Lancaster gazette. [volume] (Lancaster, Mass.) 1828-1830, 1829-02-03


ing, of course, their thoughts most turned
to the subject of manufactures. A like
inference may be confidently applied t
New-Jersey, whose debates in ConVen
ton have not been preserved.
In the populous and manufacturing
State Of Pennsylvania, partial account
only of the debates having been published
nothing certain is known of what passed
in her Convention on this point. Bul
ample evidence may be found elsewhere
that regulations of trade, for the encour
4 agement of manufactures, were consider.
ed as within the power to be granted &
the new Congress, as well as within The
scope of the national policy. OF the
States south of Pennsylvania, the only
two in whose Conventions the debates
have been preserved are Virginia and
North Carolina, and from these no ad.
verse differences can be drawn. Nor il
There the slightest indication that eithy
of the two States farthest south. whose
debates in Convention if preserved have
not been made puhlick, viewed the en-
couragement of manufactures, as not with
in the general power over trade to be
transferred to the Government ofthe Unit
ed States.
/ 3. IfCongress have not thepower, it is
annihilated for the nation policy with
out example in any other nation, and not
within the reason Of the solitary one in our
own. The example alluded to- is the
prohibition of tax OH exports, which re-
suited from the apparent impossibility Of
raising, in that mode, a. revenue from the
States proportioned to the ability to paw
1.-THE ability of some being derived, in
a great measure, not from their exports.
but from their fisheries, from their freights,
and from commerce at large, in some Of
its branches altogether external to the
United States the profits from all which.
being invisible and intangible, would es-
cape tax on exports. A tax on imports,
on the other hand, being tax on con-
sumption, which is in proportion to the
ability ofthe consumers, whatsoever de-
rived, was free from that inequality.
q. Ifrevenue be the sole object of a
Legitimate impost, and the encouragement
of domestick articles be not within the
power Of regulating trade, it would follow
that no monopolizing or unequal regula-
tons Of foreign nations could be counter
acted that neither the staple articles Of
subsistence, nor the essential implements
for the publick safety, could, under any
circumstances, be insured or fostered at
home by regulations of commerce, the
usual and most convenient mode of pro-
@yiding for both; and that the American
navigation, though the source of naval de-
fence, of a cheapening competition in
carrying out valuable and bulky articles to
market, and Of an independent carriage
ofthem during foreign wars, when for
eign navigation might be Withdrawn, must
be at once abandoned, or speedily des.
troyed it being evident that a tonnage
J duty in foreign ports against our vessels,
and an exemption from such duty in
our ports, in favour of foreign vessels,
must have the inevitable effect of Danish
ing ours from the ocean.
To assume power to protect our navi-
cation, and the cultivation and fabrication
of all articles requisite for the publick
safety, as incident to the war power, would
be more latitudinary construction Of the
text of the Constitution, than to consider
it as embraced by the specified power to
regulate trade; power which has been
exercised by all nations for those purposes,
and which effects those purposes with less
of interference with the authority and
conyeniency of the States, than might re-
suit from internal and direct modes oil
encouraging the articles, any of which
modes would be authorized, as far as
deemed necessary and proper" by con-
sidering the power as an incidental pow
er.
8. That the encouragement of manu-
features was an object of the power to
regulate trade, is proved by the use made
of the power for that object, in the first
session of the First Congress under the
Constitution when among the members
present were SO many who had been
members of the Federal Convention which
framed the Constitution, and of the State
Conventions which ratified it; each Of
these classes consisting also of members
who had opposed and who had espoused
the Constitution in its actual form. II
does not appear from the printed pro-
ceedings of Congress on that occasion,
that the power was denied by any of them.
And it may be remarked, that Members
from Virginia, in particular, as well Of the
anti-federal as the federal party, the names
then distinguishing those who had opposed
and those who had approved the Consti-
tuition, did not hesitate to propose duties
and to suggest even prohibitions in favour
of several articles of her production.
BY one duty was proposed on nine
raj coal, in favour of the Virginia coal
pits; by another, duty on hemp was pro-
nosed to encourage the growth of tina;