Address. 7 



Exports indeed can not be taxed under our system, but the return 

 goods for the sake of getting wliicli the exports are sent out are out- 

 rageoush' taxed, and therefore the exportables are lowered in value, 

 and accordingly the farmers who furnish most of the exportables bear 

 most of the burdens of '-protection." They pay in consequence of it 

 more than is just for most that they buy and sell for less than is just 

 most that they sell. 



These few short sentences of Fisher Ames in 1789 let the pro- 

 tectionist cat right out of her bag. Our people are not poor enough, 

 and neyer were, to carr}' on unprofitable branches of industry, to sup- 

 port which the whole community has to be taxed, and particularly 

 the agricultural classes. Mr. Ames seems rather to enyy the situa- 

 tion of the manufacturers of Europe, where "the artisan is driven to 

 labor for his bread,'' and w^here ''stern necessity vdth her iron rod 

 compels his exertion." He seems to deem the situation in America 

 unfortunate, where, "without invitation and encouragement" (that is 

 to say, without burdensome taxes imposed on the people to support 

 it) "the infant manufacture droops, and those who might he enq^loyed 

 in it seek with success a conipetency from our cheap ayid fertile soiiy 

 "What is then to be done, if afleged unprofitable manufactures are to 

 be carried on in the face of the competition of agriculture, in which 

 a "competency" can at any time be sought "with success?" AVhy, 

 the thing to be done, and the thing that was done, and the thing that 

 is still being done, was to depress agriculture with abominable taxes ! 

 To drag it down, if possible, to the level of the alleged unprofitable 

 "infant" manufactures! Protection assumed at the outset, and has 

 maintained to this day, an attitude of unceasing hostility to the tillers 

 of the soil. Protectionist manufacturers, who are a mere fraction of 

 the population, have cajoled the farmers, who are one-half of the i)op- 

 ulation, to consent to pay for their supplies prices artificially enhanced 

 by law, and to sell their produce at jjrices artificially depressed by 

 law, in order to enable the said manufacturers to carry on branches 

 of industry, which, as they say, would otherwise be wholly unprofit- 

 able and impossible. There never was a greater delusion than this 

 on the part of the farmers, and there never was a worse swindle than 

 this on the part of the party of the other part. 



Even the farmers of the North, where most of the so-called "in- 

 fant" manufactures were situated, (some of them had already been 

 caiTied on at a profit for 150 years — the cotton, woolen and linen in- 

 dustries having been established at Eowley, Mass., in 1638) came 

 slowly under this delusion, and many of them in every generation 

 have wholly repudiated it. But the farmers of the South perceived 

 the true nature of the snare almost from the first, and they fronted 

 it thereafter with a just indignation. The tariff of 1828, which was 

 called in the politics of the time the "Tariff of Abominations," brought 

 South Carolina to the very verge of secession and rebellion. Mr. 

 Calhoun's extreme doctrine of State rights would never have been de- 

 veloped by him but for what he deemed to be, and what was, an out- 

 rageous infringement by "protection" of the rights of the Southern 

 planters. It is but the simple truth to say, that the late civil wai- 



