As little can be inferred from the occasional transfer of United States
stock to England. Considering the interest paid on our stocks, the
entire stability of our credit, and the accumulation of capital in
England, it is not at all wonderful that investments should occasionally
be made in our funds. As a sort of countervailing fact, it may be
stated that English stocks are now actually held in this country,
though probably not to any considerable amount.
I will now proceed, Sir, to state some objections of a more general
nature to the course of Mr. Speaker's observations.
He seems to me to argue the question as if all domestic industry were
confined to the production of manufactured articles; as if the
employment of our own capital and our own labor, in the occupations of
commerce and navigation, were not as emphatically domestic industry as
any other occupation. Some other gentlemen, in the course of the debate,
have spoken of the price paid for every foreign manufactured article as
so much given for the encouragement of foreign labor, to the prejudice
of our own. But is not every such article the product of our own labor
as truly as if we had manufactured it ourselves? Our labor has earned
it, and paid the price for it. It is so much added to the stock of
national wealth. If the commodity were dollars, nobody would doubt the
truth of this remark; and it is precisely as correct in its application
to any other commodity as to silver.
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