260 ' [Assembly 



the country, gives agriculture a market at her own door and furnishes 

 the farmer with the very goods and implements he wants within an 

 hour's ride of his homestead. 



" In a moral view, too, it is good. The little villages springing 

 up, new improved water works, are large enough to invite schools 

 and academies, yet not so large as to support gambling houses and 

 like pestilences. 



" In regard to the free trade, no nation but England could adopt it 

 with any degree of rationality. It is her object, it is essential to 

 her prosperity, that she should obtain the monopoly of the world. 

 The German league excluded her fabrics in that quarter; our coarse 

 cottons interfered with her in several foreign ports; rise in food was 

 increasing the cost of production — for to give corresponding increas- 

 ed wages would bring the actual cost of many of her manufactures 

 above that of ours. Therefore to compete with us, and reduce the 

 cost of her productions, she must have cheaper food, which would 

 follow free trade as a matter of course; and therefore the duties 

 were modified. How far her agriculturists will question this modifi- 

 cation, remains to be seen. But it is her policy in this modification 

 to look for remuneration to other nations; when she takes the value 

 of .£5,000,000 she expects to send £10,000,000 in return, keeping 

 the cash balance in her favor. 



" I do not look upon the recent modification of our tariff as likely 

 to be at once very pernicious; the greatest evil that first ensues is 

 want of confidence in the stability of the government policy. Some 

 look upon all laws which spring from a parental regard by the go- 

 vernment for the prosperity of her children, the people, as an inter- 

 ference with personal rights. Still there is no monopoly among us, 

 as there has been in England in many instances. Trade between 

 our Stc-tes and people is unrestricted. What we desire by protec- 

 tion is security against foreign competition — to secure American 

 supplies for American markets; believing manufactures to be as de- 

 sirable in this country as agriculture. 



" In Rhode Island the cotton manufacture was begun the year she 

 came into the Union. A memorial was immediately sent to Con- 

 gress at Philadelphia, asking to have the duty of three cents per 

 pound on raw cotton taken off. One of the Senators from Georgia 

 advised the petitioners to take back their memorial, telling them that 

 if the duty was kept on, Georgia would in a few years raise cotton 



