- 
 

 
 1
 
 UCSB
 
 TIII: 
 
 PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD, 
 
 ;ufis at % |nbmnaplis (feposition. 
 
 BY JOHN L. HAYES. 
 
 FKOM THE BULLETIN OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF 
 WOOL MAM'KACTUKERS. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 1870.
 
 THE 
 
 PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 IT cannot be denied that a tendency to free-trade doctrine largely 
 prevails in our great cities, in fashionable circles, and among 
 literary and professional men, and, what is more than all to be 
 regretted, in our colleges. To the importing merchants and agents 
 of foreign houses, and to the newspapers who depend upon them 
 for advertisements, free trade is merely a personal question of 
 livelihood. To people of fashion it recommends itself by a 
 meaner motive. When the tariff was under discussion in 1867, 
 the prince of American dry-goods importers, at a public recep- 
 tion in Washington, gathered about him a circle of fashionable 
 women, and readily made them converts to his doctrine, by assert- 
 ing that, if the pending tariff bill should pass, their silks would 
 cost a dollar a yard more. Many professional and literary 
 men, with scarcely a broader scan, see in the protective 
 system only the cause of the increased prices of labor, and hence 
 of their necessities. But the influence, of all others, which 
 sways the mind, or rather what assumes to be the mind, of 
 the country towards free trade, which warps the press, and is 
 irresistible in the college, is the idea so carefully inculcated by 
 the propagandists of free trade, that their doctrines are sanctioned 
 by all the intellect of Europe. Free trade is thus accepted, 
 like the last Paris fashion, or is assumed as the young men 
 of the clubs assume certain manners, because "it is English, 
 you know." 
 
 But foreign opinion, or the experience of other nations having 
 conditions of existence analogous to our own, cannot, any more
 
 4 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 than the lessons of history, be lightly regarded by the philoso- 
 pher or statesman. If it be true, as is arrogantly asserted, that 
 " to relax commercial systems, and not to restrict them, is alone 
 in accordance with the spirit of the age," * and that " the leading 
 commercial nations, the United States alone excepted, have 
 been relaxing of late years their commercial systems," a pub- 
 lic opinion abroad, although no conclusive argument against 
 the protective policy here, would be a reason for questioning 
 it. The assertion, however, we believe to be wholly unsupported 
 by examples, with the single exception of England. Of Russia 
 it is declared in the official reports of English Chambers of Com- 
 merce, "that the importation of manufactured tissues is practi- 
 cally prevented, by a scale of duties higher than any in the 
 world." Some concession was made to Great Britain in 1869 ; 
 but is admitted to be but a very slight measure of free trade, 
 which " would not lead to an extension of legitimate trade, al- 
 though it might make smuggling less profitable." The Austrian 
 tariff is characterized by the same English authority as " present- 
 ing features of the most objectionable character, while the duties 
 are almost prohibitory." This was said in 1865. Recent changes 
 still leave the average duties on fabrics in Austria from 24 to 
 67 per cent.f The Swedish tariif is referred to as having "the 
 
 * Professor Perry. 
 
 t Mr. Behrens, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Bradford, in 
 a speech at the annual meeting of the Association of Chambers of Commerce, 
 of the United Kingdom, February, 1869, said : 
 
 " As to Austria, we had the same advantages as the most favored nations, by 
 virtue of a treaty which had received the sanction of the Reichsrath ; but there 
 was a supplementary convention, negotiated by Sir L. Mallet, which, unfortu- 
 nately, had not yet received that sanction. It was entered, in order to carry out 
 the treaty, which provided that no specific duty should exceed twenty per cent 
 of the value of the imported goods ; and that after 1872 it should not exceed 
 fifteen per cent. Now, the protectionists in Austria were quite aghast at this ; 
 for, although they always used to say that the fixed duties agreed upon did not 
 amount to more than five or ten per cent, when pressed to allow a restriction to 
 fifteen per cent, they said it would be ruin to them. 
 
 " On Sir L. Mallet visiting Bradford, he put patterns before him, and showed 
 that the duties had averaged from twenty-four to sixty-seven per cent. He 
 hoped the exertions made by our government, and well seconded by the Aus- 
 trian government, would have some result ; so that, even if we did not get our
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 5 
 
 unfortunate distinction of disputing with Spain the debatable 
 honor of being the highest in the world, the Russian only ex- 
 cepted." The Peninsula is declared by British manufacturers to 
 " be shut out from the products of the looms and forges of 
 England by a most ridiculous tariff." The Anglo-French treaty 
 is pronounced by Count Gasparin to be scarcely less prohibitory 
 in fact than the Morrill tariff. This treaty, we admit, cannot 
 be fairly cited as indicating either an affirmative or negative 
 sentiment as to the protective question, on the part of the Im- 
 perial Government which concluded it. It would seem that the 
 purpose of the Emperor was to conciliate England, by apparent 
 concessions to her free-trade policy, while practically yielding as 
 little as possible. Mr. Cobden and his friends claim the treaty 
 ;i> a free-trade victory. The Bradford Chamber of Commerce 
 complains that the French. tariff is still "excessive," "unreason- 
 able," and " onerous." Whether it indicates a free-trade prog- 
 ress or not, the actual protective sentiment of France is shown 
 by the arguments made for and against the commercial treaties. 
 They are defended by the political supporters of the Govern- 
 
 full pound of flesh, we might obtain a good, practical treaty. As to Russia, the 
 new tariff announced by Mr. Mitchell would not lead, he thought, to an exten- 
 sion of legitimate trade, at least as far as this country was concerned ; but it 
 might make smuggling a little less profitable. 
 
 " In proof that it was not based on any intelligible principle, lie might mention 
 that yarns and machinery were actually subject to higher duties than previously, 
 thus impeding the progress of Russian manufactures. It was said that the 
 sole reason for the change was the desire to have a round sum instead of a frac- 
 tion. While preaching free trade, however, to foreign nations, we must not 
 forget our colonies, against which we had just ground of complaint. As long as 
 they required the protection of the mother country, we might fairly demand 
 that the leading principles of our policy should be accepted as fundamental. 
 He presumed that no English colony would be allowed to introduce slavery, or 
 arbitrary imprisonment, or any thing contrary to our fundamental principles. 
 Now, surely free trade was one of those principles. What we asked foreign 
 countries to adopt, we had a perfect right to require from our colonies. In 
 newly peopled countries it might, perhaps, be right to enforce a duty on imports, 
 as the only way of raising revenue ; but it should be limited to the purposes of 
 revenue, and should not act as a protective duty. Some of the seaboard prov- 
 inces of the Canadian Confederation used to have five, seven and one-half, or ten 
 per cent duties ; but one result of the Confederation had been to substitute a 
 uniform duty of fifteen per cent."
 
 6 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 ment, for the very reason that they are sufficiently protective 
 of French industry ; and are opposed by the practical men of 
 France, for the reason that they have been disastrous to her 
 industries. M. Pouyer Qartier, eminent both as a manufac- 
 turer and statesman, in a speech before the Congress of the 
 learned societies of France during the present year, " com- 
 plained of the treaties of commerce of 1860, which had been 
 in operation ten years, and demanded what developments the 
 treaties had procured for French industry, and if agriculture 
 had derived any advantage from it. He separated himself from 
 the political economists (free traders) , when they wished to apply 
 economical science to France. In England the strife was opened 
 by the manufacturers against the landed proprietors. In France 
 it was the men of doctrine who had taken the initiative. Hence 
 all our misfortunes. They had no experience, and hence they 
 could not fail to take the wrong roads." These remarks illus- 
 trate the truth which will be apparent to any one who reads the 
 French journals, that free trade is generally repudiated by the 
 practical men of France. It is supported by extreme or specu- 
 lative philosophers, and by sentimentalists of the liberal school, 
 like Jules Simon, who closes his late speech in the Corps Legis- 
 latif with the transcendental argument : (" All the liberties are 
 sisters ; if we have liberty of trade, we shall have the others. *J 
 
 Mr. Carey has shown that the shattered fragments which five 
 and thirty years ago passed with the world as Germany, united 
 into a German Confederation by the Zollverein, and with its 
 industry protected by a scale of duties which effectually disarmed 
 English competition, then bearing down all the industry of Europe, 
 entered through the gates of the protective policy upon the career 
 which has had so brilliant a culmination. The new policy secured 
 a market on the land for nearly all its products, and, as a necessary 
 consequence, an agricultural population which grows daily both in 
 intelligence and power. Thirteen years ago Mr. Carey expressed 
 the opinion that Germany, " whose national sin for two centuries 
 has been poverty," already stood first in Europe in point of intel- 
 lectual development, and was advancing in the physical and moral 
 condition of her people with a rapidity exceeding that of any
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 7 
 
 portion of the eastern hemisphere. The philosopher is the only 
 seer. How marvellously are these predictions confirmed by the 
 events which now startle the world ! To what, says Mr. Carey, 
 is the progress due ? f To the great and simple operations of the 
 protective features of the system of the Zollverein, long regarded 
 by me as the most important measure of the century, and among 
 the most important ever adopted in Europe." \ We demand what 
 really truly protective feature of the Zollverein duties has been 
 modified in accordance with the spirit of the age ? It is vain to 
 say that the duties are low compared with our own, since they 
 are carefully adjusted to the admitted and actual necessities of 
 the manufactures which they are designed to protect. Low as 
 the apparent rate of duties in the Zollverein, they are stated by 
 Mr. Burn, of Manchester, in his recent pamphlet, to be "practi- 
 cally prohibitory " of British manufactured goods. It does not 
 affect the question whether the duties are 50 or 5 per cent, if 
 the lower duty act equally for the advantage of the industry of 
 the country which seeks to exclude injurious competition from 
 abroad. A careful observation will show that all the boasted 
 concessions to free trade in the continental tariffs, such as the 
 admission of yarns, warps, and thrown-silk, which are of the 
 nature of raw material, are made as measures of "qualified pro- 
 tection," of which we shall hereafter speak, and with the avowed 
 object of encouraging native industries.* If any doubt existed 
 
 * The protective character of the Zollverein is confirmed by the following 
 extract from a recent article by Mr. Henry Carey Baird : 
 
 "To this grand result (the Zollverein) the two men, not in official position, 
 who contributed most, were Frederic List and Baron Cotta. The central and 
 controlling ideas of List, who was an eminent and popular political economist, 
 were a nationality for his native land and the building up of a diversified industry 
 by means of protection. These were the great ends he aimed at, and these 
 thoughts can be traced on nearly every page of his ' National System of Political 
 Economy,' from the title itself to the concluding line of the book. As to whether 
 the tariff gave the protection required, as well as to the results of it, there can be 
 no more competent authority than he. Of the tariff and its effects, writing in 
 1841, he says : 
 
 " ' We hesitate not to say it affords a protection from twenty to sixty per cent 
 on manufactured goods ; ' and adds, ' Germany in the space of ten years has 
 advanced a century in prosperity, in self-respect, and power. How so 1 The
 
 8 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 as to the protective sentiment in Germany, it is set at rest by 
 the fact, that the works of our great protective philosopher have 
 been translated into the German and Italian languages, passed 
 through numerous editions, and adopted and studied as text-books 
 in continental universities. If we add to these examples that of 
 India, whose finance minister, Mr. Wilson, long a free trader, 
 found that the adoption of measures tending towards protection 
 was the only means of saving the remaining manufactures of 
 that magnificent country, impoverished by the opposite policy ; 
 that of Australia, which has already entered vigorously upon the 
 protective policy ; and that of Canada, which less vigorously, but 
 no less surely, is tending in the same direction, what examples 
 remain to prove that the leading commercial nations are relaxing 
 their commercial systems ? The example of England alone. 
 
 SIR EDWARD SULLIVAN AND ENGLAND. 
 
 Among the many recent indications that a change of opinion as 
 to the working of the free-trade system is going on now in Eng- 
 land, the most important is the work recently published, entitled 
 "Protection to Native Industry," by Sir Edward Sullivan, 
 Baronet, author of " Ten Chapters on Social Reform ; " the re- 
 publication of which, in this country, we owe to Mr. H. C. Baird, 
 of Philadelphia, and the Bureau Printing Company of Chicago. 
 Sir Edward occupies a respectable place in the magistracy 
 of his country, being a justice of the peace and deputy-lieutenant 
 of the County of Lancaster. His father was an admiral of the 
 Blue, and his family is traced back to one of the kings of 
 Munster. The testimony of one occupying the social position of 
 this writer is particularly valuable, as it assures us that he has 
 no bias for the industrial class which he seeks to relieve, while 
 
 suppression of the barriers and custom-houses which separated the German 
 States has been an excellent measure ; but it had borne bitter fruit if home 
 industry had been exposed to foreign competition. The protection of the tariff 
 of the Customs Union (Zollverein) extended to manufactured products in general 
 use has accomplished this wonderful change.' " (See Pol. Econ., Am. ed., p. 459.)
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 9 
 
 entirely independent of the commercial class, which derives the 
 principal advantages from free trade in England. The author 
 makes no pretension to philosophy or learning. He gives hardly 
 a quotation, except from General Grant's inaugural; does not 
 attempt to fortify himself with tables or statistics ; does not accu- 
 mulate facts, and even repeats such as he has collected. But his 
 work is no less convincing, because it is the utterance of deep 
 convictions. He is not deeply read in the doctrines of protection, 
 and makes admissions which a closer reasoner would not do. But 
 the book is the plain talk of a man of good practical sense, who 
 utterly discards theory, and addresses himself to the facts before 
 him ; not in book language, but just as one man of the world talks 
 with another ; and with a freedom of expression which is not 
 often found without flippancy. 
 
 Sir Edward, above all, wins our admiration by his defiance of 
 the prejudice of his class, in boldly breaking a lance for the 
 cause of the crushed working-men of England. It is a chivalric 
 deed, not less knightly than the legendary feats of Sir Launcelot 
 and the companions of the Round Table, when they went forth 
 to free the English soil from oppressors in the " true old times," 
 
 " When every morning brought a noble chance, 
 And every chance brought out a noble knight." 
 
 Our object is not to review, criticise, or even to condense 
 this book, nor to make it a text for our commentaries. We 
 shall serve our purpose, and more interest our readers who have 
 not the work in their hands, by largely extracting such portions 
 as show the new and unexpected phase of opinion in England as 
 to a question upon which there has before been no divided sen- 
 timent. 
 
 The author states the purpose of his work with admirable 
 simplicity and directness. 
 
 " Protection to native industry is not a question of sentiment or 
 theory, but of fact and common sense. There is no magic or mystery 
 about it ; it is an ordinary calculation of cost, in which all the con- 
 ditions aud figures are perfectly well known. Wages in France, 
 Belgium, Prussia, Austria, and in Switzerland, are from thirty to 
 
 2
 
 10 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 fifty per cent lower than in England : rent, clothing, food, beer, taxes, 
 and general charges, are all in the same proportion. The habits of the 
 people are economical in the extreme ; the manufacturers have as 
 much capital, science, and enterprise, and their operatives as much 
 skill and intelligence, and technical education, and industry, as we 
 have ; they get their raw materials very nearly at the same price 
 we do. The question is, Can our manufacturers, with higher wages, 
 higher rates and taxes, higher general charges, and our operatives, 
 with dearer food, dearer clothing, dearer house-rent, and extravagant 
 habits, produce as cheaply as they can ? 
 
 " The remedy for the present state of things is not to export our 
 workmen and import our manufacturers, but to keep our workmen 
 and manufacture for ourselves. 
 
 Cj' England is the only country in the world that does not, in some 
 shape or other, protect native industry, and preserve a preferential 
 market for its own operatives. Theoretically, it may be very chival- 
 rous : practically, it is very stupid, c'est beau, mais c'est bete." 
 
 The author commences his treatise with a sensible chapter on 
 the "Growth of Trade." He shows that at the very time, 
 about twenty years since, when the gold of Australia and Cali- 
 fornia, and the spread of steam communication by land and sea 
 over the whole face of the globe, increased to an inconceivable 
 extent the trade of the world, and equalized the trading condi- 
 tions of the different nations, the Manchester School of Political 
 Economists took out their patent, as it were, for free trade. 
 
 " They maintained their patent was so grand, and its advantages 
 so evident, that every nation must adopt it, and that those who did 
 so first would be the greatest gainers : so eager were they to begiu, 
 that, like most other things done in a hurry, it was only half done. 
 To try the experiment at all, other nations must be found to join us ; 
 to know what the result of free trade actually was, there must be 
 reciprocity and free ports : but as no other nation joined us, we never 
 had either one or the other. As we advanced, they drew back ; conse- 
 quently, the experiment has never been tried, and we know to-day as 
 little of free trade, strictly speaking, as we did twenty years ago. /It 
 is amusing to hear people expatiating on the marvels of free traae, 
 and on the blessings it has conferred upon the human race in general, 
 and ourselves in particular, when we remember that as yet this policy 
 has never even been tried, that its miracles and blessings are still in
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 11 
 
 the womb of the future. Free traders renounce all logic and facts 
 when discussing their favorite dogma : they are, indeed, the most dis- 
 ingenuous of arguers. I declare, that, as constantly an I have heard 
 the subject discussed, I never once heard a free trader have the 
 honesty to attribute the increased trade of the world in general, and 
 of England as part of it, to its true causes, viz., the vast increase in 
 the circulating medium and the general application of steam, but 
 always to what they choose to call free trade. To ignore these illimit- 
 able agencies, and to ascribe all progress to the pigmy efforts of a 
 small school of political economists in England, is to reverse the old 
 proverb, and to imagine the mouse bringing forth the mountain. 
 / " The increased foreign commerce of England, during the last 
 twenty years, is attributed to her free trade policy ; and we are led, 
 ' by implication, to understand that she is the only nation that has 
 advanced in commercial activity during that period ; that whilst she 
 has been advancing, the rest of the world has stood still. 
 
 " Free traders point with triumph to our Board of Trade returns 
 of exports and imports, and exclaim, triumphantly, This is our doing ; 
 but they ignore the fact it cannot be through ignorance that the 
 Board of Trade returns in France, Switzerland, Prussia, Belgium, 
 and Austria, show results far more satisfactory, a proportionate 
 increase of trade far exceeding our own. 
 
 "It is not England alone that has increased her trade during the 
 last twenty years : the whole of Europe and America, with some 
 trifling exceptions, have increased theirs far more rapidly than we 
 have. Take France, for instance, as being our nearest neighbor, and 
 compare her wealth and commercial position now with what it was 
 twenty years ago, and it will at once be granted that, however great 
 may be the blessings of free trade, sound progress is not incompatible 
 with the strictest protection ; and the bullion in the Bank of France 
 is now, in 1869, forty-seven millions, twenty-seven millions higher 
 than it was in 1844, and sixteen millions higher than in 1853 : the 
 bullion in the Bank of England is seventeen millions, two millions 
 higher than in 1844, three millions less than in 1853 ! 
 
 " In France, in 1868, the exports and imports balanced within 
 twenty millions. In England, the excess of imports was over sixty 
 millions ! aud in 1869 it will, in all probability, reach one hundred 
 millions. 
 
 " The increased commerce of the world has been caused by the 
 
 increased circulation of gold aud the increased facilities of communi- 
 
 t cation by land and sea : it never has been and never can be affected
 
 12 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 by paltry legislation, either in one direction or the other. Local 
 legislation, like that which has made England a free port, may affect 
 the trade of England, but to suppose it will materially influence the 
 commerce of the world would be preposterous ; it is only our national 
 bumptiousness that renders the idea possible. All the nations of the 
 world have increased their commerce, they under the strictest 
 principle of protection, we alone under what we call free trade. ( To 
 attribute our progress to free trade is just as absurd as to attribute 
 theirs to protection} It might be more fairly said, we have all 
 progressed in spite of both. Neither system has had more than an 
 infinitesimal effect by the side of the great agencies that have brought 
 about this result." 
 
 Similar views, but more condensely stated, had been before 
 expressed by Mr. Bigelow in his Tariff Question, which evi- 
 dently had not been seen by Sir Edward Sullivan. It is 
 instructive to observe how these two writers corroborate each 
 other. 
 
 After giving tables exhibiting the increase of British exports, 
 Mr. Bigelow says : 
 
 ' " The chief causes of this large increase of British exports are 
 undoubtedly to be found outside of the tariff laws. That they are 
 causes of general application, is shown by the fact, that Great Britain 
 was not alone in this experience of prosperity. The foreign trade of 
 France, under a tariff highly protective, increased, during the same 
 period, in a ratio greater than that of England ; and the United 
 States, with a tariff moderately protective, had a commercial record 
 equally advantageous, as may be seen by the following comparative 
 statement : 
 
 Countries Compared. 
 
 Exports in 
 1853. 
 
 Exports in 
 1859. 
 
 Percentage of 
 Increase. 
 
 Great Britain 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 494 668 905 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 652 057 355 
 
 Per cent. 
 31.82 
 
 France 
 
 253 425 000 
 
 371 628 000 
 
 46.64 
 
 United States 
 
 189 869 162 
 
 278 392 080 
 
 46.62 
 
 
 
 
 
 " In accounting for this recent and great expansion of commerce, 
 two causes especially suggest themselves : 
 
 " First, The influence of applied sciences in augmenting the 
 means of production ; an influence which is constantly becoming more 
 extensive and efficient.
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 13 
 
 s i-ondhj, The greatly increased supply of gold. 
 
 " This is pre-eminently an age of progress. Useful inventions in 
 the mechanic arts, and important discoveries in science, are of almost 
 daily occurrence. Countless improvements in existing machines, and 
 in the methods and processes of production, are continually enlarging 
 the ability to produce, multiplying articles of consumption, and 
 thus, of necessity, swelling the great currents of trade. 
 
 ''The annual produce of gold, which, prior to 1848, was $50,000,000, 
 has, since 1853, amounted to nearly $150,000,000. 'The effect of 
 this treble supply of gold,' says Mr. Tooke, ' has been to set in motion 
 and sustain a vast and increasing number of causes, all conducing to 
 augment the real wealth and resources of the world, by stimulating 
 trade, enterprise, discovery, and production.' 
 
 "While these are causes of general application, which operate 
 with more or less effect in all commercial countries, there can be no 
 doubt that they exert a peculiar power in England. This is an 
 advantage which she owes to her superior capital and skill, and to her 
 well-established system of production, and her widely extended busi- 
 ness relations. These enable her to apply, readily and efficiently, to 
 her productive means, every new improvement, and to meet with 
 promptness every new demand ; while under the all-controlling laws 
 of commercial attraction, her position, as manufacturer for half the 
 globe, draws to her vaults the larger part of the gold." 
 
 These views are confirmed by McCulloch, who says, in his 
 Dictionary, edition of 1859 : 
 
 " It would be difficult to exaggerate the advance that has been 
 made in commerce, and in most sorts of industry, and the improve- 
 ment in the condition of society that has taken place, during the last 
 seven years. A considerable portion of this advance is no doubt due 
 to the discovery of the Californian and Australian gold-fields." 
 
 The same causes had increased the manufactures and exports 
 of England during the most brilliant period of her older com- 
 mercial history. In the sixth and seventh years of Elizabeth, 
 the woollen manufacture of England had so much increased, 
 that the export of woollen goods to Antwerp alone, according 
 Camden, amounted to 750,000; and the whole value of 
 tfib exports, in 1564, was 1,200,000, all fabricated from 
 English wool. The vigor of the woollen trade, the only textile
 
 14 THE PEOTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 manufacture then established in England, is attributed by 
 Smith, a very high authority, in his celebrated memoirs of wool, 
 to the abundance of gold and silver, in consequence of the recent 
 _discovery of South America. 
 
 ""In the chapter on free trade and free ports, Sir Edward Sul- 
 livan exposes the absurdity of the first canon of free trade, that 
 " each nation should supply to the world's market what it pro- 
 duces best and cheapest, and should resign to other nations those 
 industries in which it is not so strong." He observes, that it 
 would not be difficult to prove, that as capital and science 
 become more general, and the natural resources of different 
 countries are more fully developed, there will be scarcely a 
 single article of manufacture that will not be produced as 
 cheap by some one nation or other, as in England. And 
 he pertinently inquires : " If this ever takes place, even par- 
 tially, is England to sacrifice her existence to her theory, and 
 abandon all, or a portion of her industries, because she cannot 
 produce quite so cheaply as her neighbors ? Is she to sink into 
 the position of a manufacturing country absolutely without 
 manufactures ? "ifr' 
 
 He proceeds to show what are the actual results to the work- 
 people of England, with dear food, dear clothing, dear house- 
 rent, and a double rate of wages, of unrelieved competition, 
 with the work-people of other nations, whose superior advan- 
 tages, more economical and thrifty habits, and a fostering 
 home support, enable them to undersell the English. The dis- 
 tress of the English operatives, who have been pushed out of 
 their home market by foreign competition, is shown by the 
 increasing crime and pauperism of the country. " The pauper- 
 ism and crime of the country," says Sir Edward, " are increasing 
 so rapidly, that we must look the difficulty in the face, and try 
 to mitigate it, or we must shut our eyes and ears, and let 
 destruction come upon us ; at the rate they are now increasing, 
 this need not be very long. In the year 1853, fifteen years 
 ago, the amount expended in actual relief of the poor was 
 under five millions ; in 1868 it was seven and a half millions, 
 an increase of fifty per cent in fifteen years. Nearly the whole
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 15 
 
 of this increase, and also the increase of crime, has been in the 
 manufacturing districts." He continues : 
 
 " The manufacturing districts are depressed as they never have been 
 before; and any one who will visit them may see by evidence that 
 cannot lie, by smokeless chimneys, by closed shops, by crowded poor- 
 houses and glutted jails, by crowds of squalid idlers, that the distress 
 is real. Take the oue single fact that the consumption of cotton goods 
 in England has fallen off 35 per cent in three years ! Can any fact 
 afford stronger proof of the poverty and depression of our operative 
 classes ? Cotton constitutes the greater proportion of the clothing of the 
 lower orders ; when, therefore, the consumption of cotton falls away, 
 it is proof positive that the working classes are taking less clothing. 
 
 " Those who wish to learn the present condition of affairs must not 
 consult the wealthy political leaders of the manufacturing districts, 
 men who have realized their wealth, and to a great extent have con- 
 verted their workshops into farms. They are land-owners, not manu- 
 facturers, consumers rather than producers, and they can afford 
 to see trade leaving their districts without danger or alarm. 
 
 " No : they must go amongst the workers, the managers, and active 
 owners of manufactories, amongst men whose capital is still at stake, 
 amongst the operatives, the small shopkeepers and householders who 
 crowd the manufacturing districts. You do not hear so much of the 
 present manufacturing depression at Manchester, where an immense 
 proportion of the wealth is realized, invested in lands or in the 3 per 
 cents, and where the fortunate owners have abandoned the struggling 
 existence of trade for the more brilliant life of politics. It is amongst 
 smaller men and less fortunate districts that the real suffering and 
 distress is witnessed, amongst the small and moderate capitalists still 
 struggling, striving, disappointed. Manchester represents the past, 
 not the present, condition of the manufacturing industries ; it is in 
 Bolton, Wigan, Stockport, Ohlham, Preston, Coventry, Nottingham, 
 Macclesfield, not in Manchester, that the true tale of sorrow and ruin 
 is heard. You must read the never-ending and still-increasing lists of 
 failures and bankruptcies that decimate every trade and industry in 
 the country. Never in the history of England has that portion of the 
 commercial class, that depends on home consumption and home pros- 
 perity, been so depressed, despondent, and ruined ! Never has home 
 consumption been at such a low ebb in every article consumed by the 
 working classes. It is not cotton only that is depressed ; cotton is, 
 comparatively, flourishing : it is every trade and every industry that is
 
 16 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 in the difficulties. Of this universal depression of industries I have 
 no doubt whatever ; it is only now, only within the last three years, 
 that the foreign producers have acquired the skill and capital and 
 machinery that enables them really to press us out of our own markets. 
 The shadow has been coming over us for many years, but it is only 
 just now we are beginning to feel the substance ; their progress corre- 
 sponds with our decline. A great manufacturing nation like England 
 does not suddenly collapse and give place to another ; her industries 
 are slowly, bit by bit, replaced by those of other countries ; the pro- 
 cess is gradual, and we are undergoing it at present. The difference 
 between England and her young manufacturing rivals is simple, but 
 alarming. France, Austria, Prussia, Belgium, Switzerland, have in- 
 creased their export trade and their home consumption. England has 
 increased her export trade ; but her home consumption has fallen away, 
 in the matter of cotton alone, 35 per cent in three years. Value of 
 home consumption of cotton goods, for 1866, was nearly thirteen mil- 
 lions; for 1868, nearly seven millions. 
 
 " In the present condition of manufacturing industries it is foolish to 
 tell the operative class to attribute the prosperity to free trade ; they 
 are not prosperous ; it is a mockery to tell them to thank God for a 
 full stomach, when they are empty ! They are not well off; never has 
 starvation, pauperism, crime, discontent, been so plentiful in the manu- 
 facturing districts ; never since England has been a manufacturing 
 country has every industry, great or small, been so completely de- 
 pressed; never has work been so impossible to find ; never have the 
 means and savings of the working classes been at so low an ebb. 
 
 " We have had periods when some two or three of the great in- 
 dustries were depressed, but health still remained in a number of 
 small ones : now the depression is universal ; the only industry in the 
 country that is really flourishing is that of machine makers, turning 
 out spinning and weaving machinery for foreign countries ! many of 
 these works are going night and day ! " 
 
 Of the cotton industry, in the interests of which Great Britain 
 threw open her ports to foreign manufactures, our author 
 says : 
 
 " In 1868, one-third of our total imports of raw cotton, amounting 
 to three hundred and twenty-two and one-half million of pounds, was 
 exported, because the merchant or importer could get more for it in 
 the foreign markets than in our own.
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 17 
 
 "The Board of Trade returns for December, 1809, show a falling 
 oft' of nearly half a million, or two and one-half per cent, in declared 
 value of our exports, as compared with corresponding month of De- 
 cember, 1808 ; the falling off is chiefly in cotton goods, which are over 
 800,000 less than in December, 1808. 
 
 " It is not that the great cotton industry has dwindled, but that Eng- 
 land no longer has a monopoly of it ; whilst cotton mills are closed or 
 pulled down in England, others are being erected in considerable num- 
 bers in France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and America, and 
 the English manufacturers of cotton machinery are working early and 
 late to execute orders for these countries. It is rather a melancholy 
 consideration for us, but I believe it to be a fact, that the only flour- 
 ishing industry in England at this moment is that of the machinists 
 producing cotton machinery of all kinds for foreign countries." 
 
 Sir Edward refers only incidentally to the decline in the silk 
 industry under free trade, for the reason, probably, that the facts 
 were so well known in England that it was unnecessary to en- 
 large upon them ; while, on the other, hand, free traders regard 
 the facts so damaging to the cause, that they seek to suppress 
 them. Some pertinent facts and admissions leak out in the re- 
 ports and journals of commerce, which only serve to supply the 
 omissions in the work before us. A memorial to Lord Stanley, 
 from the working-men's association at Coventrv, represents that 
 fifty-five firms in the ribbon trade at that town have succumbed 
 since 1860, and twelve hundred houses are vacant. In seven 
 years before the French treaty, 8,000 were given by the 
 parish for out-door relief; in seven years succeeding the treaty, 
 3(3,000 were given for parochial relief; for the simple reason 
 that the importations of French ribbons, during corresponding 
 periods, had more than quadrupled in consequence of the treaty. 
 At a meeting of the Macclesfield Chamber of Commerce, in 
 June, 1868, Mr. Condron said : 
 
 " In 182G, Mr. Huskissou introduced his free-trade measures, and 
 immediately both silk and cotton manufactures began to decline. 
 Before the treaty came into operation, there was a great silk trade car- 
 ried on in Macclesfield, and there were thousands of silk looms in 
 Manchester ; but immediately after the commencement of the treaty, 
 t nine-tenths of the factories were closed, and machinery worth 50,000 
 
 3
 
 18 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 had been sold for less than 5,000. . . . He (Mr. Condron) 
 contended that the silk trade throughout England had been entirely 
 annihilated by the French treaty, and the general trade of Manchester 
 had suffered by it. The silk that should be thrown in Manchester, 
 Macclesfield, and other places in England, was now going to France, 
 and other foreign looms." 
 
 The Association of Chambers of Commerce suppress, as we 
 have intimated, all reports embodying such facts as are given 
 above. 
 
 At the annual meeting of the Association in 1869, a commit- 
 tee, appointed to consider foreign tariffs, presented a general re- 
 port and a special report from the Chamber of Macclesfield. 
 The question arose on the adoption of the report. The difficulty 
 was to get rid of the Macclesfield report, which had exposed the 
 condition of the silk industry. 
 
 " Mr. Morris, of Halifax, said the different Chambers had, of 
 course, merely expressed their own opinions, and the meeting ought 
 not to sanction the complaints of the operation of free trade. Any 
 thing of that kind should be withdrawn from the report. 
 
 " Mr. Wright, of Macclesfield, said that what the manufacturers 
 wanted, was not a system of free trade, from which some painfully 
 suffered, but a system of fair trading between country and country ; 
 and then they would be able to compete with their foreign neighbors. 
 . . A manufacture was springing up in Macclesfield and else- 
 where, called the mixed trade ; including gentlemen's scarfs and 
 ladies' dresses, it being partly on account of the unparalleled price of 
 raw material. On these products France levied a duty of 10 or 20 
 per cent. Now, there ought to be some reciprocity in the way of 
 duties. ... If there was free trade all over the world, it would 
 be for the benefit, not only of individuals, but of the whole com- 
 munity. 
 
 " Mr. Bracklehurst, M.P., remarked that Macclesfield Chamber had 
 drawn up their report to the best of their light. The shoe had cer- 
 tainly pinched them very much ; but whether this had arisen from the 
 French treaty or not, he would not discuss. The trade of the town 
 had materially diminished. Before the treaty, the importation of silk 
 goods from France was about 750,000 value ; but in 1868 it was 
 nearly 3,000,000; and this showed how severe the competition was 
 iti that department. . . . According to the census of 1861, the
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 19 
 
 silk trade employed 117,000 persons, and indirectly 300,000 were 
 probably dependent on it. Now he was afraid the next census would 
 show a material decrease. Pauperism was increasing enormously, and 
 it could only be arrested by occupation being found for the people. 
 
 " Mr. Field protested emphatically, not only against several sentences 
 in the report, but against remarks which had been made antagonistic 
 to the principles of free trade. . . . Now he protested against 
 the meeting being committed to doctrines of that kind. It had been 
 suggested that such sentences should be expunged, but he thought it 
 would be difficult to extract a virus which so extensively permeated 
 the reports. It would be more prudent to accompany them with a pro- 
 test against all such sentiments. He would therefore propose a rider 
 to this effect, ' without expressing approval of any sentiments that 
 may be found in them at variance with the doctrines of free trade.' " 
 
 To get rid of the Macclesfield report, several members recom- 
 mended that none of the reports of the separate Chambers be 
 printed. Although one member feebly protested that the facts 
 contained in the report should go before the country, that it might 
 " consider how to meet so serious a diminution of exports." Mr. 
 AVhitwell, M.P., pointed out that the difficulty would be met 
 by printing none of the Chambers' reports, "as his report con- 
 tained nothing hostile to free trade." This course was adopted 
 by the meeting, and thus the Macclesfield report, which would 
 have enlightened England as to the fatal influence of free trade 
 upon one of the most important industries, was suppressed. 
 
 It is from this industry, so depressed that the free traders of 
 England dare not publish the facts, that an American writer of 
 Political Economy * derives an illustration of his proposition that 
 " no branch of business grows into self-sustainincj and vigorous 
 
 o o o 
 
 life without the stimulating breezes of competition." 
 
 " For more than a century (he says) the silk manufacture of Eng- 
 land, fenced round and protected, as it was called, by these restrictive 
 and prohibitory duties, languished, pined, and at times almost expired, 
 for the simple reason that the manufacturers, instead of relying upon 
 their own inventive skill and energy, looked to the government for 
 support and an artificial monopoly ; and when at length, in 1826, this 
 
 * Professor Perry.
 
 20 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 foolish system was abandoned, and the silk interest was told that it must 
 look out for itself, and the ports were thrown open to foreign silk, then 
 first the English silk culture began to thrive. It has thriven from that 
 day to this ; until now we are told that in the plainer and firmer kinds 
 of silk the English surpass the French, and that there is a considerable 
 exportation of these English silks into France itself." 
 
 Sir Edward Sullivan admits that the whole English press, and 
 the wealthy manufacturers, deny that the manufacturing interests 
 of England are declining. We find, however, the views of Sir 
 Edward supported by an overwhelming authority from an unex- 
 pected source. 
 
 At the annual dinner of the Chambers of Commerce of Eng- 
 land, in March, 1868, as we find in their official reports, 
 
 " Mr. Ripley, of Bradford, proposed the ' Textile Manufacturing 
 Company ; ' with the toast, the names Mr. Bazley, M.P., Col. Akroyd, 
 M.P., and Mr. Mundilla, as representatives of three great industries. 
 . Mr. Akroyd had devoted to the interests of commerce 
 time, talents, and money, to an extent that few had done. His estab- 
 lishment was held to be a model to manufacturers generally. 
 
 " Col. Akroyd, in responding in behalf of the woollen manufactur- 
 ers, after a few preliminary remarks, said, ' He wished to utter a 
 word of caution to manufacturers. Looking to the past history of 
 the country they were apt to imagine it was impossible to lay 
 down too much machinery, and to build too many factories. There 
 was some limit to the products the world would take, and we are 
 bound to admit into competition the manufacturers of Germany and 
 France. We had other competitors in supplying the demands of the 
 world at large, and we could scarcely be justified in increasing our mills 
 and machinery at the rate we had done in the past.' " 
 
 Mildly as this singular admission is expressed by this high 
 commercial authority, it is full of meaning. It is a declaration 
 that the manufacturing prosperity of England has culminated 
 under the system of free trade. With the natural increase of her 
 population, one-fifth of which is dependent entirely upon the 
 textile manufacture, the arresting of the increase of mills and 
 machinery which in former years, as from 1850 to 1859, had 
 nearly doubled the product of the cotton manufacture in less than 
 ten years means inevitable decline, a fatal decline to a nation
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 21 
 
 which, in fifty years, has derived a profit from the manufacture 
 of cotton alone of one thousand mill tons pounds sterling. 
 
 Under the head of "special interests," the work before us 
 presents very lucidly the motive which induces the ruling class 
 in England the whole press which is its voice, and members of 
 Parliament who are its organs to adhere so pertinaciously to 
 free trade. AVe have been led to believe that this policy is kept 
 up, as it was established, by the great manufacturing interest. 
 Sir Edward Sullivan shows that it is sustained by the selfish in- 
 terests of the high and easy classes, the only consumers of foreign 
 manufactures, who find great convenience and economy in the 
 free admission of foreign manufactures in the British markets. 
 He shows that this class oppose protection as a system of legisla- 
 tion for special interests ; those of the operative class, because 
 their own special interests are better secured by free trade. But, 
 says he, 
 
 " The special interests of some classes are, however, more urgent 
 than those of others ; for instance, the fever patient has a special in- 
 terest in quinine, the gourmet has a special interest in truffles. But 
 these special interests cannot be considered of equal importance ; the 
 gourmet can live without truffles, but the fever patient may die without 
 quinine. 
 
 " It is the same with our own industries. The upper and middle- 
 class consumers have a special interest in getting their luxuries cheap, 
 as cheap as they possibly can, irrespective of the interest of the pro- 
 ducer. The producers have a special interest in having a remunerative 
 market for their produce ; but you cannot compare the magnitude of 
 those two interests. It is a matter of convenience and luxury to the 
 former, of actual existence to the latter. 
 
 " In considering the effect of making England a free port, it is most 
 important to examine and to weigh well how it affects the special in- 
 terests of the different orders and classes of the community. It has 
 been by no means general in its effect. To some classes it has been 
 a great convenience, to others a source of great wealth, to others 
 again a source of danger and prospective ruin. 
 
 " The admission of foreign manufactures into our markets has 
 
 been a great convenience and economy to the upper and middle classes, 
 
 to the rich, and to those who enjoy fixed or professional incomes, or 
 
 , incomes from lands. To all of them it is a decided gain ; they get
 
 22 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 more for their money, their luxuries are all cheapened, and they have 
 greater facilities for indulging in foreign tastes and fashions. The 
 upper class, and those with fixed or professional incomes, profit by it 
 considerably ; but the class that profits by it most of all is the commer- 
 cial class, the great bankers, merchants, and brokers of the coun- 
 try ; to them it has been the source of immense wealth. England has 
 become a vast emporium for foreign goods and manufactures of all 
 sorts of kinds and descriptions ; English merchants are, in fact, the 
 bankers and brokers of the goods of the whole world. Countless 
 millions of produce and manufactures pass through their hands ; and, 
 as every item leaves some trifle behind, their business is most lucrative. 
 An English merchant gets an order for silks, or cottons, or clocks, or 
 watches, or the finer description of cottons and linens, for the East 
 Indies or China, or North or South America, or Turkey, or any part 
 of the world : it is perfectly immaterial to him whether the article he 
 supplies has been manufactured in Manchester or Rouen, Coventry or 
 Lyons ; it does not signify the least to him whether it is British or 
 foreign manufacture, so long as he gets his percentage. 
 
 " So long as merchants can buy foreign articles in England cheaper 
 than British, they are quite indifferent as to the means by which this 
 result is attained, whether by fair competitioner by crafty and unjust 
 manipulation of markets ; they have nothing to do with the stoppage 
 of mills and the ruin of manufacturers and operatives : their business 
 is simply to buy and sell ; to buy as cheap and sell as dear as they 
 can." 
 
 It is asserted that while the operatives, the small tradesmen 
 and householders, and the vast population that crowds the manu- 
 facturing districts, spend all their money on home-made articles, 
 and none of it on foreign luxuries, the wealthy class, noblemen, 
 bankers, manufacturers who increase their expenditure, spend 
 their surplus wealth on wine, pictures, clocks, silks, satins, and 
 articles of foreign luxury ; and that, to speak roughly, nearly 
 every manufacturing industry in England might shut up, cease 
 to exist, and the rich and middle-class consumers, those with 
 fixed incomes in fact, would still be supplied with every thing 
 they require from abroad, with very little additional cost. 
 
 The author gives a remarkable illustration of the manner in 
 which the interests of the luxurious classes are favored, in Eng- 
 lish diplomacy, in the provisions of the Anglo-French treaty.
 
 f 
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 23 
 
 lit shows that every single one of the thirty-three or thirty-four 
 articles, admitted duty free from France, are articles of luxury 
 or convenience, whose use is entirely confined to the wealthier 
 and more luxurious classes in the English community, while not 
 a -ingle one is directly or indirectly, or in any degree whatever, 
 of any service to the working classes. 
 
 With such tacts before the working-people, who can doubt 
 that the masses of England will, at no brief day in the future, 
 repudiate the calculations of the free-trade philosophy, from 
 which their class has been excluded as a factor? As the author 
 says, in concluding his chapter on Reciprocity, 
 
 " The working classes have been enfranchised ; they have been 
 urged to think and speak for themselves : and it is very probable the 
 first use they will make of this liberty will be to protect themselves, 
 and to tear to threads ' the puerile doctrines and illusions of their 
 teachers, and return to the fine old national sense.' 
 
 " Even now, I believe that the most ordinary speaker, who would 
 condescend to stump any manufacturing borough or county on the cry 
 of ' Protection to Native Industry,' would carry it against, Mr. Bright 
 himself. Trade unions have hitherto had for their object the protec- 
 tion of workmen from each other, and from their employers ; soon they 
 will seek to protect themselves and their employers against unfair 
 foreign competition." 
 
 The writer under review regards the abolition of the corn laws 
 as a decided legislative and social success ; but he denies, although 
 his reasoning upon the subject is somewhat obscure, that the 
 logical corollary of returning to protection to native industries is 
 to return to protection of corn. The true reason why no such 
 deduction can be made, although the author fails to state it, is 
 that, in the then existing condition of England, the abolition of the 
 corn laws was a measure of protection to the manufacturing class. 
 It was a measure of qualified protection, a distinction first made 
 by Mr. Bigelow ; "qualified protection," as he defines it, being 
 "either the abrogation or adjustment of custom duties, with 
 a view to cheapen production, and thereby aid the home 
 producer against foreign rivalry. In the first case, raw ma- 
 terials are admitted free ; in the other case, duties on articles
 
 24 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 of general consumption are increased or diminished, according 
 to the bearing on the cost of living, and consequently on 
 the rate of wages." "I freely grant," says Mr. Gladstone, 
 " that the relief of raw materials from taxation is a different 
 thing from annihilating protection." The abolition of the corn 
 laws was equivalent to an increase of wages to the operatives, 
 who threatened revolution in their clamor for relief. The bread 
 tax for the year 1860, with the sliding scale, and with corn at the 
 prices which ruled for three years before its repeal, would have 
 amounted to over $31,000,000. As "qualified protection" has 
 in view the peculiar circumstances of the nation in which it is 
 applied, its successful operation in England, as in the admission 
 of all raw materials free, is no argument for its adoption in a na- 
 tion placed in altogether different circumstances. For instance, 
 England admitted wool free of duty. This was a boon to manu- 
 facturers, but no injury to agriculture. England raises only 
 mutton sheep. Her climate prevents the culture of merinos. 
 With the command of the best long-woollecl sheep in the world, 
 she had no fear of competition with her wool from foreign nations. 
 Her lands were already occupied by all the flocks which they 
 could nourish. The production of wool could not, therefore, be 
 stimulated by any duty. Besides, sheep are grown in England 
 primarily for mutton, the wool being only the incident. Animals, 
 unlike wool, are, in an insular country, almost completely pro- 
 tected by expense of transportation. The repeal of the corn laws, 
 and the enlarged purchasing power of one-fifth of the whole popu- 
 lation dependent on manufactures, increasing the consumption of 
 animal food, made the improved market for mutton an ample com- 
 pensation for the repeal of the duty on wool. It is needless to 
 observe that the conditions of sheep husbandry in this country find 
 no parallel with those enumerated as peculiar to England. To 
 demand, upon the authority of English example, the repeal of the 
 wool duties here, which are essential to keep up the supply of 
 four-fifths of the consumption of our mills, is as unreasonable as 
 it is preposterous to hope to accomplish it while the agricultural 
 class, being the most numerous, have a just claim for the regard 
 to their rights and interests, and also have the political power 
 to enforce them.
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 25 
 
 We have already remarked that it is the object of Sir Edward 
 Sullivan less to prove his case by an array of facts and sta- 
 tistics than to utter his earnest convictions. 
 
 The fundamental truths upon which his argument reposes 
 viz., that the former advance of England in manufacturing pros- 
 perity was in spite of free trade, and that the present decline is 
 due to it require but very simple statements or illustrations. 
 Still, we may gather some incidental facts which are instructive, 
 and which we present without any attempt at systematic arrange- 
 ment, leaving to the reader to apply them. 
 
 The facts given as the operation of the Anglo-French treaty 
 are peculiarly interesting, in view of the reference which is so 
 often made to this treaty as an illustration of the progress of free 
 economical philosophy. An American writer upon political 
 economy,* speaking of this treaty, observes : "A large part of 
 the manufactures of either country are admitted into the other 
 with perfect freedom, and the duties on most of the rest very 
 materially reduced ; and the French manufacturers have found, 
 as the American at no distant day will find, that there is nothing 
 which stimulates manufactures so much as a broad market, 
 not merely a home market, but a world market. The French 
 sent to England, in 1863, 1,170,000,000 francs' worth of goods, 
 and received back within a trifle as much in return, which was 
 almost a quarter of what they sent and received to and from the 
 rest of the world." 
 
 Upon consulting the French treaty and the pages of Sir Ed- 
 ward Sullivan, we find a very different story. France admitted 
 free not a single article of textile manufactures except thrown 
 silk, which was wanted as a raw material, and a few articles of 
 miscellaneous manufacture, such as tiles, bricks, and gas retorts, 
 also wanted to supply her manufacturers, and artificial flowers 
 and modes, which was admitting coals to Newcastle ; but she did 
 admit brandies, silk, glass, mirrors, china, carriages, cabinet-ware, 
 and thirty or more other articles which are actually produced 
 more cheaply in France than in England, at an ad valorem duty 
 
 * Professor Perry. 
 4
 
 26 THE PKOTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 of 15 per cent. In 1865, according to our author, the total ex- 
 ports from England to France amounted to twenty -five and one- 
 half millions sterling. The exports from France to England 
 amounted to fifty-three millions, of which over forty millions were 
 French products and manufactures. Our author continues : 
 
 " The relative value of this international trade is shown more by 
 its nature than by its amount. It was nearly as follows : seventy-two 
 per cent of our exports to France were raw materials (seven-eighths of 
 which were foreign and colonial produce, merely passing through the 
 country, and one-eighth coal and iron). Sixteen per cent were half raw 
 materials, chiefly yarns of different descriptions, on which most of the 
 labor remained to be done in France. Twelve per cent only were fully 
 manufactured articles ; a very lai'ge proportion of which consisted in 
 the machinery of all kinds required to manufacture the raw and half 
 raw materials we supplied them with. 
 
 " Our manufactured goods paid duties from 27J per cent on glass 
 and potteries, to 20 per cent on cutlery, 13 per cent on cotton, to 
 1\ on metal work. 
 
 " Of our imports from France, 16 per cent were raw materials ; all 
 home produce, consisting chiefly of brandy, wines, oil, corn, &c., 
 true produce of the soil, annual and inexhaustible, and on which a 
 vast amount of labor had been employed. 
 
 " Thirty-one per cent were half raw materials, and 52| per cent 
 were fully manufactured articles, on which all the labor was em- 
 ployed in France, and all of which were admitted duty free in 
 England. 
 
 " It is thus a fact, that 88 per cent of the articles exported from 
 England to France, in 1865, consisted of foreign and colonial raw 
 produce, on which no labor had been expended in this country, and 
 of half raw materials, on which comparatively little had been em- 
 ployed, and of the coal and iron necessary to manufacture them ; 
 whilst of the remaining 12 per cent, a very considerable proportion 
 consisted of spinning and weaving, and other machinery necessary to 
 extend the manufacturing industries of the country. 
 
 " This was in 1865. Take a later date. In the debate in the 
 French Chambers, Jan. 18, 1870, Monsieur Johnstone said : ' Our 
 exports to England are four times as large as our importations from 
 that country ; we have exported goods to the value of four hundred 
 millions of francs more than we have imported.' And still, in the face 
 of statements and facts such as these, we find free-trade orators and
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 27 
 
 five-trade penny-a-liners calling on the producing class to be thankful 
 for the blessings they derive from free trade. 
 
 " According to this statement of the exchange of the manufactured 
 products of the two countries in 1865, the French exported to us 
 seven times the value of manufactured goods we exported to them; 
 to do this, they must have expended seven times as much in wages, 
 and found occupation for seven times as many hands." 
 
 The wilful misrepresentations in respect to this treaty, made 
 to the people by free-trade advocates, is thus exposed : 
 
 " Public men have stated, in addressing the working classes, that 
 our exports of cotton to France alone exceeded thirteen millions per 
 annum ; and they have asked them what they would have done but 
 for this market for such a large portion of their produce. But they 
 kue\v perfectly well that nine-tenths of this cotton exported to France 
 was either in the raw state, merely passing through the country, or 
 cotton in a half manufactured state. Misrepresentations of the com- 
 parative competing powers of ourselves and foreigners are cruel 
 deceits to practise on the ignorance of the operative class, and they 
 have a perfect right to, and in all probability will some day, resent 
 them." 
 
 The figures as to the balance of trade, in which the author 
 says he is not ashamed to believe, considering it a matter of 
 very serious import that every year the balance of trade against 
 England should increase, are thus stated : 
 
 " In 1854 the balance against us was .... 37 millions. 
 
 1855 .... 27 ,, 
 
 1856 .... 33 ,, 
 
 1857 .... 41 
 
 1858 ,, .... 25 ,, 
 
 1859 , 14 
 
 1860 .... 45 
 
 1861 .... 58 
 
 1862 ,, ,, o9 ,, 
 
 1863 ,, .... 52 ,, 
 
 1864 .... 62 
 
 1865 ,, ,, .... 53 
 
 1866 .... 57 
 
 1867 .... 50 
 
 1868 ,, ,, ,, ... 68 ,,
 
 28 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 "In 1869, it is stated, it will be over one hundred millions. In 
 1854, our imports exceeded our exports by thirty-seven millions; in 
 1847, by forty-one millions ; in 1868, by sixty-eight millions ; so that, 
 in fourteen years, the annual balance against us, in our export and 
 import trade, has advanced from thirty-seven to sixty-eight millions, 
 and the total against us amounts to nearly seven hundred millions. 
 Remember, this is a quantitative comparison ; the meaning of it is, 
 that, in 1868, we buy more and sell less, in comparison to our whole 
 trade, to the extent of thirty-one millions, than we did in 1854. 
 
 "As I have before remarked, the fact that, during the last twelve 
 or fourteen years, the excess of imports over exports amounts to over 
 seven hundred millions sterling, is a proof of the immense wealth 
 of the country, but no proof at all that the wealth is increasing ; on 
 the contrary, the accumulated wealth of the country must have 
 diminished." 
 
 While the author maintains that the tide of wealth now ebb- 
 ing from England would flow back, if free trade were adopted 
 by the other principal nations, he has no hope of such a con- 
 summation. He says : 
 
 " Protection is as firmly drawn around all the native industries of 
 Europe and America as it was twenty years ago, and generations will 
 elapse before there is any sensible move in the opposite direction. If 
 the English operative class are to wait till universal free trade over- 
 spreads the world, England must be turned into a Sleepy Hollow, to 
 be awakened every hundred years, to see how foreigners are learning 
 their duty to their neighbors as well as to themselves. 
 
 " We are told free-trade principles are spreading ; why, in Prussia, 
 Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, the idea even of opening their ports 
 and markets, and inviting competition with their own industrial 
 population, has never yet been mooted : whilst in America, the oper- 
 ative's paradise, the duties on many British manufactures have been 
 doubled during the last few years ; and France, the Promised Land 
 of free trade, is already trying to withdraw the nominal facilities 
 doled out to us in the commercial treaty. The only man in France 
 who is at heart a free trader, is the emperor himself." 
 
 TKe reactionists in England against free trade, as it exists 
 there, do not yet acknowledge themselves to be protectionists. 
 They limit themselves to demanding reciprocity. They say : 
 " Give us reciprocity. Get other nations to take all their duties
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 29 
 
 off, and we shall be content ; let us close our ports to nations who 
 will not reciprocate, and we shall have real free trade in one." 
 Such a party has already rallied in Coventry, and resolutions in 
 favor of reciprocity were passed at a public meeting. By what- 
 ever name the reactionary party is called, it no less represents 
 protective sentiments. Several pamphlets which have recently 
 appeared, give earnest utterance to the extensive dissatisfaction 
 prevailing among the manufacturers, in relation to the working 
 of the free-trade policy. One before us, printed in 1869, 
 is entitled " The Present and Long-continued Stagnation of 
 Trade ; its Causes, Effects, and Cure : by a Manchester Man." 
 The writer is Mr. R. Burn. Another tract is entitled "Free 
 Trade, a Gigantic Mistake: by James Roberts." As the argu- 
 ments and facts are of the same tenor as those already given in 
 the lengthy quotations from Sir Edward Sullivan, we shall con- 
 tent ourselves with a single extract from each pamphlet, bearing 
 upon the fundamental fact, the decline of manufacturing pros- 
 perity in England. Mr. Burn, of Manchester, says: 
 
 " The trade of this country has fallen into such a deplorable po- 
 sition, that there is scarcely a single branch of it which does not leave 
 a very heavy loss to the producers, and consequently little inducement 
 for the investment of capital and the employment of labor ; indeed, 
 the amount of distress that at present pervades the industrial interests 
 of this kingdom is truly deplorable, and the future appears still more 
 clouded than the present. 
 
 " The cause of such a state of things, I feel very sure, arises al- 
 most exclusively from foreign competition, which has increased to such 
 an extent that, a few years since, would have been thought fabulous, 
 and no doubt was not anticipated by the most acute politicians a quarter 
 of a century ago. It was then thought, that as manufacturers we 
 reigned supreme, and could defy all corn-petition. However, experi- 
 ence has proved the reverse ; and we now fiud that, unless we can ob- 
 tain foreign reciprocity, even by begging that which we could once 
 have commanded, we must descend to a position lower than that which 
 we at present hold." 
 
 Mr. Roberts states thus in detail the industries which are suf- 
 fering : 
 
 t " In order to explain and account for the injuries to British manu-
 
 30 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 facturing trades, it is necessary that we should show how foreign com- 
 petition, and the admission of foreign manufactures duty free, are 
 affecting the British workman ; and we will now cite cases, by way of 
 illustration, which have come under our notice in a variety of ways, 
 and are very varied in their character. 
 
 " We find that Mill wall, Deptford, Woolwich, and most ship-building 
 ports, are comparatively idle ; no sailing vessels building : foreign 
 vessels do away with the necessity for British. Trade falls off in the 
 towns of Nottingham, Macclesfield, Stockport, Bolton, Wigan, Old- 
 ham, Coventry, Leek, Preston, Manchester, Derby, Congleton, Sand- 
 bach, Leighton, Buzzard, Luton, Newport, Pagnell, Tring, Exeter, 
 Crediton, and London, and many other places. Ship-building involves 
 thirty other trades ; watch-making, sixty trades : they are gradually 
 passing from us. The iron trade is losing ground ; tools, chairs, pans, 
 spades, hoes, axes, nails, lamps, tin-ware, locks, curry-combs, traps, 
 hinges, brass foundry, needles, hooks, guns, swords, buttons, jewelry, 
 steel pens, trinkets, pins, wire, tubing, scales, cutlery, bronze articles, 
 japanned articles, &c., &c., now come from America, France, and 
 Germany. We have doors, window-sashes, and all kinds of wood- 
 work, from the Baltic. Foreign agricultural implements, furniture, 
 artificial flowers, baby-linen, dresses, baskets, beads, beds, Berlin work, 
 blankets, bonnets, boots, braids, brushes, candles, canes, common car- 
 pets, cardboards, caps, china, glass of every kind, clocks, cloths, dam- 
 asks, delaine, electrotype paper, pencils, fringe, muslin, lace, gilded 
 goods, gold and silver articles, hosiery, leather, linen, looking-glasses, 
 lucifers, shoes, silk, ribbons, soap, stationery, stays, steam-engines, 
 in fact every thing, small and great ; and all are admitted duty free 
 into England, and on equal terms into our colonies. 
 
 " Is it, then, any matter of surprise that the British workmen and 
 British manufacturers have no employment ? If all these articles were 
 made here, there would be no lack of work for the British workman ; 
 and the whole of England would once more be set in motion." 
 
 M. Emile de Laveleye, an eminent French political economist, 
 but not of the protective school, has recently furnished to the 
 " Revue des Deux Mondes " a very instructive article upon the 
 " land question " in England. After showing that the accumu- 
 lation of capital in the little island of Great Britain is so vast, that 
 the vaunted treasures of Carthage, Tyre, and Babylon are noth- 
 ing by its side, he adduces many facts which confirm the state- 
 ments of the English authorities already quoted, as to the present
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION* ABROAD. 31 
 
 unparalleled distress of the working classes in England. lie 
 shows that pauperism, which had before slightly diminished, had 
 increased since 1866. The number of persons relieved, which 
 in January, 1866, was 920,344, rose in January, 1869, to 
 1,039, .Vl'.i. in a total population of 21,760,000 ; that is, in Eng- 
 land, exclusive of Scotland and Ireland. Although in the last 
 year 167,000 emigrants had left room for those who remained, 
 the number of paupers had increased in that year 74,000. He 
 quotes the observation of Lord Hamilton in Parliament, that 
 "it is impossible to consult the sad statements which indicate a 
 constant increase of misery for the three years past, without be- 
 ing vividly alarmed for the future." M. Laveleye remarks that 
 this increase of wealth on the one hand, and of misery on the 
 other, overturns all the old calculations of the science of political 
 economy. " The economists say that if a considerable part of 
 mankind is still poorly provided with the necessaries of life, it is 
 because labor does not produce enough. This would seem true. 
 Then the genius of invention accomplishes wonders. It constructs 
 machines so admirable, that a single individual can do the work 
 which once required a thousand. According to Mr. Fairbairn, 
 an English engineer, the total number of horse-powers employed 
 on the steam engines of England, in 1865, was 3,650,000, equiv- 
 alent to the labor of seventy-six millions workmen. There are 
 in that country about five millions families. Each family, then, 
 has at its service fifteen slaves, whose muscles of steel, put in 
 motion by coal, are never tired. Among those peoples who have 
 not yet learned how to borrow from nature these indefatigable 
 servants, in Russia, for example, the labor of the head 
 of a family, using the most simple tools, is sufficient to provide 
 comfortably for all his dependants. How is it that every Eng- 
 lishman, having at his command fifteen slaves, is not able to live 
 in the greatest comfort? M. F. Passy, in his work on Machines, 
 repeats a calculation which proves that England, in 1860, ex- 
 ported 2,673,960 kilograms in weight of cotton cloth, or sixty- 
 four times the circumference of the earth. How is it that she 
 can send abroad the vestment for our planet, when she cannot 
 clothe her own poor ? "
 
 32 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 The writer seeks, with English economists, Mill, Leslie, 
 Fawcet, and Bright, to explain the exceptional situation in 
 which England finds herself, by the land monopoly, which excludes 
 the whole working population from any interest in the soil. Poten- 
 tial as this cause unquestionably is, M. Laveleye almost uncon- 
 sciously admits, in the following passage, the influence of a more 
 efficient cause ; viz. , unrestricted foreign competition with English 
 industry. Comparing the present condition of industry with that 
 under the old regime, he says : "Now, on the contrary, in the 
 economic world all is agitation, uncertainty, strife, incessant al- 
 ternatives of progress and crises. This is the result of the division 
 of labor, which makes all the industries dependent on each other ; 
 of the employment of mechanical forces, which group an increasing 
 number.of workmen, with increasing wages, in the same establish- 
 ment ; and of the facility of international exchanges, which 
 places each one in competition with unknown rivals scattered 
 throughout the whole world. The great industry does not 
 work for the clientage of the neighborhood which it can under- 
 stand, but for the market of the world, whose necessities it is 
 impossible to foresee. The dearness of food or raw material, a 
 revolution, a war, a change of tastes, a crowd of other circum- 
 stances, may close the outlets of production, and bring on ruin. 
 The workmen share the chances of their employers ; a new 
 engine, a displaced industry, may force them to change their 
 occupation or residence. No one, neither patron nor workman, 
 is sure of the morrow. Such is the situation which we see every- 
 where around us. It gives rise to the complaints which we 
 hear from time to time, on the part of masters as well as work- 
 men ; but without re-establishing the regime of the Middle Ages, 
 or finding a wholly new organization, whose elements we can- 
 not yet resolve, it is difficult to escape from a situation which 
 is the result of economic liberty, free competition (la concur- 
 rence), and the condition of industrial progress. To this gen- 
 eral uncertainty of conditions, we must now add another source 
 of complaints and troubles. It is the strife between labor and 
 capital. It is a general hostility, a veritable social war, of 
 which the arms of combat are coalitions and strikes. It is not
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 33 
 
 for political rights that they are undertaken ; it is, what is much 
 more agoni/ing, for the means of existence. It is the ' struggle 
 for life,' of which naturalists speak, transported from the animal 
 world to the economical world. The manufacturing employer, 
 pushed by free competition, is obliged to demand the utmost 
 possible work for the least possible wages. The workman, on 
 his side, is driven to obtain the most wages from the least work. 
 The conflict, far from subsiding, becomes more general, and no- 
 where has taken more alarming proportions than in England." 
 What can be more graphic than this sketch of the results of free 
 trade, drawn by one who is compelled, by theory, to accept a 
 M.Mcm whose lamentable consequences he deplores ! 
 
 It is the vaunted economic liberty, the unrestrained compe- 
 tition from abroad, the contempt for home demand, the ambition 
 to supply the world, the system of production at the cheapest 
 possible rate for the utmost possible production, which have 
 cast the people of England into the " struggle for life," upon 
 which the upper classes look down, from the amphitheatre of 
 exalted position, as the Romans looked upon the struggles of 
 the arena. We have to thank M. Laveleye for the illustration 
 which he has drawn from the animal world, and we will venture 
 to complete it. 
 
 Mr. Darwin, to whom we owe the phrase above quoted, and 
 the first elucidation of a great principle of nature which it ex- 
 presses, has shown that, in the free strife for existence to which 
 nature has left the feral races of the animal world, it is the 
 strongest, and not the best merely, which have swept race after race 
 from the earth ; for many of the extinct forms are grander than 
 those which survive. He shows, too, that it is through an unre- 
 stricted range over the continents, unprotected by barriers of moun- 
 tain ranges or intervening oceans, that the domain of the surviving 
 races has been extended. The barriers of mountains, oceans, 
 rivers, and climates, have alone preserved the characteristic 
 features of those regions which retain their peculiar types of 
 animal or vegetable existence. These natural obstructions have 
 given variety to the productions of the earth, and break up that 
 drear monotony which would have followed from the unimpeded 
 sway of the strongest races.
 
 34 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 So it is in the industrial world. In the economical compe- 
 tition of nations, it is not the best and fittest industries which 
 survive ; it is those of the strongest people. Unobstructed in 
 their admission to India and Turkey, British cottons have sup- 
 planted the magnificent muslins of Hindostan ; and the cheap 
 dress goods of Bradford have extinguished the precious mohair 
 fabrics of Angora, just as the white-weed and Canada thistle 
 take possession of the blue-grass pastures of the West. They 
 supplant, but they by no means replace. Protective barriers 
 are to industrial nations what natural obstructions are to the 
 animal and vegetable world. They secure to each country its 
 native industries, and permit others to take root, which, in time, 
 acquire a national character, impressed by the peculiar genius of 
 each people. The arts and products of each country overflow 
 its borders, and spread into surrounding nations. The whole 
 world is benefited by the variety, excellence, and cheapness, 
 which follow from the competition of many industrial countries, 
 deriving their very power to compete from partial exemption 
 from competition ; and is relieved from the monotony, medi- 
 ocrity, and dearness of production, which are the inevitable 
 results of a monopoly of industries by the strongest and wealth- 
 iest nation. 
 
 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS AND FRANCE. 
 
 Amidst the crash which announces to us, as we write, the fall 
 of the proudest nation of Europe, and the displacement of the 
 political axis of a continent, it seems almost mistimed to turn 
 to France for any other lessons than the vanity of human am- 
 bition, and the instability of a national glory which has no other 
 defence than imperial will. As a military nation, France is, to 
 all appearance, annihilated. But she lives, and will continue 
 to live, in her science and art, in her taste which rules the em- 
 pire of fashion ; and, above all, in the supremacy of her industry, 
 which the genius of her workmen and the perfection of their 
 productions have made the best, if not the most powerful, among 
 all the industries of modern nations. The example and lessons 
 of such a country will be still studied by all nations who desire to
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 35 
 
 attain material prosperity. The country which, in Colbert, gave 
 to the world the great apostle of the protective philosophy, has 
 in the most cherished of her living historians and statesmen the 
 best expounder of his doctrines. We propose, in further illus- 
 tration of our general theme, "The Protective Sentiment 
 Abroad," to present the substance of a recent discourse by this 
 eminent man, after submitting some brief biographical notes, 
 to enforce the weight of authority with which he speaks upon 
 economical questions. 
 
 Louis Adolphe Thiers was born at Marseilles, in France, 
 April 16th, 1797. The son of a poor workman, an origin in 
 which he has always gloried, he was, through the patronage of 
 influential maternal relations, enabled to receive a classical edu- 
 cation. After distinguishing himself at college, he studied law, 
 and, entering upon his profession, made some efforts which gave 
 promise of a brilliant career. He was, however, early led 
 away by the higher attractions of history and philosophy. Com- 
 pleting ten volumes of the " History of the French Revolution," 
 a work commenced by another author, he at once attained celeb- 
 rity as a historian. He became equally well known as a shrewd 
 political writer and literary critic, through his contributions to 
 the journals, and a volume on the fine arts, and one of travels. 
 In 1830 he established, with Mignet and Armand Carrel, a 
 new political journal, the "National," which, more than any 
 other, contributed to bring about the Revolution of that year. 
 
 After rising to distinction in the Chamber of Deputies, to 
 which he had been elected through the political influence 
 acquired as a journalist, he became, in 1832, Minister of the 
 Interior, and shortly afterwards Minister of Commerce. His 
 administration was signalized by the new impulse given to inter- 
 nal improvements, and the fostering care afforded to industry. 
 In 1836 he rose to the Premiership of France. Being unable 
 to persuade the King, Louis Philippe, to adopt a more liberal 
 policy at home and more energy in his transactions abroad, he 
 
 resigned, but was reinstated in 1840. AVhile Premier, he set 
 himself at work, with extraordinary vigor, to prepare the country 
 
 f for war ; which he deemed necessary to raise France to her
 
 36 THE PEOTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 proper standing, outwitted as she had been by the diplomacy of 
 Russia, Austria, and England, in respect to the Eastern ques- 
 tion. He prepared for this emergency, by reinforcing the 
 regular army, reorganizing the National Guards ; and by con- 
 structing the fortifications of Paris, which he has lived to see 
 the last refuge of the Capital. Unable, however, to make the 
 King partake of his war views, he resigned the Premiership, 
 and has not again been called to the administrative control of 
 public affairs. 
 
 From 1845 to 1848 he figured as one of the opposition 
 leaders to the Guizot cabinet, and was prominent in denoun- 
 cing the growing influence of the Jesuits. His speeches were 
 eagerly read and commented upon ; and his articles in the 
 "Constitutionel," in the ownership of which he had a share, 
 contributed to the spread of the reform agitation. In 1846 he 
 denounced the cabinet for declaring itself against the annexation 
 of Texas to the United States, under the poor pretence of 
 preserving an American equilibrium, which was in reality only 
 an English equilibrium; and thus, as he expressed it, "alien- 
 ating France from the great American nation, which is destined 
 to effect the enfranchisement of our political system." 
 
 Although M. Thiers voted for the Presidency of Louis 
 Napoleon, he pronounced, only fifteen days before the coup 
 d'etat, while demanding the independence of the Assembly, as 
 it were the funeral oration of the Republic, by predicting that 
 it was perhaps the last Assembly which should really represent 
 France. The political seer, who had penetrated the designs of 
 the imperial usurper, could not fail to fall under his ban. Thiers 
 was imprisoned, and afterwards temporarily banished. He was 
 shortly after permitted to return, when he abandoned politics, 
 and entered upon the completion of his great work, the " His- 
 tory of the Consulate and the Empire," a work published in 
 20 volumes, which has been translated into every language in 
 Europe ; and, in 1863, won for its author, from the Institute 
 of France, the extraordinary prize of 20,000 francs. As we 
 have more to do with M. Thiers as a practical statesman than 
 as a historian, we will pass by this work, with the single quo-
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 37 
 
 tation <>f its concluding sentence, a passage which reveals the 
 liberal, and at the same time conservative, tone which character- 
 izes the political opinions of a statesman writing history which 
 he has helped to make : 
 
 " The life of this great man, so instructive for soldiers, rulers, and 
 politicians, contains a lesson also to citizens. It teaches them that 
 they ought never to abandon their country to the power of one man, 
 no matter who he may be, no matter under what circumstances ! This 
 is the cry which springs from my heart, the sincere wish I utter as I 
 conclude this long history of our triumphs and our successes, and 
 which I hope will penetrate the heart of every Frenchman, and per- 
 suade him never to sacrifice his liberty, nor run the risk of doing so, 
 by abusing it." 
 
 In 1863, M. Thiers reappeared upon the political stage as 
 a member of the Corps Legislatif, being one of nine deputies, 
 of liberal politics, returned by the city of Paris. He at once 
 took the first place in the opposition, as the defender of the 
 public liberties ; and his discourses, always carefully prepared 
 for the press, were eagerly read by the country, if not reli- 
 giously listened to by the Assembly. In the recent events M. 
 Thiers has been conspicuous for the sagacity with which he pro- 
 nounced upon the want of preparation, on the part of France, 
 for the terrible struggle into which the Emperor had so rashly 
 rushed ; and for the patriotic forbearance which withheld him 
 from discouraging the army by an expression of his views. 
 The Assembly evinced its confidence in his wisdom and vast 
 military sagacity, by electing him, against his own remonstrance, 
 without a dissenting voice, a member of the Committee of De- 
 fence. His own country, as well as Europe, has listened to 
 every word which has fallen from his lips, with an eagerness 
 which has sufficiently recognized him as the first of the states- 
 men of France. 
 
 It is said by his biographers, in pronouncing upon his forensic 
 powers, that it is not the style of his discourses, though 
 declared at times to have attained the most austere beauties 
 of eloquence, nor his stature or voice, which make M. Thiers 
 a great orator, but it is " the intelligence and good sense
 
 38 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 which he exhibits in an incomparable degree." Of his char- 
 acter as a statesman, it is said, "that among the men who 
 served Louis Philippe, that which distinguished M. Thiers 
 in a remarkable degree is his vivid sentiment of national 
 dignity, and a sort of practical genius, which enabled him 
 to govern otherwise than by pure formulas of political theory. 
 Enamoured with the wonders of art and the grandeurs of indus- 
 try, he has always applied his thoughts to the first necessities 
 of a nation." Again it is said : " One of the most remarkable 
 characteristics of the talent of M. Thiers is a powerful faculty of 
 assimilation in the presence of things the most unlike, the rela- 
 tions of which he is able to seize at once, and which he is able 
 to unite into a system full of lucidity and practical utility. The 
 different consulative committees of commerce, manufactures, and 
 agriculture, which he frequently called together, under his pres- 
 idency as Minister of Public Works, and whose apparently oppo- 
 site interests he sought to reconcile, brought out particularly 
 this eminent quality." 
 
 If the views of a statesman so eminently practical, upon the 
 most practical of all public questions, outweigh all the theories 
 of schoolmen and closet essayists, the passages which follow, 
 and which we have translated from " L'Opinion Nationale," are 
 the truest expression of the protective sentiment of France. 
 
 The question of an inquiry into the operation of the commer- 
 cial treaties being before the Corps Legislatif, M. Thiers, on the 
 22d of January, 1870, after calling attention to the gravity of 
 the question before the Assembly, addressed it as follows : 
 
 " Every nation has three great affairs, which should be the object of 
 its ardent and constant solicitude : liberty first, its greatness next, 
 and finally its material prosperity. Liberty, which consists not merely 
 in the right of the nation to criticise its government, but in the right 
 of governing itself by its own hands, and conformably to its own 
 ideas ; greatness, which does not consist in subjecting its neighbors 
 by brute force, but in exercising over them so much influence 
 that no question shall be resolved in the world against its interests 
 and security ; prosperity, finally, which consists in drawing from its
 
 f 
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 39 
 
 own soil, and from the genius of its inhabitants, the greatest possible 
 amount of well-being. 
 
 " And do not think that this anxiety for the prosperity of the country 
 has any tiling in common with that passion for material interests which 
 the highest minds despise. There is no work of higher morality than 
 to diminish the sum of the evils which weigh upon man, even in the 
 most civilized societies. To make man less unhappy, that is, to make 
 him better, it is to make him more just towards his government, 
 to his fellow-beings, towards Providence itself. 
 
 We have before us a noble task : we shall succeed, I hope, in ac- 
 complishing it. It is to give to the country liberty, without disturbance, 
 without violence, without revolution. The work of establishing pros- 
 perity where it is wanting is not less grand or less worthy of your 
 thoughts. 
 
 " The Government has thought, for a time, that it could arrogate, 
 for itself alone, the right of deciding upon the economical system 
 of the country. I do not wish to recriminate as to the past: this is 
 not the time. We must, on the contrary, forget the past, or remem- 
 ber the past only to derive from it instruction. Our task is to 
 fecundate the present and the future. 
 
 ' It was nevertheless a strange pretension, that of thinking that the 
 Government could, of itself alone, decide upon the economical system 
 of the country. I can understand that the Government when it is 
 composed of the most enlightened men of the country might believe 
 that it could be a better diplomat, a better warrior, than the mass of 
 the nation ; but a better merchant, a better manufacturer, a better agri- 
 culturist, when the nation is composed of merchants, manufacturers, 
 and agriculturists, is an unsustainable pretension." 
 
 After appealing to the Assembly to listen to details, however 
 dry, without which they would have in mind only vague gener- 
 alities, without practical utility, M. Thiers continues : 
 
 " I have exhausted myself in this study, to which I have brought the 
 greatest material disinterestedness, and that moral disinterestedness, 
 which results from the absence of bias for any system. I shall pro- 
 ceed directly to the end which we have in view. In these debates 
 some call themselves protectionists, others free traders, and we have 
 even heard the term compensationists. I accept whatever term you 
 will. It is the tiling only which I have in view. 
 
 " It is asked, Shall we place around France a sort of Chinese wall ?
 
 40 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 No : oui* object is the national labor, which we wish to preserve in the 
 country ; to give birth to it where it does not exist ; but, above all, 
 to preserve it where it does exist. Do we demand, for this, prohibitive 
 duties ? No. Duties sufficiently protective ? Not even that." 
 
 After briefly showing that the duties in France are not suffi- 
 cient to preserve such national industry as is already established, 
 he resumes : 
 
 " I can understand that we might hesitate before undertaking to de- 
 velop certain industries in a country ; but what I cannot understand is, 
 that, when they are already developed, we should leave them to perish. 
 
 " We are told that we would have a hot-house industry. What, then, 
 are the nations which have sought to develop among themselves a na- 
 tional labor ? They are the nations which are intelligent and free. When 
 the foreigner brings them a product, after they have found it service- 
 able, they desire to imitate it. The nations which do not have this 
 desire are the indolent nations of the East ; intelligent and free nations 
 seek to appropriate for themselves the products brought to them by 
 foreign nations. 
 
 " We are constantly referred to England. Here is an example 
 which this great and intelligent nation has given us. In the four- 
 teenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, the people of the Low coun- 
 tries had become enriched by the beautiful products of their woollen 
 manufactures ; England, who had received these products, as soon as 
 she commenced to wake up to her position, said to herself, ' It is out of 
 my wools that these tissues are fabricated. I have the hands, the in- 
 telligence, the raw material ; and shall the labor of foreigners provide 
 me with my necessities ? ' She kept her wools : she put herself to 
 work ; and then commenced the great prosperity of England. Was 
 there any barbarism in that ? I am asked, Did not England soon 
 after renounce this system? I answer by the question, Did not 
 England, only a few years ago, in order to procure for herself the 
 beautiful industry of flax and linens, cover herself with protective 
 tariffs, forbid the exportation of machines, and even give premiums to 
 the peasants of Ireland to encourage the production of flax ? 
 
 " I wish it were in my power to conduct you through the history of 
 civilization. I could show you that there has been no intelligent na- 
 tion, which has not held it, not only for its profit, but for its honor, to 
 create for itself the productions of other nations, whenever nature 
 did not oppose it.
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 41 
 
 " I uecil not recall Colbert, creating our marine, onr woollen indus- 
 try, our silk industry, our lace manufactures, our glass industry, and 
 for this purpose giving, according to the language of the times, the 
 money of the king, the lands of the king, and even nobility itself, 
 which was at the kind's di.-posal. 
 
 "This is old-time history, you say. I will lead you to the youngest 
 and freest nations. You shall see that the procedures of two cen- 
 turies ago are still their procedures. An English member of Parlia- 
 ment, Sir Weutworth Dilke, who has travelled over all the English 
 possessions, has recently published a remarkable book, in which you 
 will find a curious picture of the vast Britannic Empire. I would 
 have those who think themselves at the head of the science of politi- 
 cal economy, and who scoff at the protective system, read this book. 
 They would see that it is not America alone which covers herself with 
 protective tariffs to develop her own labor : the English Colonies, 
 Canada, and Australia, have recourse to the most energetic tariffs 
 against their own metropolis, to establish industries upon their own 
 soil. India herself, which has a colony of 500,000 English established 
 upon her territory, makes tariffs, that its cotton may be manufactured 
 by herself. And Sir Wentworth Dilke repeats the words spiritedly 
 uttered by America of the West : ' An agricultural people should 
 become a manufacturing people. We want something besides the 
 seaboard capitals, New York and Boston. We want to sustain the 
 brilliant cities of the interior, such as Cincinnati and Chicago ; and 
 to do this, we must exclude, by means of protection, the productions 
 of foreign nations.' 
 
 And nevertheless Sir Wentworth Dilke is a free trader -in England ; 
 but he comprehends that what suits one country does not suit all, and 
 that free trade is not the law of the ivorld. 
 
 " But I lay aside theory, to return to it again, and proceed to the 
 facts which touch us so nearly." 
 
 M. Thiers then proceeds to point out the circumstances which 
 characterize the state of the leading industries of France, under 
 the operation of the treaties of Commerce, with the free-trade 
 tendency impressed upon them by the arbitrary act of the gov- 
 ernment which concluded them. Tli order which he proposes in 
 this discussion is instructive : 
 
 " Since all the industries have man for their object and instrument, 
 , I shall take as my guiding thread in this debate the order of the neces-
 
 42 THE PEOTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 sides of man. It is necessary that man should clothe himself ; that he 
 should procure for himself a covering ; that he should feed himself; and, 
 finally, put himself in communication with the world. I shall ex- 
 amine these according to their logical order, the textile industries, 
 those of construction and iron, agriculture, and the merchant marine." 
 
 It would be beyond our purpose to follow the orator in details 
 which have special relation to the interests of France : we shall 
 limit ourselves to extracts which are instructive to our own in- 
 dustry, or throw light upon the general question of protection. 
 
 It is sometimes said that the American cotton manufacture can 
 contend, without the aid of tariffs, against the cotton manufac- 
 ture of Great Britain. Let those who assert this be instructed 
 by what M. Thiers says of the incapacity of France for such a 
 contest : 
 
 " Cotton is the grand textile of modern times. It was not unknown 
 to the ancients. Egypt shows us cotton stuffs dating four or five thou- 
 sand years ago. What is the importance of the industry of cotton 
 among us ? We work up 600,000 or 700,000 bales, which represent in 
 weight 90,000,000 of kilograms, and in value 300,000,000 of francs. 
 When the cotton has been spun, woven, converted into plain cloths, 
 printed cloths, haberdashery, and hoisery, these 300,000,000 of francs 
 represent 11,000,000 or 12,000,000 of francs. No industry has supe- 
 rior or equal importance. What is its peril ? It is exposed to a double 
 rivalry, that of the English and of the Swiss. 
 
 " The English find the material, in part upon their own possessions 
 and part abroad. They have created among themselves an immense 
 market, and it is not possible that we can seriously speak of making 
 Havre the equivalent of England. The English have over us im- 
 mense advantages : great capital, raw material, an enormous com- 
 merce, machines in the greatest number, coal at the cheapest price, 
 and finally, which is a capital point, have the cheapness which results 
 from an immense production. Whilst we move 6,000,000 of spindles, 
 they move 34,000,000 ; we work up 600,000 or 700,000 bales of cotton, 
 they work up 3,000,000. Hence the cheapness which creates the grand 
 production by lowering the general expenses. ... It is very difficult to 
 establish the true prices of production, I know : but, for myself, I am 
 sure that the difference in the cost of production between England and 
 France is not less than 15 or 20 per cent."
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 43 
 
 The advantage of the Swiss cotton manufacturers over the 
 French is estimated by M. Thiers at 25 per cent. 
 
 After reviewing the state of the flax manufacture, and coming to 
 the woollen industry, M. Thiers regards the industry of merinos, 
 like that of silks, so dominant that it fears no competitor. The 
 mixed stuffs of wool and cotton, he says, are with difficulty sus- 
 tained in competition with those of England. The fine clothing 
 industry has^iothing to fear ; but with the inferior stuffs, made 
 of waste material, the English, says M. Thiers, overwhelm 
 France. "The most hideous and tainted rags are disinfected, 
 carded, transformed into a kind of oakum, then into yarn with- 
 out solidity, and made into tissues, which, instead of 10 or 12 
 francs, costs 4 francs the yard. Whilst we formerly made for 
 the people excellent cloths, entirely of wool, and which could 
 not be worn out, we give them at present these detestable stuffs ; 
 and this for the profit of foreigners." We need not say that our 
 wool and woollen tariff has delivered the United States from an 
 inundation of these "detestable stuffs," of which the English 
 blankets, costing 18 or 20 cents per lb., are a type, and whose 
 exclusion, by a duty of 200 or 300 per cent, is the gravest charge 
 which the free traders can make against our tariff. 
 
 Proceeding to a discussion of the existing state of agriculture 
 in France, M. Thiers calls attention to the hundreds of letters 
 which he has received, complaining of its decline, especially in 
 the wool-growing districts, and to a petition signed by more 
 than a thousand agriculturists of Campiegne, who say that the 
 price of wools has decreased 40 per cent, and that mutton is sold 
 with difficulty since it meets in the markets of Paris the English 
 and German competition. 
 
 He asks, Is it true that wools which we have seen at 1 franc 
 50 centimes bring now only 71 centimes ? A voice in the Cham- 
 bers answers that it is unquestionable. M. Thiers proceeds : 
 
 " In certain countries where they have pasturage analogous to that 
 of England, and the culture of the large-sized animals has succeeded, 
 the culture of the English sheep, which produce much mutton and 
 wool, has also succeeded ; but upon four-fifths of the territory, where 
 the soil is stony, and only the fine grasses abound, the fine sheep alone
 
 44 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 can convert this grass into flesh and manure. But it is threatened 
 that this French sheep must disappear from the soil. (Cries from the 
 Chamber, ' It is true.') The wools of Australia do not possess all the 
 qualities of the French wool. They are not so silky, so fine, so supple, 
 and, above all, so tenacious ; but they are very excellent, and they are 
 able to make a very formidable competition, because the pastures in 
 Australia are immense, the internal duties are small, and because 
 the facility of transportation permits these wools to be landed upon 
 our shores at very low prices. 
 
 " Our ovine population has gone down from 40,000,000 to 30,000,- 
 000. Our production of wool is 65,000,000 kilograms, and we 
 import 90,000,000. Australia already gives 165,000,000, and she 
 will give 300,000,000 if they are wanted. La Plata can produce 
 as much more. 
 
 " In this situation how can the French resist the foreign competition ? 
 The agricultural industry of France cannot dispense with sheep. The 
 facts which I have given ought to inspire you with the most serious 
 concern." 
 
 In the replication which M. Thiers made to the arguments 
 of the free traders, on the 26th of January, he refers again to 
 the question of wools : 
 
 " A young and very intelligent traveller, M. de Beaumont, has given 
 some curious details about Australia. The wool-growers who com- 
 menced with 150,000 francs make as much as 500,000 francs in a 
 year. The reason is that the laud costs nothing ; there are no taxes ; 
 and a man on horseback can take care of 1000 sheep. Australia will 
 soon export 200,000,000 or 300,000,000 of kilograms. La Plata 
 and the Cape of Good Hope will soon reach the same number. 
 
 " I do not wish to prevent your resorting to these countries. Protec- 
 tion as well as free trade follows the progress of science. But with an 
 indigenous production of 65,000,000 of kilograms, in presence of a 
 foreign exportation which may reach 600,000,000, can you be tranquil? 
 
 " We are told, Make mutton. Have you ever seen sheep producing 
 mutton and no wool ? You say to agriculture, Grow sheep which 
 produce the most mutton and the most wool. This unhappy agricul- 
 ture, which you accuse of being all routine, has tried the English 
 sheep in the north of France. It does not think much of it. Is the 
 essay practicable everywhei'e ? Ask our agriculturists ? They 
 will tell you that in the centre, the east, the south, the rustic sheep,
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 45 
 
 tin- old French shoe]), is the only one possible. There are no districts 
 having pa.Mures which will grow tin- mutton sheep, and for four-lift hs 
 of the territory the production of 65,OOU,000 of kilograms remains, 
 in the face of a foreign production which can reach up to 600,000,000 
 of kilograms. 
 
 " If this situation does not impress you, it is because you are opti- 
 mists ; and this no one has a right to be except for his own affairs. 
 When it concerns the fortune of the community, optimism is nothing 
 but blind improvidence." 
 
 We have reproduced these passages at length, because we 
 regard them as worthy of profound attention. They completely 
 disprove the statement of the late special Commissioner of the 
 l\e venue, already denied by the Executive Committee of our Wool 
 Manufacturers' Association, that the experience in France has 
 been " high duty, low wool at home ; moderate duty or free wool, 
 prices good at home." They establish the important proposition 
 that the agriculture of a nation cannot dispense with sheep; 
 they show that the unrestricted competition of the wools of the 
 southern hemisphere, which is extinguishing the fine-woolled 
 flocks of France, is a subject of serious concern to her statesmen ; 
 and they lead us to sincere congratulation that this delicate and 
 difficult question of the just protection of sheep husbandry and 
 the woollen industry has been so wisely resolved by American 
 legislation. 
 
 The friends of the commercial treaties had pointed to the 
 actual figures, which showed a large numerical increase in the 
 exports of France. M. Thiers, in reply to this, points out 
 that there is a very important distinction between an increase of 
 numbers and an augmentation of ascending force. The ascend- 
 ing force of the numbers representing French commerce, which 
 before 1860 was 115 per cent, had fallen, since the treaties, to 
 65 per cent. 
 
 '' But it is asked (says M. Thiers) how it is possible that French 
 industry, which had shown such prodigies at the Exposition, could not 
 compete with all the world ? It is true that the French industry has 
 a superiority ; but in what ? In articles of luxury. Yes : our work- 
 men are very skilful ; if they have not the patience of the English 
 f workmen, they are no less the most intelligent in Europe. Our silk
 
 46 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 products are superior to all ; and also our printed cottons and stuffs. 
 The English, the Swiss, and the Germans borrow our models, and 
 thus make a considerable saving. Our designs are above all com- 
 parison ; our machines are superior to the English machines ; our 
 irons, at least before the ruin of the charcoal iron forges, were ex- 
 cellent ; our grains are, at least, as good as those of Arragon and 
 Naples. But in one thing we are wanting, cheapness of production : 
 we have perfection, but we do not have cheapness. Moreover, we 
 do not have the immense outlets of England ; we have not India and 
 Australia ; we have not been able to take in all the markets of the 
 woi'ld, the ascendency given by cheapness carried to such a point as 
 to discourage all rivals. We produce 1,000,000 tons of iron ; Eng- 
 land produces 10,000,000 tons : how can we produce at the same 
 price ? 
 
 " To desire us to enter into rivalry with England in cheapness, is to 
 mistake the genius of France and the truth of our situation. And 
 now shall France complain that she cannot supply so many nations 
 as England ? No. She must understand that all nations cannot be 
 great in the same way. England is the nation of cheap production, 
 and she must seek after cheap production. This is her career. France 
 must seek after perfection, and the elevation of her products. How 
 has she made her fortune in the world, and reached this ascending 
 force, of which I have so often spoken ? Is it by entering into com- 
 petition with England in the low price of products ? No, gentlemen. 
 It is by selling her silks and printed goods, which have no rivals in 
 the world. It is by her merinos, it is by her wines, not the com- 
 mon wines, but the delicate wines, so superior that we made our for- 
 tune out of them before the treaties. 
 
 " Since the new system, the quality of products of all industries 
 has been lowered in France. Have our workmen become less skil- 
 ful ? No. But we have sought to rival our neighbors in cheapness. 
 This is the secret of the situation. 
 
 " But this situation is enviable, compared with that of the great and 
 admirable nation which we call England. God forbid that I should 
 utter one injurious word against a nation which has been an inviolable 
 asylum for the proscribed of all revolutions! against that nation 
 which has given us the most beautiful model of human liberty, and 
 where the government, kept at an equal distance from the passions of 
 the low and the passions of the high, is to my eyes the ideal of govern- 
 ments. But I may be allowed to say that it has in its industrial 
 greatness that which is not so solid as the situation of France.
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 47 
 
 " France has her consumers within itself. Its market does not de- 
 pend upon a cannon-shot fired in Europe. And for exportation she 
 has her beautiful products. England, on the contrary, has an artifi- 
 cial existence. She depends upon the doings of the United States ; 
 upon the doings of her colonies, which already oppose her with hos- 
 tile tariffs. May not the day come when its immense production 
 will find no purchasers ? She produces ten times as much as her con- 
 sumption ! This little island, in the words of Fox, embraces the 
 world. True ; but when she embraces the world, she is vulnerable 
 everywhere. 
 
 " Such was the situation of Holland in the seventeenth century, which 
 had realized a prodigy almost as marvellous. What was needed to 
 make Holland, which gave laws to France, to descend from this lofty 
 place ? It needed only fifty years. It needed only a Navigation Act 
 in England ; it needed only a Colbert in France. 
 
 " God forbid that I should predict for England such a destiny ; but, I 
 repeat it, her existence, which depends upon consumers, which she 
 seeks everywhere without herself, is less solid than that of France, 
 which has her consumers in her own bosom. 
 
 " I ardently desire that England should continue her career ; but I 
 do not envy that career for our own country. That our country should 
 have her career as brilliant, depends upon your wisdom. It is for 
 you to choose between doctrines puerile and full of illusions, and the 
 doctrines of your old national good sense." 
 
 On the 26th of January M. Thicrs resumed the discussion 
 of the Economical question before the Assembly, repeating 
 and reinforcing his positions, and replying to objections. 
 We shall limit ourselves to two extracts of general application 
 from the second discourse. The objection so often made by 
 free traders here, that the old industries, which cannot sustain 
 themselves without defensive duties, deserve no protection, is 
 thus vigorously answered : 
 
 "You say that no protection is due to an industry which demands 
 an exaggerated protection, and an eternal protection. That is your 
 principle ; that is the principle of free trade. Let us apply it to 
 France, and come to the bottom of the doctrine. 
 
 " Cotton has been protected ever since it came into Europe. It has 
 
 been protected by prohibition. I repeat that I condemn prohibition ; 
 
 * but I observe that cotton has been protected since the commencement
 
 48 THE PEOTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 of the eighteenth century, a protection of a hundred years. But you 
 have declared that you would not have an eternal protection. You 
 must then cease to protect cotton, or your maxim is false. 
 
 " Wool has been protected since the time of Colbert, and it still de- 
 mands to be protected. Must we, then, abandon our woollens to the 
 competition of Germans, Belgians, and English ? The linen industry 
 has been protected since all time. It ought then, since it has need of 
 permanent protection, to be given up like the others. Iron has been 
 protected since a very ancient period, and still cannot get along with- 
 out protection. It deserves it no longer, since you admit only tempo- 
 rary protection. 
 
 " Our agriculture has been always protected. It still cannot produce 
 grain at the same price as the Crimea, and the plains of Western 
 America. It deserves to be no longer protected. What, then, shall 
 France do ? If you dare maintain that she can make cotton cloth at 
 the price of England, woollens at the price of Germany and Belgium, 
 if our metallurgy can contend with that of England, and our agricul- 
 ture afford grain as cheap as the Crimea and America, then I will 
 acknoAvledge that there is no longer need of protection ; and thus, all 
 the world being ruined, there will result universal prosperity. I ask 
 again, Can our agriculture produce at the price of the Crimea ? (A 
 member, Yes.) 
 
 " My adversary proves that he has studied the question more in books 
 than in practice. You can never prove to me that France, with the 
 imposts which weigh upon her agriculture, can produce grain as 
 cheaply as the Crimea. 
 
 "What, then, shall we do ? Shall we renounce all our industries, and 
 make only wine ? Recall the lessons of history ? If there is a country 
 which could content itself with its wines, it is Portugal. What has 
 she become ? If France should renounce her industries, her cottons, 
 her woollens, her irons, Avould not the Avorld say that she had suuk 
 into idiocy ? " 
 
 Let those who assert that protective duties are oppressive 
 taxes, imposed upon the mass of the community for the benefit 
 of a monopolist, see how firmly this great practical philosopher 
 plants himself upon the doctrine that protection is a boon to 
 the consumer : 
 
 "It is urged that all the protections accorded to industry constitute 
 monopolies, and that, to enrich a few monopolists, we burden the
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 49 
 
 whole country. It is true there is a monopoly ; but it is not in France, 
 it is abroad. I drsire to say that this little monopoly, which you 
 accord to French industry, destroys the monopoly of foreign industry. 
 
 " When Knirland and France alone worked up cotton, as you know, 
 what was the price of a kilogram of cotton yarn which is now 
 worth three francs ? It was worth twenty-seven francs. It is true 
 that this was at the period of our wars, and when the raw material 
 bore a high price ; but after the peace the price was still as high as 
 fourteen francs. 
 
 " It has gone down now to three francs. And here is the reason 
 why. In proportion as the French production was developed, there 
 was, in spite of prohibition, a sort of penetration between the two 
 markets. We created a competition with England, and thus the cot- 
 ton fell to three francs. 
 
 " What purpose, then, has the monopoly served? It has compelled 
 the foreigner to lower his prices. Every time that you give a protec- 
 tion to a national product, you cause the price of the foreign product 
 to be lowered, and yon prevent monopoly. 
 
 " Another example more recent. When the linen industry was de- 
 stroyed in France by the English production by power, a kilogram 
 of thread was worth seven francs. We protected the linen industry in 
 France. This protection permitted competition ; and the French pro- 
 duct compelled the English manufacturers to lower their prices to 
 three francs fifty centimes. 
 
 " If, then, there is any thing evident, it is that this pretended mo- 
 nopoly, this sacrifice of a few centimes, produces a general lowering of 
 price, which is for the benefit of the whole country ... If you are not 
 willing that the French manufacturers should fabricate, because you 
 have to pay twenty per cent more than in England, it will end in the 
 English making you pay a hundred per cent more. 
 
 " If England were the only country to produce certain objects, could 
 you have them at the same price ? Certainly not. It is competition, 
 sustained by a just protection, which destroys foreign monopoly. 
 Those who speak of universal, unrestricted competition, do not com- 
 prehend it. Do you know what true competition is? It is that no 
 nation should ever suffer itself to make any surrender of its native 
 industries. It is that no one should say that it will no longer manufac- 
 ture cotton, because it cannot produce as cheaply as another ; that no 
 one shall say that it will no longer fabricate cloths, because it cannot 
 fabricate at so good an account as its neighbor ; that no one should 
 say that it will not raise grain, under the pretext that grain is pro- 
 
 7
 
 50 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 duced more dearly than in other countries. The nation which should 
 reason thus would exhibit the reasoning of an idiot. Do you know 
 what is the true competition of nation with nation, the universal com- 
 petition? It is a noble ambition on the part of each people, the 
 noble emulation of producing every thing, and even that which it pro- 
 duces with less advantage than other people. This competition has, as 
 its result, the reduction of prices to the lowest attainable standard, 
 throughout the entire world." 
 
 SIR WENTWORTH DILKE AND THE BRITISH COLONIES. 
 
 Our readers cannot fail to be interested by the full extract 
 which we give below, from the English author to whom M. 
 Thiers refers. The work of Sir Wentworth Dilke, " Greater 
 Britain," has attracted much attention in England. The author 
 is a baronet, a member of Parliament, a graduate of Cambridge, 
 a barrister, and a radical in his political opinions. His senti- 
 ment for this country is sufficiently shown by the remark that 
 the United States, in the late war, " struck the noblest blow for 
 freedom that the world has ever seen." This article completes 
 the circuit in our review of "The Protective Question Abroad." 
 
 " PROTECTION. 
 
 " The greatest of all democratic stumbling-blocks is said to be pro- 
 tection. 
 
 " ' Encourage native industry ! ' the colonial shop-keeper writes up ; 
 ' Show your patriotism, and buy colonial goods ! ' is painted in huge 
 letters on a shop-front at Castlemaine. 
 
 " In England some unscrupulous traders, we are told, write ' From 
 Paris ' over their English goods ; but such dishonesty in Victoria takes 
 another shape. There we have ' warranted colonial made' placed over 
 imported wares ; for many will pay a higher price for a colonial product, 
 confessedly not more than equal to the foreign, such is the rage for na- 
 tive industry, and the hatred of the ' Antipodean doctrine of Free 
 Trade.' 
 
 " Many former colonists who lived at home persuaded themselves, 
 and unfortunately persuaded also the public in England, that the pro- 
 tectionists are weak in the colonies. So far is this from being the 
 case in either Victoria or New South Wales, that in the former colony
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 51 
 
 I found that, in the Lower House, the Free Traders formed but three- 
 elevenths of the Assembly ; and in New South Wales the pastoral 
 tenants of the Crown may be said to stand alone in their support of 
 free trade. Some of the squatters go so far as to declare that none 
 of the public men of the colonies really believe in the advantages of 
 protection ; but that they dishonestly accept the principle, and under- 
 take to act upon it when in office, in order to secure the votes of an 
 ignorant majority of laborers, who are themselves convinced that pro- 
 tection means high wages. 
 
 " It would seem as though we free traders had become nearly as 
 bigoted in favor of free trade as our former opponents were in favor 
 of protection. Just as they used to say, We are right : why argue 
 the question ? so now, in face of the support of protection by all the 
 greatest minds in America, all the first statesmen of the Australians, 
 we tell the New England and the Australian politicians that we will 
 not discuss protection with them, because there can be no two minds 
 about it among men of intelligence and education. We will hear no 
 defence of ' national lunacy,' we say. 
 
 " If, putting aside our prejudices, we consent to argue with an Aus- 
 tralian or American protectionist, we find ourselves in difficulties. 
 All the ordinary arguments, against the compelling people by Act of 
 Parliament to consume a dearer or inferior article, are admitted as 
 soon as they are urged. 
 
 " If you attempt to prove that protection is bolstered up by those 
 whose private interests it subserves, you are shown the shrewd Aus- 
 tralian diggers, and the calculating Western farmers in America, men 
 whose pocket interests are wholly opposed to protection, and who yet, 
 almost to a man. support it. A digg'er at Ballarat defended protec- 
 tion to me in this way : he said he kne\v that under a protective tariff 
 he had to pay dearer than would otherwise be the case for his jacket 
 and his moleskin trousers, but that he preferred to do this, as, by so 
 doing, he aided in building up in the colony such trades as the making 
 up of clothes, iu which his brother, and other men, physically too weak 
 to be diggers, could gain an honest living. In short, the self-denying 
 protection of the Australian diggers is of the character of that which 
 would be accorded to the glaziers of a town by the citizens, if they 
 broke their windows to find their fellow-townsmen work. ' We know 
 we lose, but men must live,' they say. At the same time, they deny 
 that the loss will be enduring. The digger tells you that he should 
 not mind a continuing pocket loss, but that, as a matter of fact, this, 
 which in an old country would be pocket loss, in a new country such
 
 52 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 as his only comes to this, that it forms a check on immigration. Wages 
 being five shillings a day in Victoria and three shillings a day in Eng- 
 land, workmen would naturally flock into Victoria from England, until 
 wages in Melbourne fell to three shillings sixpence, or four shillings. 
 Here comes in prohibition, and by increasing the cost of living in 
 Victoria, and cutting into the Australian handicraftsman's margin of 
 luxuries, diminishes the temptation to immigration, and consequently 
 the influx itself. 
 
 " The Western farmers in America, I have heard, defended protec- 
 tion upon far wider grounds : they admit that free trade would con- 
 duce to the most rapid possible peopling of their country with foreign 
 immigrants ; but this, they say, is an eminently undesirable conclusion. 
 They prefer to pay a heavy tax in the increased price of every thing 
 they consume, and in the greater cost of labor, rather than see their 
 country demoralized by a rush of Irish or Germans, or their political 
 institutions endangered by a still further increase in the size and power 
 of New York. One old fellow said to me : ' I don't want the Ameri- 
 cans in 1900 to be two hundred millions, but I want them to be 
 happy.' 
 
 " The American protectionists point to the danger that their coun- 
 trymen would run, unless town kept pace with country population. 
 
 " Settlers would pour off to the West, and drain the juices of the 
 fertile land by cropping it year after year, without fallow, without 
 manure ; and then, as the land became in a few years exhausted, 
 would have nowhere whither to turn to find the fertilizers which the soil 
 would need. Were they to depend upon agriculture alone, they would 
 sweep in a wave across the land, leaving behind them a worn-out, 
 depopulated, jungle-covered soil, open to future settlement when its 
 lauds should have recovered their fertility by some other and more provi- 
 dent race. The coast lands of the most ancient countries are exhausted, 
 densely bushed, and uninhabited. In this fact lies the power of our 
 sailor race : crossing the seas, we occupy the coasts, and step by step 
 work our way into the upper country, where we should not have at- 
 tempted to show ourselves had the ancient population resisted us upon 
 the shores. In India, in Ceylon, we met the hardy race of the high- 
 lauds and interior, only after we had already fixed ourselves upon 
 the coast, with a safe basis for our supply. The fate that these coun- 
 tries have met is that which colonists expect to be their own, unless 
 the protective system be carried out in its entirety. In like manner 
 the Americans point to the ruin of Virginia, and, if you urge ' slavery, 
 answer, ' Slavery is but agriculture.'
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 53 
 
 " Those who speak of the selfishness of the protectionists as a 
 whole, can never have taken the trouble to examine into the argu- 
 ments by which protection is supported in Australia aud America. In 
 these countries, protection is no mere national delusion : it is a system 
 deliberately adopted with open eyes as one conducive to the country's 
 welfare, in spite of objections known to all, in spite of pocket losses 
 that come home to all. If it be, as we in England believe, a folly, it 
 is at all events a sublime one, full of self-sacrifice, illustrative of a 
 certain nobility in the national heart. The Australian diggers, and 
 \V> -tern farmers in America, are setting a grand example to the world 
 of self-sacrifice for a national object ; hundreds and thousands of 
 rough men are content to live they and their families upon less 
 than they might otherwise enjoy, in order that the condition of the 
 mass of their countrymen may continue raised above that of their 
 brother toilers in Old England. 
 
 " Their manufactures are beginning now to stand alone ; but hith- 
 erto, without protection, the Americans would have had no cities but 
 seaports. By picturing to ourselves England dependent upon the 
 city of London, upon Liverpool, and Hull, and Bristol, we shall see 
 the necessity the Western men are now under of setting off Pittsburg 
 against New York and Philadelphia. In short, the tendency, accord- 
 ing to the Western farmers, of free trade, in the early stages of a 
 country's existence, is to promote universal centralization, to destroy 
 local centres and the commerce they create, to so tax the farmer with 
 the cost of transport to distant markets, that he must grow wheat 
 and corn continuously, and cannot but exhaust his soil. With mar- 
 kets so distant, the richest forest lands are not worth clearing ; and 
 settlements sweep over the country, occupying the poorer lands, and 
 then abandoning them once more. 
 
 ' Protection in the colonies and America is, to a great degree, a re- 
 volt against steam. Steam is making the world all one ; steam 'cor- 
 rects ' differences in the price of labor. When steam brings all 
 races into competition with each other, the cheaper races will extinguish 
 the dearer, till at last some one people will inhabit the whole earth. 
 
 " Coal remains the only power, as it will probably always be 
 cheaper to carry the manufactured goods than to carry the coal. 
 
 " Time after time, I have heard the Western farmers draw imagi- 
 nary pictures of the state of America, if free trade should gain the 
 day, and ask of what avail it is to say that free trade and free cir- 
 culation of people are profitable to the pocket, if they destroy the 
 national existence of America ; what good to point out the gain of
 
 54 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 weight to their pui'ses, in the face of the destruction of their religion, 
 their language, and their Saxon institutions ? 
 
 " One of the greatest of the thinkers of America defended protec- 
 tion to me on the following grounds : That, without protection, 
 America could, at present, have but few and limited manufac- 
 tures ; that a nation cannot properly be said to exist as such, unless 
 she has manufactures of many kinds ; for men are born, some with a 
 turn to agriculture, some with a turn to mechanics ; and if you force 
 the mechanic by nature to become a farmer, he will make a bad farm- 
 er, and the nation will lose the advantage of his power and invention ; 
 that the whole of the possible employments of the human race are, 
 in a measure, necessary employments ; necessary to the making up of 
 a nation : that every concession to free trade cuts out of all chance 
 of action some of the faculties of the American national mind, and, in 
 so doing, weakens and debases it ; that each and every class of 
 workers is of such importance to the country, that we must make 
 any sacrifice necessary to maintain them in full work : ' The 
 national mind is manifold,' he said ; ' and if you do not keep up 
 every branch of employment, in every district, you waste the national 
 force.' 
 
 " If we were to remain a purely agricultural people, land would 
 fall into fewer and fewer hands, and our people become more and 
 more brutalized as the years rolled on. 
 
 " It must not be supposed that protection is entirely defended upon 
 these strange new grounds. ' Save us from the pauper-labor of 
 Europe,' is the most recent, as well as the oldest, of protectionist 
 cries. The Australians and Americans say, that by working wo- 
 men at one shilling a day in the mines in Wales, and by generally 
 degrading all laborers under the rank of highly skilled artisans, the 
 British keep wages so low, that, in spite of the cost of carriage, they 
 can almost invariably undersell the colonists and Americans in 
 American and Australian markets. This state of degradation and 
 poverty nothing can force them to introduce into their own countries ; 
 and, on the other hand, they consider manufactures necessary for the 
 national purpose alluded to before. The alternative is protection. 
 
 The most unavoidable of all these difficulties of protection namely, 
 that no human government can ever be trusted to adjust protective 
 taxation without corruption is no objection to the prohibition which 
 the Western protectionists demand. The New-p]uglanders say, ' Let 
 us meet the English on fair terms ; ' the Western men say that they 
 will not meet them at all. Some of the New York protectionists
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 55 
 
 declare that their object is -merely the fostering of American manu- 
 factures until they are able to stand alone, the United States not 
 having at present reached the point which has been attained by other 
 nations when they threw protection to the winds. Such halting 
 protectionists as these manufacturers find no sympathy in Australia 
 or the West ; although the highest of all protectionists look forward to 
 the distant time when, local centres being everywhere established, 
 customs will be abolished on all sides, and mankind form one family. 
 It is a common doctrine in the colonies of England, that a nation can- 
 not be called ' independent ' if it has to cry out to another for sup- 
 plies of necessaries ; that true national existence is first attained when 
 the country becomes capable of supplying to its own citizens those 
 goods without which they cannot exist in the state of comfort which 
 they have already reached. Political is apt to follow upon commer- 
 cial dependency, they say. 
 
 " The question of protection is bound up with the wider one of 
 whether we are to love our fellow-subjects, our race, or the world at 
 large ; whether we are to pursue our country's good at the expense of 
 other nations. There is a growing belief in England that the noblest 
 philosophy is to deny the existence of the moral right to benefit our- 
 selves by harming others ; that love of mankind must, in time, re- 
 place love of race, as that has, in part, replaced narrow patriotism 
 and love of self. It would seem that our free-trade system lends 
 itself better to these wide modern sympathies, than does protection. 
 On the other hand, it may be argued that, if every state consults the 
 good of its own citizens, we shall, by the action of all nations, 
 obtain the desired happiness of the whole world, and this with 
 rapidity. 
 
 u The chief thing to be borne in mind in discussing protection with 
 an Australian or an American is, that he never thinks of denying that, 
 under protection, he pays a higher price for his goods than he would 
 if he bought them from us ; and that he admits at once that he tem- 
 porarily pays a tax of fifteen or twenty per cent upon every thing he 
 buys, in order to help set his country on the road to national unity 
 and ultimate wealth. -JpYithout protection, the American tells you, 
 there will be commercial New York, sugar-growing Louisiana, the 
 corn-growing North-west, .but no America : protection alone can 
 give him a united couutryjt^W'hen we talk about things being to the 
 advantage or disadvantage of a country, the American protectionist 
 asks what you mean. Admitting that all you say against protection 
 may be true, he says that he had sooner see America supporting a
 
 56 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 hundred millions independent of the remainder of the world, than two 
 hundred millions dependent for clothes upon the British. ' You, on 
 the other hand,' he says, ' would prefer our custom.' How can we 
 discuss this question ? The difference between us is radical, and we 
 have no base on which to build, from the reason that every country 
 understands its own interests better than it does those of its neighbor. 
 As a rule, the colonists hold that they should not protect themselves 
 against the sister colonies, but only against the outer world ; and 
 while I was in Melbourne, an arrangement was made with respect 
 to the broader customs between Victoria and New South Wales ; but 
 this is at present the only step that has been taken towards inter- 
 colonial free trade. 
 
 " It is passing strange that Victoria should be noted for the eager- 
 ness with which her people seek protection. Possessed of little coal, 
 they appear to be attempting artificially to create an industry which, 
 owing to this sad lack of fuel, must languish from the moment that it is 
 let alone. Sydney coal sells in Melbourne at thirty shillings a ton ; 
 at the pit's mouth, at Newcastle, New South Wales, it fetches only 
 seven or eight shillings. With regard, however, to the making-op of 
 native produce, the question in the case of Victoria is merely this : Is 
 it cheaper to carry the wool to the coal, and then the woollen goods 
 back again, than to carry the coal to the wool ? And as long as 
 Victoria can continue to export wheat, so that the coal ships may not 
 want freight, wool manufacturers may prosper in Victoria. 
 
 " The Victorians naturally deny that the cost of coal has much to 
 do with the question. The French manufactures, they point out, 
 with dearer coal, but with cheaper labor, have in many branches of 
 trade beaten the English out of common markets ; but, then, under 
 protection, there is no chance of cheap labor in Victoria. 
 
 " Writing for the Englishmen of Old England, it is not necessary 
 for me to defend free trade by any arguments. As far as we in our 
 island are concerned, it is so manifestly to the pocket interest of 
 almost all of us, and at the same time, on account of the minuteness 
 of our territory, so little dangerous politically, that for Britain there 
 can be no danger of a deliberate relapse into protection ; although we 
 have but little right to talk about free trade, so long as we continue 
 our enormous subsidies to the Cunard liners. 
 
 " The American argument in favor of prohibition is, in the main, 
 it will be seen, political ; the economical objections being admitted, 
 but outweighed. Our action in the matter of our postal contracts, 
 and in the case of the Factory Acts, at all events shows that we are
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. f>7 
 
 not ourselves invariably averse to distinguish between the political 
 and the economical aspect of certain questions. 
 
 "My duty has been to chronicle what is said and thought upon the 
 matter in our various plantations. One thing, at least, is clear, that 
 even if the opinions I have recorded be as ridiculous when applied to 
 Australia or America as they would be when applied to England, they 
 ure not supported by a selfish clique, but rest upon the generosity and 
 self-sacritice of a majority of the population." 
 
 REMARKS AT THE INDIANAPOLIS EXPOSITION, AUG. 2, 1870, 
 BY JOHN L. HAYES.* 
 
 Mu. PKKSIDKNT, LADIKS AND GKXTLKMKX, I intend to confine my remarks 
 entirely to the subject of the woollen manufacture, and topics connected with it. 
 The protective system which was established by our fathers, for the protective 
 system was established by the first Act which was passed by Congress after 
 the inauguration of our government, and which has been continued with more 
 or less efficiency during the whole period of our national history, had placed our 
 woollen industry, at the time of our great war, in a position to do its part in pro- 
 viding the industrial resources and the means necessary for carrying on the war. 
 That war was one in which victory was won by the North, not by its skill, not 
 by its courage, not by its military genius, not by its patriotism ; but it was really 
 won through the industrial resources of the North. It was won because the 
 North bad power industrial power; because it had strength material 
 strength, growing out of its diversified industry. 
 
 I say the woollen industry of this country, at the period of the war, was in a 
 position to perform its part ; it did perform a very important part throughout 
 the war. Our mills, our looms, and our sewing machines used up no less than 
 two hundred millions pounds of wool during the war, for the benefit of the army 
 and navy. In one single year of the war we furnished thirty-five millions of 7 
 garments to our soldiers. Our army was better clothed than any other armVf 
 ever was in the history of the world. They were clothed in wool in sound 
 cloths ; and the Quarter- Master-General of the Army has officially reported that 
 there is no army upon earth so well clothed as that of the United States, or as 
 it was clothed during the war. 
 
 But the clothing of our army and navy, and the furnishing of the industrial 
 resources necessary to the nation, in its time of difficulty, is not the only good 
 result of our woollen industry. Some persons are disposed to speak slightingly, 
 and even sneeringly, of the clothing interest ; for the growing of wool, the mak- 
 ing of woollens, and the conversion of them into garments constitutes but one 
 
 * These remarks, made wholly without notes, were originally reported in the " Indianapolis 
 Journal.' 1 The editor, in reproducing them, follows substantially the original report, supplying 
 omissions of quotations, and correcting some statements and figures imperfectly understood by the 
 reporter.
 
 58 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 great interest. The great British author, Thomas Carlyle, has written a work 
 which he calls Sartor Resartus, or " The Tailor Sewed Over." This work he 
 characterizes as the "philosophy of clothes," and takes this subject as the vehicle 
 of his satire upon the subject of mere externals. He says that in turning a cor- 
 ner in the Scottish town of Edinburgh he came upon a sign on which was written 
 So-and-so, " Breeches-maker to His Majesty ; " and then followed the words sic 
 itur ad astra, " so we ascend to the stars." This was intended as satire; but 
 there was a great deal more truth in it than the philosopher conceived of. The 
 prime necessities of the whole world of mankind .consists of a very few things, 
 food, clothing, and the means of shelter. Clothing is one of the first great 
 essentials of man. Take, if you please, your household expenses, and see what 
 they indicate as to the importance of this class of commodities. You will find, 
 that, in the necessary expenses of the family, clothing has the second place, 
 always next to the article of food ; and in fashionable families, very often the 
 first place of all. What, therefore, can conduce so much to the absolute comfort 
 of the homes and households of the country, as to increase and improve the 
 means of obtaining cheap, good, and substantial clothing ? If we are enabled to 
 use double the amount, in value, of clothing, or to get it at one-half the money ; 
 or, in other words, if we are enabled for the least possible expenditure of labor to 
 get the largest possible amount of clothing, how much is thereby added to the 
 comfort of the people ! That is the grand object of the wool industry of this 
 country. 
 
 What is the present position of our woollen manufacture ? We consume, in 
 this country, two hundred and forty millions of dollars' worth of woollen manu- 
 factures, or of manufactures of which wool is the chief component, per annum. 
 Of that amount we import thirty-two millions of dollars' worth. Of this thirty- 
 two millions about six millions are in cloths ; about fifteen millions in dress 
 goods ; about two millions in carpets of certain classes. But when we say we 
 import thirty-two millions, bear in mind that that is the declared value, the 
 amount on which the duty is paid ; we have got to add to that the cost of the 
 duties and the charges or profits of the importer, which will double it ; so that 
 we may put the total value of our imports at sixty-four millions of dollars. Es- 
 timates, very carefully made, show that we produced, in the year 1868, one 
 hundred and seventy -five millions dollars' worth of woollen manufactures ; adding 
 to what we produced ourselves what we imported, we consume, in round num- 
 bers, two hundred and forty millions. And we may safely say, that we produce 
 here, of our own manufacture, nearly three-fourths of all the woollen goods used 
 in this country. 
 
 But when we come to look at it practically, we find that for the goods con- 
 sumed by the great masses of the people, we are very largely independent of 
 all foreign countries. A few years ago all the materials used for our great coats, 
 such as beaver and Esquimaux cloths, were made abroad ; but, within the last 
 five years, we have succeeded in making those goods of an excellent quality at 
 home ; and, practically, we now make all the cloths that we use for our great coats. 
 We make all our under-goods, stockings, hosiery, and goods for under-clothing, 
 amounting to some forty millions of dollars. Three or four years ago we made 
 no goods of the class that are made fitted to the form ; but within two or three 
 years past we have succeeded in making these also, not by hand, but by machin- 
 ery, and surpassing in quality any goods of the kind that are made abroad. And
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 59 
 
 the result of tliis has been, that American competition has actually reduced the 
 prices of the foreign articles at least six dollars on the dozen. 
 
 Then we have introduced, within the last five or six years, a very large class 
 of dress poods. During the war there was an association of patriotic ladies 
 formed, who pledged themselves that they would not wear any thing but 
 American goods. But when these patriotic ladies went into the shops to make 
 their purchases, they found, to their great mortification, that there was a sad 
 deficiency in the better classes of dress goods of American manufacture. But it 
 is not so now. Now the ladies can be dressed, and most elegantly dressed, in 
 American goods entirely. The silk goods that were shown in the Exposition 
 at New York compared favorably with any that are made abroad. Our silks, 
 ' our lustres, our serges, and a great variety of cotton stuffs, of a class not made 
 in this country at all, until within the last five years, challenge comparison with 
 any similar articles made abroad. And in the article of carpets, I say, without 
 hesitation, that we surpass the manufacturers of any other country on the globe. 
 \Ve can make, at this very time, all the ingrain, two-ply, and three-ply carpets 
 that are used in this country. We have nearly twice the number of looms en- 
 gaged in that branch of manufacture that are to be found in England ; and our 
 carpets are so far superior to those of English manufacture, that there are now, 
 comparatively, none at all of that class of carpets imported into this country. 
 The materials of which the English carpets of that class are made are so poor 
 and weak that they cannot be woven by power looms, but have to be made by 
 hand looms; while ours are made in the power loom, are of better and stronger 
 materials, and superior in every respect. 
 
 Of the Brussels and other rich and expensive carpets, nearly one-half are made 
 in this country. Within the last two years we have succeeded in manufacturing 
 what is known as tiie Axminster carpet. That is a carpet which is laid down in 
 palaces, a carpet that costs eight dollars a yard. These carpets are made in 
 Europe by hand ; but we have been able to make them by the power loom, supe- 
 rior in strength to the French, and in beauty and finish so exact a copy of the orig- 
 inals that, if you lay the two side by side, you cannot tell them apart. And these 
 we make at so low a cost, that we have compelled the manufacturer of the foreign 
 article to reduce his price a dollar or two a yard, although the American Axmin- 
 sters are frequently put upon the market and sold for the imported article. 
 
 Your own Exposition shows how much you have done ; but the great fact to be 
 looked at is, that we have not only done all this, but that we have been enabled 
 to make these goods cheaper through the competition that grows out of our pro- 
 tective system. Our import duties are the great barrier that prevents the influx 
 of the great tide of foreign importation that would otherwise sweep over us. If 
 you will take the pains to compare the prices of goods at the present time with 
 the prices that prevailed hi I860, just before the war, and before the present tariff 
 was levied, you will see what has been the result of the protective system. Now 
 you cannot ordinarily arrive at a satisfactory comparison of prices of cloths at 
 periods so far apart, for the reason that there will be some difference in style, fin- 
 ish, coloring, or in some other respect, between any two pieces manufactured ten 
 years apart. You must have an uniform standard ; and the only such standard 
 you can have is the article of flannel ; and every piece of cloth at one stage of its 
 manufacture is a piece of flannel. That, therefore, we take as a standard in a 
 comparison of the prices of 1860 and those of the present year. We have careful
 
 60 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABE01D. 
 
 and accurate reports from two of the first flannel commercial houses in the United 
 States, engaged in the selling of flannels, houses which represent the sales of 
 twenty different establishments, and the products of at least one hundred different 
 sets of machinery. That report shows, in one house, that the prices in gold at 
 which their flannels sell at the present time are twenty-one per cent less than they 
 were in 1860, and in the other establishment sixteen per cent less. The fact is 
 there demonstrated by the prices of flannels, which are an uniform standard ; 
 it is settled beyond contradiction how much the country has gained by this pro- 
 tective system, and the competition which grows out of it. 
 
 I say, therefore, as a result of the tariff and the protective system, that prices 
 are much lower to the consumer. I will go further, and say that for the wool-grower, 
 who sells his product to the factory alongside of him, the prices of woollen cloth- 
 ing at the present time are at least fifty per cent lower than before the war ; and 
 before the woollen mills were established in your midst, through the protection 
 afforded by the Morrill tariff and the tariff of 1867. 
 
 Now, what is the one great power by which we are enabled to clothe the masses 
 of our people with a hundred and seventy-five millions dollars' wortli of goods of 
 home manufacture ? I answer, It is the possession, mainly, of an animal which 
 some persons are accustomed to regard with contempt, and which John Randolph, 
 of Iloanoke, once said he would always go out of his way to kick, and that is 
 the sheep ; and more than all is it owing to the fact that this country has the 
 possession of the merino sheep. Here we have an illustration of the connection 
 and mutual relation of agriculture and manufactures ; and the historical facts, 
 which I shall now briefly review, will show how absolutely the manufacturing 
 interests of this as well as every other country are dependent upon its agriculture. 
 
 The Romans wore nothing but woollen goods. They had no cotton ; they had 
 a little linen which was worn as a material of luxury ; they had no silk. They 
 cultivated the sheep with great care, and some of their richest possessions were 
 in sheep. But there was' one breed of sheep which they cultivated with extra- 
 ordinary care, and by that system of selection which Darwin speaks of as the 
 source of the perfected forms of our domestic animals. It was called the Taren- 
 tine sheep, from Tarentum, a city of Greek origin, situated at the head of the 
 Tarentine gulf. The fleece of this sheep was of exceeding fineness ; it was of 
 great delicacy, and the prices of its fleeces were enormous. The sheep were 
 clothed in cold weather to keep them warm ; and the result was that they were 
 very tender and their wool was very fine. They were a product of Greek 
 civilization transmitted down to the Romans. Columella, the great Roman 
 agriculturist, says that his uncle, residing in Spain, crossed some of the fine 
 Tarentine sheep with some rams that had been imported from Africa ; and the 
 consequence was, that these animals had the whiteness of the father with the 
 fineness of the fleece of the mother, and that that race was perpetuated. 
 Here we see an improvement of the stock, an increase of strength and produc- 
 tiveness given to the fine-wool sheep of Spain. At that time the sheep of Spain 
 were of immense value ; for Strabo says that sheep from Spain, in the time of 
 Tiberius, were carried to Rome, and sold for the price of a talent, one thousand 
 dollars a head. In the time of our Saviour a thousand dollars was given in Rome 
 for a Spanish sheep. When the barbarians inundated Italy, these fine-wool sheep 
 were all swept away, but they remained in Spain : they were cultivated by the 
 Moors in the mountains of Spain, which were almost inaccessible, and were not
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 61 
 
 reached by the hordes of Huns, and other Northern barbarians, which had laid waste 
 the Creator portion of tin- Roman possessions. They continued to be nourished 
 there by the .Moors, who were very much advanced in arts; and further on were 
 found there as the Spanish merino. So that the Spanish merino which we now 
 have, if not the only, is at all events by far the most important relic that we have 
 to-day which has come down to us from Greek and Human material civilization. 
 \Ye have here a direct inheritance from the material wealth of the Old World 
 civilisation. 
 
 What was the result of the possession of this race of animals to the countries 
 which could command their fleeces ? The Moors, before their expulsion from 
 Spain, had 1(5,000 looms employed in making the fine cloths then known. The 
 States of Italy, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, established commerce on 
 tlu- ancient routes of navigation to the East. They made the Spanish wool, which 
 they secured by their commerce, into fine cloths ; and we find that Florence, Genoa, 
 I'isa, and Venice acquired their wealth and splendor, and the material of their com- 
 merce, from the woollen manufacture. The arts flourished as wealth increased ; 
 and we find the colossal statue of David, one of the grandest works of the great 
 Michel Angelo, purchased by the Wool- Workers' Guild. 
 
 The arts declined in Italy. They then went over to the low countries, the 
 Netherlands. The Netherlands were in possession of this Spanish fleece, from 
 the fact that the two monarchies had been combined under King Charles the Fifth. 
 Their precious cloths were carried all over the East, and all over the world which 
 was then known. From the Netherlands the wool manufacture was carried to 
 England, to Germany, and to France. Such was the early result of the possession 
 of this animal, and of the wool manufacture which this animal supplied. 
 
 It was scarcely one century ago that Western Europe determined to get pos- 
 sesion of this merino race. The King of Saxony sent out to Spain to get it in 
 177t>. At that time, of such importance was the culture of this animal held to be, 
 that the mode of cultivating them was directed to be read before the service in 
 the churches on Sunday. What is the result of that importation ? We have now 
 the Saxony sheep with fleeces vastly finer than the old Spanish stock. The 
 King of Prussia, Frederick the Second, introduced about three hundred of these 
 sheep into his kingdom, and persevered in their culture until they were estab- 
 lished in Prussia. What is the result of that ? Eighteen per cent of all 
 Prussian exports now are fine woollen goods from the merino sheep. The 
 great Maria Theresa, in 1776, introduced the merino sheep into Hungary, 
 and established them there. At this time the finest manufacture of Hungary 
 is her cloth, and the most valuable of all her possessions are her flocks. Louis 
 the Sixteenth, in 1786, introduced the merino sheep into France. The great 
 Colbert, a century before that, had endeavored to establish it there, and failed. 
 But Daubenton, the great naturalist, and the associate of Buflbn, had made the 
 sheep a subject of study, and with his assistance the merino race was established 
 in that country. The result is, that France to-day has the finest manufactures in 
 the world, only a century after the introduction of the Spanish sheep into that 
 country. The stock of sheep of Rambouillet still exists. Said Napoleon : " Spain 
 has twenty -five millions of merinos ; France shall have one hundred millions ; " 
 and he established three hundred sheep-folds all over France. One of the most 
 interesting and most touching incidents, as showing the interest which the great 
 people of the world have in the culture of this animal, is this : The sheep-fold of
 
 62 THE PEOTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 Rambouillet was about to be destroyed. The Empress Eugenie, the wife of the 
 present Emperor, learned that such was the fact, and she at once declared that it 
 should not be done, that the Rambouillet sheep-fold was identified with the in- 
 dustrial prosperity of France ; and she took the flock of Rambouillet under her 
 special protection, declaring that it should be regarded as her personal charge. 
 
 Thus we find all the continent of Europe provided with this race of sheep 
 less than a century ago. A little later, about the commencement of the present 
 century, the merinos were introduced into this country. The best family of our 
 merinos came from an importation which we owe, indirectly, to George Wash- 
 ington. For Colonel Humphreys who had been an aid of Washington, and 
 who had been stimulated by Washington with that love of agriculture which 
 was so strong a feature in his character having been appointed minister to Spain, 
 brought home with him, in 1802, the most important of the early importations of 
 the merino sheep, which had been selected from the best Spanish families. From 
 this Humphreys's sheep have come our American merinos, a peculiar breed, and 
 one of the finest in the world.* 
 
 I may say in regard to the improvement which has been made in this country 
 in the culture of sheep, that our American merinos, our best improved American 
 sheep, produced more washed wool in 184(5 than they did of unwashed wool 
 when first introduced; and that they 'now produce twice the amount of scoured 
 wool that the original Spanish sheep did. It is one of the most productive 
 sheep in the world. I may say that the possession of the merino fleece, which 
 composes now a great proportion of the fleece of this country, is to fabrics pre- 
 cisely what wheat and flour are to grain. We may eat corn bread and rye 
 bread occasionally, for a change ; but we all, in the long-run, have to come back 
 to wheat. So it is with merino wool ; it is the great foundation of all fabrics. 
 Its fibre is finer than any other. The greater the number of strands there are 
 in a wire cable, the stronger it is ; and just so, the greater the number of fibres 
 that are contained in a yarn of a given diameter, the greater will be its strength. 
 Merino wool constitutes the greatest portion of the cloths of the world ; it is the 
 wool of which there is the highest necessity. 
 
 I am coming now to my point (and I fear you may think I am a long time 
 in coming to it). My point is this : Our merino wool culture was at one time 
 on the point of being destroyed by the immense increase of the wool product of 
 South American countries, La Plata and Buenos Ayres. The increase within 
 seven years was, in La Plata alone, from sixteen millions to fifty-nine millions of 
 pounds per annum. The wool-growers and the wool manufacturers came to- 
 gether. There was at that time no division or classification of the grades of 
 wool with respect to the tariff duty, except upon the basis of the price ; and there 
 was always an opportunity to bring in the wool a little dirtier, and in that man- 
 ner avoid the proper duty. Instead of six cents per pound, the proper duty, 
 the importers of wool and manufacturers paid practically but three cents. The 
 wool-growers demanded an increase on the duties on wool ; the wool manufactur- 
 ers assented. The wool duty upon the great bulk of imported wools was increased 
 from an average of about three cents up to ten cents specific, and eleven cents 
 
 * In the speech, as delivered and reported, it was inaccurately stated that the Humphreys's 
 merinos were the first ever brought to America which actually survived. This error, which is 
 now corrected, was kindly pointed out, in a private letter, by Dr. Randall.
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 63 
 
 ad valorem; and the result was simply the salvation of the growth of wool in this 
 country. The fine wool husbandry in the Southern Hemisphere had grown so 
 rapidly, from the failure of the cotton crops of this country, that when the war 
 closed, if it had not been for this wool tariff, there would have been such an 
 importation from the Southern Hemisphere as would have wiped out the merino 
 flocks of this country, one of the most important of our material resources. 
 The wool tariff saved it. Before the tariff was applied, the importation of wool 
 from Buenos Ayres and the Cape of Good Hoj>e was thirtj'-six thousand bales ; 
 in the next year, after the woollen tariff went into operation, the importations 
 were only about seven thousand hales ; so that there was actually a relief to the 
 wool-growers of this country, from the ruinous competition, of thirty thousand 
 bales of foreign wool. Of course I need not tell you that this measure was 
 the salvation of the wool-growing interests of this country. 
 
 Nevertheless the manufacturers were mucli troubled about this tariff. They 
 accepted it at first as a necessity, but yet the demands of the wool-growers for 
 this increased duty proved to be really the salvation of the wool manufacturer. 
 The fair demand of the manufacturer was, that he should be placed in the same 
 position as if he had his wool still free from duty ; and accordingly a neutralizing 
 duty was placed upon cloth fifty cents per pound to offset the duty of about 
 twelve cents per pound on wool; it taking about four pounds of wool, upon the 
 average, to make a yard of cloth. As the tariff went into operation the wool man- 
 ufacturer felt its operation first. This fifty cents per pound on cloth was a barrier 
 which was raised against the importation of foreign cloths ; and, but for the de- 
 mands of the wool-grower for protection to his interests, the manufacturer would 
 not have had the benefit of it. The result has been to shut out European goods, 
 and to build up our home manufactures as nothing ever did before. To the 
 demands of the wool-growers we owe the best protection that has ever been 
 given to our manufacturers. Said an intelligent manufacturer to me the other 
 day, " I have been manufacturing wool for thirty years, and this is the first 
 time the plug has ever been in." 
 
 Now, if our government has given this encouragement to the woollen manu- 
 facture, the next question is, Has the manufacturer responded ? Has he done 
 his duty ? in other words, has it paid to encourage the manufacturer ? 
 
 Let us make a comparison between the position of the woollen manufacturer 
 in this country and the industry abroad. And I cannot express my ideas upon 
 this point in a better way than by reading an extract from a report upon wool- 
 lens, at the Paris Exposition, prepared conjointly by one of the most eminent 
 of our practical manufacturers and myself: 
 
 " A more important point of comparison between American and foreign fabrics is the 
 relative cost of production of such manufactures as we have most successfully achieved 
 here, measured by the only correct standard, the relative expenditure of human labor 
 required for such production. The solution of this question will determine whether we 
 have such natural or acquired advantages as will justify the encouragement of this man- 
 ufacture as a national industry. In pursuing this inquiry, we can fix upon no single 
 representative article of uniform quality and value; such as a ton of pig iron, the 
 relative cost of which would determine the comparative advantages of the American or 
 foreigner in the manufacture of iron. The infinite variety of cloths forbids the selec- 
 tion of any one as the standard of comparison, even if it were possible to obtain data 
 from the books of foreign manufacturers. This question must be solved for the pro- 
 / ducts of the card-wool industry, generally, by comparing the efficiency of our system,
 
 64 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 processes, and machinery of fabrication. The many practical manufacturers who have 
 recently visited Europe, for the express purpose of studying its industries, concur in 
 declaring that, in these respects, we are on an equality with the most advanced nations. 
 Laying aside the supposed advantages which we have, in the possession of water- 
 power, upon which far too much stress is laid in popular estimates, we apply every- 
 where, in our fabrication of woollens, the factory system, and make the utmost use of 
 mechanical power, while handicraft processes are still largely used abroad, especially in 
 weaving. For the preparation of card-wool, no machinery at the Exposition equalled 
 in efficiency the American burring machinery exhibited there, such as is in general use 
 here. In the carding of wool no improvements were seen at Verviers, one of the chief 
 centres of the card-wool industry in Europe, which we do not have in use. About the 
 same number of hands were employed at the cards as here. Spinning, in large estab- 
 lishments abroad, is usually performed by mules; while jack spinning is more generally 
 adopted in New England, as better suited to the different qualities and quantities of 
 yarns demanded by the variety of fabrics usually produced in our mills. The mules 
 used here are of equal efficiency with those in the best mills in Europe. With respect 
 to weaving, it was remarked that looms were being constructed at the machine shops at 
 Verviers, such as we would not put into our mills to-day. It was also remarked, that 
 no European looms for weaving fancy goods were shown at the Exposition, which would 
 bear comparison with the Crompton loom, and even upon that admirable machine great 
 improvements are known to be in progress. The other processes of manufacture, such 
 as dyeing, are the same as in Europe. When we take into consideration the greater 
 energy and intelligence of our better fed and better educated workmen; the necessary 
 use of every labor-saving process, on account of the higher cost of labor here; and the 
 admitted superiority in construction of American machinery, it may be safely asserted 
 that a yard of cloth is made in this countiy with less hours of human labor than one 
 of equal quality and the same degree of finish abroad. In other words, a week's labor 
 will produce more yards of cloth in an American than in an European mill. But it is 
 said that a yard of cloth costs less in Europe than in the United States. Even this 
 statement requires qualification, for the American laborer can purchase here more yards 
 of cloth, by the produce of a day's work, than the European laborer, the ratio of the 
 price of cloth in this country, to-day, not being in proportion to the ratio of the rate of 
 wages of ordinary labor. It is still true, that the money cost of producing cloths is 
 greater in this country than in Europe. From what has been said, it is apparent that 
 the greater money cost of fabricating cloths is not due to any want of natural advan- 
 tages, or any deficiency in skill and effective labor on the part of the Americ:m manu- 
 facturer. It is not true of this industry, as is often asserted by theorists, that it has a 
 sickly and hot-bed growth, sustained only by artificial stimulus; and rendering its pro- 
 ductions as unnatural, to use Adam Smith's often-quoted comparison, 'as that of wine 
 produced from grapes grown in the hot-houses of Scotland.' The higher cost of produc- 
 tion in that country is due, solely, to national causes inherent to the condition of a new 
 country and a progressive people, or the higher rates of interest on capital required to 
 initiate and sustain industrial enterprise, and the higher rates of labor demanded by the 
 greater social and educational requirements of our industrial population." 
 
 So we see that the free-trade argument, that unrestricted competition with 
 other nations would lead us to the exercise of higher skill, amounts to nothing 
 at all. We have already in the woollen manufacture more skill than foreign 
 nations ; for a week's labor in the American mills produces more than a week's 
 labor in the mills abroad. If we had unrestricted foreign competition with our 
 home products, how should we be able to pay our high prices for labor 1 How 
 could we keep up the rates of labor to that standard which is essential to the 
 prosperity of our workmen ? We protectionists declare, as the foundation of
 
 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 65 
 
 our whole argument, tliat the wage? of labor sliould be brought up, and kept 
 up; while, on the other side, they invariably acknowledge, if they are fair and 
 intelligent men, that the results of free trade will be to reduce the price of 
 labor; and that we cannot continue to manufacture and compete with foreigners 
 except by reducing the price of labor to the foreign standard. A certain class 
 of philosophers and benevolent men in this country, and among them a good 
 many of those who have been advocates of free soil doctrines, such men as 
 William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, carried away by the sentiment 
 of universal philanthropy, have been inclined to the side of free trade, and to 
 overlook entirely the particular interests of this country. But I find, in a very 
 recent letter of Mr. Phillips, some remarks embodying an argument which 
 covers the whole ground upon which we found protection. The blessings of 
 protection and the malign results of free trade were never more eloquently por- 
 trayed than in the vivid words which I will read to you : 
 
 " Putting aside all theories, every lover of progress must see with profound 
 regret the introduction here of any element which will lessen wages. The main- 
 spring of our progress is high wages, wages at such a level that the working- 
 man can spare his wife to preside over a ' home,' can command leisure, go to 
 lectures, take a newspaper, and lift himself from the deadening level of mere toil. 
 That dollar left after all the bills are paid on Saturday night means education, in- 
 dependence, self-respect, manhood : it increases the value of every acre near by, 
 fills tlu- to vn with dwellings, opens public libraries and crowds them; dots the 
 continent with cities, and cobwebs it with railways. That one remaining dollar 
 insures progress, and guarantees millions to its owner better than a score of stat- 
 utes. It is worth more than a thousand colleges, and makes armies and police 
 superfluous." 
 
 I have not talked about the improvement of the woollen manufacture abroad, 
 but here at home, as applied to this country, because I conceive that that is 
 what we have to do with. Providence has so arranged it that the instinct of self- 
 preservation shall be the strongest fnstinct of our nature. In a man of little cul- 
 ture, where that instinct is strong, it leads to selfishness ; give him more culture, 
 and it leads to a kind of selfishness, ' to self-interest ; next, he looks not 
 only at his own personal interests, but at those of his family ; and with a still 
 greater degree of enlightenment and culture he begins to look after his coun- 
 try. When a man goes outside of his country to work, he generally works 
 with very little effect. With the old Greeks and Romans, patriotism was the first 
 of all the virtues ; and during our war we thought patriotism was a very great 
 virtue ; we partook a great deal of the Greek and Roman sentiment on that sub- 
 ject, and our young men were so inspired by that sentiment that they could pour 
 out their life-blood with a smile of peace and triumph. We now hear the tocsin 
 of war resounding through Europe, and we are about to witness there one of those 
 great conflicts which, in the end, are always sure to advance the cause of human 
 liberty. Meanwhile, in this country, we find the Germans, almost as one man, 
 crying out for Fatherland; and upon the other hand, the French, with one voice, 
 shouting for their country, forgetful of every wrong, forgetful of exile, forgetful of 
 every leeling of animosity toward the Emperor. To them France is still Ma mere 
 bleu aimce, " My mother well beloved." One of Pan-idol's last expressions was, " If 
 war breaks out in France, there will be but one party, the party of the Govern- 
 ment." 
 
 9
 
 66 THE PROTECTIVE QUESTION ABROAD. 
 
 The most sublime example, illustrating this love of country, is that of the 
 great Author of our religion : "O Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! How often would I have 
 gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings." 
 What depth of love for his country was there ! I once heard Parodi sing those 
 words to the music of one of the great Masters, and as she prolonged the words, 
 " Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! " it brought most vividly before my mind the thought of 
 the agony of love which Jesus had for the country of his fathers. I felt that the 
 doctrine that the love of country must be subordinate to that universal philanthropy 
 which is declared and preached for by free-trade theorists, and men of that class, 
 is the idlest clamor in the world. The human heart and the sentiments of reli- 
 gion declare this. All these things teach us that it is through the development of 
 our own country that we are to earry out the great work which we are called upon 
 to do for the good of mankind. In Expositions like this we are no less truly 
 fighting for our country than if we were fighting for her upon the field of battle. 
 We are doing our part to carry out the country's industrial independence, the 
 only sure foundation of the prosperity of every nation. And when I hear men 
 preaching free-trade theories, and see Americans accepting and repeating the les- 
 sons taught them by England, for the purely selfish purpose of putting down and 
 keeping down our industrial independence, I cannot restrain my indignation. I 
 feel as Jefferson felt towards the Americans of his time who were for assimilating 
 us to the rotten as well as sound parts of the British model, when he described 
 the apostates who had gone over to these heresies as "men who were Samsons in 
 the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the 
 harlot England." 
 
 Let me say in conclusion, gentlemen, that the intelligent manufacturers of 
 New England rejoice in the progress of manufactures at the West. They know 
 very well that the undeniable effect of competition is to diminish the consump- 
 tion of Eastern goods. But they know that this competition, which reduces the 
 prices to consumers, is the strongest argument for the protective policy, without 
 which neither the manufacturers of the East or the West could live for a mo- 
 ment. The true work of the East is the higher branches of manufacture, de- 
 manding the investment of more capital and the employment of the most skilled 
 labor. Such a field exists in the worsted manufacture, or that of dress goods. 
 Our largest clothing mill has already taken off' fifty sets from the manufacture of 
 cloths, and is employing its capital in the production of dress goods. 
 
 The only obstacle to that movement is the want of confidence in the continu- 
 ance of our protective system. It would cost a million or two millions of dollars 
 to build a worsted mill which could fairly compete with the best mills of Brad- 
 ford or lloubaix. So long as British influence can make it doubtful whether our 
 protective system will continue, American capital will fail to flow into the new 
 investments in the woollen manufacture. The British manufacturers can well 
 afford, therefore, to agitate free trade in this country. They do not expect to 
 repeal our tariff laws, but they deter capital from new manufacturing investments. 
 It is really British influence which is now retarding our national progress, just 
 as it did in the early period of our national existence. It is this influence, which, 
 unconsciously it may be, makes men, who are otherwise honest and patriotic, 
 advocates of the baleful system of British free trade ; and which makes the re- 
 mark of Mr. Jefferson, in his letter to Mr. Mazzei, as true now as it was then.
 
 Ul/OD
 
 i 
 
 i