158 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. [March, 



hindrance to its manufacture. Should they, on the other hand, 

 attempt by high duties, to protect the manufacture of silk, 

 they must leave the admission of raw silk free, which would 

 proportionately discourage the cultivation. A system of utter 

 prohibition of foreign silk, or foreign silk goods, would be likely 

 to result no better than did the same system of prohibition and 

 monopoly, which was pursued in Great Britain for a very long 

 period of years. It would enhance the price, but diminish the 

 consumption. It would check enterprise and ingenuity in the 

 improvement and the manufacture. It would tend to divert 

 much labor into new channels of industry without any corres- 

 ponding advantage. So far from putting a stop to smuggling, 

 the temptation to the illicit introduction of silk would be vastly 

 increased. 



To the laying of a reasonable duty upon imported silk, wheth- 

 er raw or manufactured, for revenue, there can be no sound objec- 

 tion. Silk being wholly a luxury is a fit subject of tax, as the tax 

 must of course fall upon those who are best able to pay it. 

 But beyond this, any legislative enactments with a view to force 

 its culture here, would be met by attempts to defeat or evade 

 the law, which in such an article as silk in any form, from the 

 small space which it occupies in proportion to its value, would 

 be but too successful. As I have already remarked, the exor- 

 bitant duty of thirty-six, or forty per cent, as it was a short 

 time since, upon sewings, has served not to benefit our own 

 manufacture, but rather materially to injure the sale of the 

 article, by the inducements offered, and the consequent illegal 

 introduction of the foreign article. 



XX. — Calculations respecting Silk Products. — I am 

 aware that I oppose the popular opinion in speaking thus dis- 

 couragingly of the manufacture of silk in our country. It 

 would be more agreeable to float with the tide than to struggle 

 against it ; but whether the oi)inion of an individual be of little 

 or much weight in the community, he is bound to respect his 

 own judgment, and is at liberty to utter only his honest convic- 



