4 Housatonic Agricultural Society. 



the two owners. There was no flooding of the country at that time 

 with the cheap goods of foreigners, because the only way that can be 

 brought about is for the natives to flood the foreigners with cheap 

 native goods in exchange, inasmuch as in trade goods are never given 

 away, but are sold against other goods. Free trade does not compel 

 anyl3ody to trade : it does not even recommend anybody to trade ; it 

 merely allows those j^ersons to trade who find it for their profit to do 

 so. Unless it is profitable for them to trade, they will not trade. 

 They have no motive to trade. If it be profitable for any two persons 

 to trade, and a law steps in to prevent it, then that law destroys pro- 

 perty, interferes with rights, and makes the persons subject to it so 

 far forth slaves. 



The new constitution of government that went into operation in 

 1789 forbade any taxes to be laid upon ex2?orts, so that this nation 

 has enjoyed now for almost a centm-y one-haif of the privileges of an 

 absolute free trade ; but unluckily for the people, and pai'ticularly for 

 the farmers, of the country, the constitution allowed of taxes on wi- 

 port8^ a power which has been perverted and abused by selfish and 

 wicked men to the enormous detriment of the masses of the people, 

 and especially of all the interests of agriculture. Most of the states- 

 men of that time were oj^posed to laying any taxes on imports except 

 low and simple ones for the sake of getting money to carry on the 

 government : and even Alexander Hamilton, without whose powerful 

 help the system of perverting taxes so as to enrich the few at the ex- 

 pense of tiie many, miscalled "protection," would not then have come 

 in, was himself in favor of paying bounties to certain industries out- 

 right from the treasury so that everybody could see what was given 

 for what was got, and really demonstrated in his first report to Con- 

 gTess as Secretary of the Treasury the uselessness of an}^ protection 

 at all by enumerating many branches of manufactui'es that were then 

 thriving in this country ; and James Madison, in the debate in the 

 House of Representatives, said : " I ovm myself the friend of a very 

 free system of commerce: if industry and labor are left to take their 

 own course they vnll generally be directed to those objects which are 

 most productive, and that m a manner more certain and direct than 

 the vyisdom of the most enlightened-legislature coidd point out ; nor 

 do I believe that the national interest is more proynoted by such legis- 

 lative directions than the interests of the individuals concerned^ 



But shrewd members of this first Congress, mostly from New 

 England, at the instance and under the pressure of certain men who 

 thought thereby to raise the j)rice artificially of theii- own special 

 home products, by means of lobbjdng and log-rolling, and with the 

 assistance of the Secretary of the Treasury, caused to jDass the first 

 tariff bill for the United States. Its preamble was, " Whereas, it is 

 necessa.ry for the support of the Government, for the discharge of 

 the debts of the United States, and the encouragement and protection 

 of manufactures, that duties he laid,''' and so on. The actual duties 

 laid in this first tariff were very low — on cotton and woolen goods 

 only five, and on iron goods only seven and one-half, ^>6r centum ; 

 but then a false principle, namely, that a man's neighbors may be in- 



