OF AMERICA. 



ally paid for rent in England. But, on the other hand, the 

 British farmer enjoys for the present one decided advantage : 

 he sells his produce in the dearest, and buys his clothing, 

 implements, &c. &c., in the cheapest market in the world. 



Let us, however, continue our inquiry as to the total 

 annual amount taken out of the pockets of the Western 

 farmers by exorbitant protective duties. These duties 

 have a yTery wide range. They are as low as lo per cent, 

 on diamonds which the Western farmer does not use, and 

 as high as 93 per cent, on cleaned rice which he does use. 

 They are levied on no less than 1,600 different articles, some 

 of them yielding less revenue than it costs to collect it, and 

 the whole producing a complexit}^ which gives comfortable 

 employment to swanns of clerks, &:c., at every seaport. 

 The heaviest per-centage rates are tliose imposed on articles 

 of general and necessar)^ consumption by the people, which 

 accordingly contribute very nearly three-fourths of the total 

 amount collected. But let us strike an average. By a care- 

 ful comparison of the total value of the chief dutiable 

 foreign articles imported in the year 1878, with the total 

 amount of duties levied in that year on the same articles, 

 it has been clearly ascertained that the average rate of 

 duties paid on their value was 42I per cent. Were the 

 average confined to the articles named in the table at p. 9, 

 it would no doubt much exceed 42I per cent., but, to be within 

 the mark, we will adopt the general average. This average 

 then (42I per cent.), is the measure of the difference be- 

 tween the prices which the Western farmers now pay for 

 what they consume, and those which they would pay were 

 foreign articles admitted duty free. The prices which the 

 manufacturers in the Eastern States make the American 

 people pay for their goods are not, and cannot be, less, but 

 are, and must be, something more than 42I per cent, in 

 addition to British prices, or else how could the Britisher 

 pay an average of 42I per cent, duties, and still make a 

 profit on what he sends to America ? If the prices paid by 

 the Western farmer to the manufacturers of the Eastern 

 States only exceeded British prices by, say 25 per cent., no 



