Speaker, we are
not supplied with satisfactory grounds of judging with respect to these
various particulars. Who can tell, from any thing yet before the
committee, whether the proposed duty be too high or too low on any one
article? Gentlemen tell us, that they are in favor of domestic industry;
so am I. They would give it protection; so would I. But then all
domestic industry is not confined to manufactures. The employments of
agriculture, commerce, and navigation are all branches of the same
domestic industry; they all furnish employment for American capital and
American labor. And when the question is, whether new duties shall be
laid, for the purpose of giving further encouragement to particular
manufactures, every reasonable man must ask himself, both whether the
proposed new encouragement be necessary, and whether it can be given
without injustice to other branches of industry.
It is desirable to know, also, somewhat more distinctly, how the
proposed means will produce the intended effect. One great object
proposed, for example, is the increase of the home market for the
consumption of agricultural products. This certainly is much to be
desired; but what provisions of the bill are expected wholly or
principally to produce this, is not stated. I would not deny that some
increase of the home market may follow, from the adoption of this bill,
but all its provisions have not an equal tendency to produce this
effect. Those manufactures which employ most labor, create, of course,
most demand for articles of consumption; and those create least in the
production of which capital and skill enter as the chief ingredients of
cost.
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