of justice. The man or the government which serves 
 the cause of England has all sorts of good qualities ; he who hurts those 
 interests, all sorts of defects, so that it would seem that the criterion of 
 what is noble, or just, is to be found in the degree of favor or opposition 
 to English interests. The same thing occurs to some extent in the judg- 
 me:its of all nations, but it is manifested in England to a degree that 
 astonishes a foreigner. Plngland is often accused on this account of a 
 political machiavellism which, in my opinion, not only does not exist 
 any more, but rather less than elsewhere." 
 
 The real charge to be brought against her is not machia- 
 vellism, but selfishness such as is above so well described, and 
 which wholly unfits her for taking the lead in the work of organi- 
 zation in which your own country, my dear sir, seems now to be 
 so well engaged. Of all the countries of the world, England is 
 the one that has the fewest real friends, and hence it is that she 
 has so entirely lost her hold on Europe. How she stood, a year 
 since, on this continent, even am"ong those who are now soliciting 
 her aid for the destruction of this Union, may be seen from the 
 following extract from a speech of Mr. Jefferson Davis, now at 
 the head of the, so-called, Confederate States, delivered in the 
 Senate of the United States, less than eighteen months since: — 
 
 "This English teaching, this English philanthropy, is to us what the 
 wooden horse was at the siege of Troy. It has its concealed evil. It looks, 
 I'believe, to the separation of those States; the ruin of the navigating 
 and manufacturing States, who are their rivals ; not the Southern States, 
 who contribute to their wealth and prosperity. Yet, strange as it may 
 seem, there only do the seeds they scatter take root. British inter- 
 ference linds no footing, receives no welcome among us of the South. 
 We turn with loathing and disgust from tlieir mock philanthro])y." 
 
 Towards France, as I I)elieve, there exists no such feeling as 
 that which is here exhibited, in any ])orti()ii of the world; and fur 
 the reason, that her position in the world of commerce has always
 
 26 LETTERS TO MONS, MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 been that of the sheep which has desired to protect herself, and 
 not that of the wolf desiring to prey upon the sheep. The results 
 of this now exhibit themselves in the facts, that by means of a 
 protective system more striiifjent and more steadily maintained 
 than any other in the world, she has been enabled to obtain 
 the admission into the British markets of many of the most im- 
 jiortant products of her vast and varied industry, while retaining; 
 for herself that thoroug:h ])rotection for her own manufactures 
 which had before been promised l)y the Council of State; and, 
 that she is liecoming from day to day more fully enabled, by means 
 of tlie reciprocity system, to brino; to act in concert with her, those 
 of the countries of continental Europe whose policy has recently 
 been most in accordance with her own — thereby bringing the sheep 
 to act together, and thus enabling them more thoroughly to repel 
 the wolf's attacks. The idea is a grand one — it being the organi- 
 zation of Europe at large in opposition to that system which looks 
 to having but a single workshop for the world. Fully carried out, 
 it cannot fail to result in placing France in the lead of both the 
 political and the commercial world. 
 
 French commercial policy tends thus to the production of union 
 between France and the advancing communities of the earth, and 
 brings with it, as you so properly say in your Address, "the thought 
 of mutual approximation and of harmony among the most civil- 
 ized nations" — that is, of those nations which have most adopted 
 your own admirable ideas as to the duty imposed on governments 
 so to act as to secure the taking possession of all the various 
 Ijranches of industry for which they are fitted, and thus to pro- 
 mote that diversification in the pursuits of their people which is 
 required for the production of harmony within, and strength for 
 resistance to all attacks from without. British policy, on the con- 
 trary, tends to the prevention of any movement in that direction, 
 and hence it is, that in all the nations subject to it, we witness 
 nothing but growing discord at home, with steady decline in the 
 power for self-defence, the latest proof of this being furnished in 
 the recent history of these United States; the Germanic Union, 
 on the contrary, furnishing the most conclusive evidence of the 
 advantages to be derived from moving in the direction indicated 
 by France. 
 
 Thirty years since, Northern Germany presented to view a con- 
 geries of independent states, various in their sizes and widely dif- 
 ferent in their modes of thought and action. Small as they were, 
 each had its little custom-houses, and, as a necessary consequence, 
 tliere was but little domestic commerce, and absolutely no common 
 bond of union. Prohibited by England from obtaining machinery, 
 their people found themselves compelled to send their food and their 
 wool to tiiat country in search of the spindle and the loom, and 
 there to submit to severe taxation as a condition i>recedent to the
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 27 
 
 conversion of the two into cloth, to be then retnrned to the place 
 from whence the materials had come, and to be worn bj'^ those to 
 whose labors their production had been due. Food and wool were, 
 of course, verj' cheap, while cloth was very dear, and the farmer 
 very badly clothed. A better day, however, was then close at 
 hand — stern necessity having compelled the formation of new 
 arrangements which gradually took the form of a great Customs 
 Uuion — embracing 35,000,000 of people — within which commerce 
 was to be absolutely free. Without its limits trade was to be 
 subjected to such restrictions as were deemed to be required for 
 carrying into effect the grand idea of " acclimating" among the 
 German people "the principal branches of industry," and "adding 
 to woollens and cottons all that might be required for rendering 
 them familiar with the working of metals and mines, and with the 
 arts of navigation" — in full accordance with the ideas that you, 
 ray dear sir, have so well expressed. Under the system thus 
 inaugurated, the people gradually grew in strength and power — 
 each and every stage of their growth being attended by a disap- 
 pearance of some of the restrictions under which they before had 
 suffered. First, came permission to purchase machinery in Eng- 
 land. Next, the English duties on wool disappeared. Again, 
 the market of England was opened to their food. With each suc- 
 cessive stage of progress towards commercial freedom, there came 
 a diminution in the necessity for exporting raw materials, and an 
 increase in the power to export finished commodities, with steady 
 increase in the prices of food and wool as compared with those of 
 cloth and iron, and a constant increase in the productiveness and 
 value of German labor and land. With each, there came an in- 
 creased desire for the formation of a closer and more intimate 
 union than that which then existed. With each, the government 
 grew in strength for resistance to aggression from abroad — that 
 strength having, within the last three years, manifested itself to an 
 extent that could scarcely have been anticipated, even by those 
 who had most carefully studied the Germanic movement. Here, 
 as everywhere, my dear sir, enlightened protection has proved to 
 be the road towards strength and independence. 
 
 Thirty years since, the American Union exhibited a scene of 
 prosperity, the like of which had never I)een known — a thoroughly 
 protective tariff having largely aided in developing the industry of 
 the country, while so rapidly filling the public treasury as, three 
 years later, to compel the entire extinction of the public debt. 
 Always turbulent. South Carolina was then as anxious for a dis- 
 solution of the Union as she has recently })roved herself to be, 
 but so strong was then the attachment to the Union that she 
 could find no second. Three years later,- the 15ritish free trade 
 system was re-inaugurated; and since then, with the exception 
 only of the years from 1842 to 1847, our course has been dictated
 
 28 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 
 
 to US by the class of men which thrives upon tlie profits of trans- 
 portation, and desires, therefore, that all our products shall be 
 exported in the most l)ulky form. Fifteen years have now elapsed 
 since we last abandoned that policy to the steady pursuit of which 
 France owes her present slrenfj^th. With each and every of those 
 years, the relations of American slavery and British free trade 
 have been becoming more close and intimate. With each, there 
 has been an increasing alienation of the several portions of the 
 Union, and for the simple reason, that with each there has been 
 a diminution of the jiower to n^aintain domestic commerce, 
 accompanied by an increase in the necessity for looking to Eng- 
 land as the only outlet for those rude products of our soil which 
 we have not been allowed to manufacture. Having thus made 
 of ourselves sheep, the wolf stands now ready to devour us so 
 soon as a fitting opportunity for so doing shall be presented. 
 Anxious to pass from that position, and to take once more our 
 true one, we have now established the Morrill tariff, and although, 
 as a protective measure, it is but a very feeble imitation of your 
 own, as well as of those to which your German and Belgian neigh- 
 bors owe their [)resent wealth and strength, it cannot fail, as I 
 think, ultimately to bring about a state of things that shall fit us 
 for association, on a footing of reciprocity, with all those civilized 
 countries where the i)lough, the loom, and the anvil are made to 
 work together. 
 
 The raising of raw material for distant markets is the proper 
 work of slaves and savages, and yet it is to that work to which 
 British policy would restrict the nations of the world. Hence 
 it is, that slavery and British free trade have, in this country, 
 always worked together, and hence, too, it is, that there is, at 
 this moment, so strong a pro-southern tendency in the general 
 British mind. The more the tendency towards converting those 
 raw products into finished commodities — the greater the tendency 
 towards the adoption of your own most excellent doctrines — the 
 greater l)ecoraes the power of both communities and individuals 
 to rise from the condition of slaves to that of freemen. French, 
 German, and Belgian i)olicies look in that direction, and hence it 
 is that there is so general a pro-northern tendency in the mind of 
 Continental Europe. That in this respect your feelings are in 
 full accord with those of your countrymen generally, I feel very 
 certain, and therefore it is, that I cannot but hope that fur- 
 ther examination of our recent tariff may lead you to the conclu- 
 sion that its authors are entitled to the gratitude of every friend 
 of civilization and of freedom. 
 
 That there is a perfect harmony of all real, permanent, and 
 well understood international interests, I feel well assured, and 
 equally well am I satisfied that the day is not far distant when 
 you, and all other of the enlightened men of continental Eu-
 
 LETTERS TO MONS. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 29 
 
 rope, must arrive at the conclusion, that the interests of tlieir 
 respective countries, as well as those of freedom, would, in the 
 past, have been much promoted by our permanent adoption of the 
 policy of which France has so long been the chief exponent, and 
 by our absolute and determined rejection of that barl)arizing 
 system which England seeks to force upon a reluctant world — 
 and that in the establishment of our present tarifl', we have made 
 a move in the right direction. 
 
 Begging you to excuse my several trespasses upon your kind 
 attention, and hoping that you may live to see the time when the 
 whole of continental Europe shall be united in the formation of 
 such a protective union as appears to be indicated by your Address, 
 I remain, my dear sir, with great esteem and regard, 
 Yours, very trulv, 
 
 HENRY C. CAREY. 
 MoNS. Michel Chevalier. 
 
 Philadelphia, October 31, 1861.
 
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