New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-11-27

Also 20 that our consumers of Iron are compelled by
this duty TO pay Fourteen Millions -Four Hundred
Thousand Dollars into the pockets OF the American
Iron-masters in order that this $4,SOO,OOO may be
secured for the Treasury. What sort OF economy,
political or otherwise, is thisI Why should the
consumers of Iron pay this exOrbitant sum to favored
individuals-all Of them asserted to be rolling in
wealth-in order to get an amount so much
smaller into the Treasury Surely, if the Free
Traders premises are sound-(as feel sure they are
not)-Tariff taxation, though Revenue be its sole
object, is the most unequal, unjust, injurious mode
in which the Treasury can BIO replenshed; and the
fact that we are heavily in debt and obliged to raise
large sums by taxation, should dictate the entire
abrogation of Duties on Imports, ana the suDstltu-
ton therefor of some system which would not take
four dollars from the community for every one that
it put into tho Treasury, The naked fact that the
Free Traders persist in declaring themselves sup
porters of Tariff for Revenue proves them insincere
in their fundamental positions or extremely reckless
of the public interest and welfare.
XI. Our Revolutionary patriots were, with few
exceptions. farmers. and their statesmen and sol
diers were generally like Washington, engaged in
cutivating the soil Yet the first Tariff ever framed
under our Federal Constitution, declared the Pro-
lection of Manufactures to be one Of its objects
Jefferson and Madison likewise agricultursts;
Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay were the repre-
sentatives in Congress Of constituencies almost
wholly Agricultural; yet these forcibly urged the
Protection of Manufactures expressly for the benefit
of our inland Agriculture. by creating and diffusing
demand for its produce which should not BIO subject
to the fluctuations and caprice of foreign markets
Plant the manufacturer by the side Of the farmer,
said in substance Thomas JetersOn;' so said, IN
those identical words, Gen. Jackson, eight years
later Not in the interest of q manufacturing class
which had as vet no existence but in order that Ag
ricuture might have Just and sure reward, was the
Protective policy commended. not by these only but
by George Clinton, Simon Snyder, Dewitt Clinton,
William L. Marcy. and other eminent Governors OF
States and by large majority of our most honored
statesmen of the Revolutionary and the succeeding
generation. submit that these were not the dupes
of specous phrases, yet of sordd interests, but
that they knew whereof they affirmed and spoke
from personal knowledge of the disasters which pro-
coded, the blessings which followed. the initial tri-
umphs of Protection.
XII. Monopoly is the restriction to one, or small
class, of the right to make, vend or use a certain
article. man may be loosely said to have mon
opoly OF his own farm or freside but how has any
one monopoly of pursuit which is free to all his
countrymen and how can that law be said to create
a monopoly in favor of those now prosecuting BUSH
ness which inevitably strongly invites others to en-
bark in that business and partake fully Of its gans
The use made Of the term Monopoly by Free Traders
seems to afront to the general inteligence-an
ostentatious defiance of dictonaries-an experiment
which presumes an amazing dearth of common sense
Kill Insdous efforts have long been, and still
are being made by Free-Trlders 10 prejudice espe-
cally the West against Protection as device to en-
rich and aggrandze the East, and particularly New
England ut the expense of the newer States If one
were 10 believe the speeches made, the editorials
written, throughout the West. by anti-Protection-
lists, he would suppose that New-England
had devised and originated Protection 10 sub
serve her own special ends. Yet History
proves that New-England opposed Protection
throughout tho earlier struggles in It's behalf
while the Free West with great unanmity
forced it upon her practically constraining her
TO withdraw her capital and energies in good
measure from Navigation and Foreign Trade and
employ them in Manufactures. Aud now. among
the duties most vehemently denounced ut the West
are those Iron. Lumber, and Salt-all Articles
largely imported and consumed by New-Eugland;
none of them, to any considerable extent produced
by her. And. for every furnace and factory built
set to work in the East because Of the Protective
regime iuaugurated in 1861, at least two have been
while more aTe about TO be. called into being in the
West
XIV. The striking fact that moro immigrants have
landed on shores in single year since Indus
try was measurably diversified by the naturalization
and growth of Manufactures, than during the
whole forty years of our National existence which
preceded the passage of the Tariff of 1884, and that
imm grafton is more considerable from Ireland and
the purely Agricultural portions of Germany than
from the far denser populations of Great Britain and
of those German States wherein mixed industry has
taken root, bear their own comment. Right we'll do
comprehend that the discovery of Gold in California
gave special impetus to this immigration. and
that its volume has not always been Immediately
sweed by casual triumph of Protection, nor
diminished by temporary predominance OF relative
Free Trade. The factories and furnaces called into
existence by Protection not closed Immediately
on the passage of a lower tariff; no sensible man
ever imagined that they would be- Important
branches of Home Manufacture long since attained
an efficiency and Perfection. by the aid Of American
invention. machinery, and skill that enables them
to defy foreign rivalry under almost any condi-
tons. 1t is the less true, however, that Popu
lation strongly tends in either hemisphere to aban
don the regions wholly devoted to Agriculture and
concentrate in districts alive and vital with the hiss
of steam, the hum of machinery, and the roar OF
wheels-that the existence and Prosperity of Manu-
features in any country is strongly conducive. if not
Indispensable to the steady. majestic influx thereto
of Immigration.
XIV. Finally, the great truth. so forcibly set forth
by Mr. Clay in 1892, that Protection has been to u
sheet-anchor of Prosperity, handspring of Progress
has not been and can never be explained away. Our
years of signal disaster and depression have been
those in which our ports were most easily flooded
with foreign goods-those which interviewed betwiIt
the recognition of our Independence and the enact
ment of the Tariff of 17S9-those which followed
the close of Last War with Great Britain
and were sgnalized by immense impOrtations