The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1867-01-24
NO. AZ.

/
.can people began to practice upon the
maxims of selfdefense and selfdepend-
ence. From having been, if not abso-
lutely impoverished and almost without
remunerative enterprise, depressed by un
employed labor and idle capital, all their
great material agencies were brought into
motion with promptitude, and kept in
operation with rapidity and regularity,
which relieved them from want, their
country from danger, and excited the
amazcment of civilized nations.
Protection to the manufactures of the
country, when rightly Viewed, is merely
the defense Of labor against competition
from abroad. The wages of labor in the
United States is higher than those in any
other country, consequently our laborers
are the more elevated. Labor is the foun-
aatlon OF sboth individual aud national
wealth and those nations that have best
protected 1t from foreign competition
have been the most prosperous. 1t is
clearly, therefore, the interest OF the na-
ton to foster and protect domestic indus
try, by relieving from internal taxation
every sort Of labor, and imposing such
heavy duties upon all importations of for
elSn manufactured articles, as to prevent
the possibility OF com petition from abroad.
Not only should individual enterprise aud
industry be thus be thus encouraged, but
all public works, liberal aud properly
restricted general railroad system, and in
ternal Improvements OF every kind, re-
ceive the fostering care and most liberal
ali OF the Government. We are rich in
everything necessary to-meet our wants,
and render US indepenent of every other
country, aud we have only to avail our
selves OF cur own resources and capabili-
ties, to progress continually onward to 4
degree OF greatness never yet attained by
any nation. Oar agricultural, mineral
and manufacturing resources are UNEQUAL
ed, and 1t should be our constant study to
devise and prosecute means tending to
their highest Development
Why, then, should not the wisdom Of
Government make available the teachings
Of experience, and at once legislate for the
manifest good of the people? Why per-
nit our manufactures to beg that they
may live?
The Government of Great Britain has,
by her protective system, ''p;led duty up
on duty" for more than one hundred and
fifty years, and hence upon protection is
founded her manufacturing supremacy.
Yet her emissaries come to this country,
and for sinister purposes extol "free
trade, speak scofingly of projections"
and endeavor to persude our people to be-
lieve and adopt the absured theory, that
''tariEs hinder the development of indus
try and the growth of weaith"
The great Republican party in the Con-
vcntion which nominated Abraham Lin
coin, in Chicago, in 1860, as if preparing
for the very war which most Of our states
men were a. that period anxious to post
pone, adopted a resolution, which" to
use the language Of an eminent Pennsy-
lvanian, "declaYed that the produce of the
farm should no longer be compelled to re-
main inert and losing interest while wait
ing demand in distant markets that the
capital which daily took the form of labor
power should no longer be allowed to go
to waste; thatthe fuel which underlies our
soil should no longer there remain to be
mere support for for foreign rails that
the power which lay then pertiied in the
form of coal should everywhere be brought
to aid the human arm that our vast de-
posite Of iron ore should be made to take
the form o.! engines and other machinery,
to DC used as substitutes for mere mus
cular force ; aud that all our wonderful
resources, material and moral, must and
should be at once developed
'Such was the intent aud meaning of
the brief resolution then and there adopt
ed, to be at the earliest practicable mo-
ment ratified by Congress, as proved to be
the case when the Morrill, tariff, on the
memorable ID Of March, 1861, was made
the law Of the land. To that Law, aided
as it was by the admirable action of the
Treasury in supplying machinery of cir
cnlation, we stand now indebted for the
fact that we have, in the short space of
FIVE years, produced more food, built moro
houses and mills, opened more mines,
constructed more roads than everbefore,
and so greatly added to the wealth of tho
country that the property of the loyal
States would this day exchange for twice
the quantity Of gold that could five years
since have been obtained for all the real
and personal property, Southern chattles
excepted, of the whole Of the States and
and Territories Of which the Union stands
composed"
Ii the principle Of protection proved to
be such a talsman in the time of war,
shall we reject it in time of peace? If
an answer were needed to this question
reference could be had to the repeated
concessions to this principle by the re-
ceut free traders of the South. Scarcely
one OF the ambitious men who led their
unfortunate people into rebellion, bat now
freely admits that ifthe South had manu-
iactured their own fabrics, on their own
plantations, aud cultivated skilled labor in
ihier great cities, they would have been
able to proloug their conflict with the Co.
~ noyg ~ an;ox- snbstant;,l