No. 200.] 229 



the public good. It was but sixty-four years ago that Thomas Jeffer- 

 son said, " Such is our attachment to agriculture, and such our pre- 

 ference for foreign manufactures, that, be it wise or unwise, our 

 people will certainly return as soon as ihey can to the raising raw 

 materials, and exchanging them for liner manufactures than they are 

 able to execute themselves." 



But sixty-four years, when the world moves by machinery, is a 

 Methuselah's life ; and if that eminent philosopher had anticipated the 

 realities which these days disclose, he had also foreseen how admira- 

 bly, under his own institutions, the finest manufactures of Europe 

 might be rivalled by a people whose attachment to agriculture re- 

 mained unshaken. 



Facts are surer guides than theories can be. 



" Experience is \>y industry achieved, 

 And perfected by the swift course of time." 



What the measure of protection is that goverment may most wisely 

 extend, it is no part of my present purpose to consider. But two 

 conclusions the past has established ; that a permanent and steady 

 policy should be pursued, and that protection as such should be so ap- 

 plied, that the favor granted may not prejudicially affect interests 

 equally important, and deserving equal consideration. 



Of the value of our manufactures as a means of supplying our 

 home wants, no difference of opinion can exist. Our experience has 

 been too recent and too impressive, not to have convinced us that the 

 same parental care with which other nations have uniformly guarded 

 the labor of the subject, must be assumed and fell by our own to- 

 ward that of the citizen, if the citizen and the subject are to trade to- 

 gether upon terms of reciprocal advantage. Such considerations con- 

 cern us at present, only as they tend to make plain the intimate union 

 of those interests which this Institute would encourage. I do not be. 

 lieve in the truth of the position, that if the manufacturer is helped, 

 the merchant or the farmer is by consequence hurt. 



That partial legislation is possible, we know ; but that because the 

 life and health of one was preserved, the others must fall sick, is a 

 theory all fancy-built. For what are our manufactures wanted ? Thai 

 labor may be profitably employed ; that all the people shall not, in the 

 words of Mr. Jefferson, return to the raising of raw materials ; thai. 



