John Taylor of Caroline

“ If we will not exchange the surplus of our industry for the surplus of their industry, we render it as impossible for foreign nations to take our surplus, as it would be for us to take theirs, without such an exchange. Money alone cannot sustain a commerce between two nations, even if both had gold and silver mines. To give money for money would be no commerce at all. Mechanical and agricultural commodities constitute the basis of exchanges, and these exchanges constitute the essence of commerce. ”

“ And thus these echoes between Congress and the court are considered as the only constitutional limitations. This repercussion is the only security against Federal usurpations. "A power to tax, involves a power to destroy." This echo has destroyed the right of taxation reserved to the States, and extended ten miles square to the size of the United States. "Congress has a right to regulate the conduct and interest of individuals," because it is necessary for the sake of political economy. ”

“ The promise of future compensation for present wealth is the cunning offer made by the capitalists to the farmers. Build factories and give bounties to us now, and we will restore to you the blessing of free exchanges the moment we can no longer extort from you an enhanced price for our fabricks. Such is the basis of their arguments, and such the boon by which they are endeavouring to bribe the farmers, without paying any respect to other occupations. Is there any man in his senses who would make such a bargain with another man? ”

“ Is not the price of shirting sufficiently high without enhancing it to enrich capitalists? If money only will be received for foreign goods, must not the trade end soon enough of itself, without hastening its death by restrictions, and infallibly effect one object of the protecting-duty policy — that of compelling us to manufacture. We have not exportable money enough to pay for one year's importation, and when our money is out importations must cease, if our agricultural products will not be received in payment; and when importations cease, manufactures will be in sufficient demand. ”

“ Exchanges of necessaries, conveniences, and especially luxuries, and not mere acquisitions of money, constitute the great impulse, which has caused human nature to make those exertions by which civilization has been extended, knowledge produced, refinements discovered, wealth obtained, and a love of liberty inspired. Leave this impulse undiminished; this moral steam-engine to operate; and its force will be sufficient to drive our commerce, our wealth, and prosperity along, in spite of all the little foreign currents setting in many different directions, which may endeavour to impede them. ”

“ But this whimsical mode of reasoning is gotten over, and the admission of the Committee, that the protection of manufactures by a tax on the community, is wrong, virtually retracted by the magical influence of the word "permanent." A tax on the many to raise a bounty for the few, is allowed by the Committee to be radically wrong, if the tax is permanent. It is impossible to find a better argument in favour of abuses, because it will fit all. The conciliating candour of acknowledging a policy to be bad if permanent, is a solicitation of confidence in the assurance that it is good, if temporary. ”

“ The solitary promise of future cheapness to farmers, to arise from the factory policy, is met by many formidable considerations: If it could be fulfilled at some distant period, the great injury to society from reducing the respectable and numerous class of mechanicks down to Johnson's definition of them; from creating a moneyed aristocracy; and from establishing the policy of exclusive privileges, in which few or no farmers can ever share, would alone suffice to prove that the bribe, if received, would bring along with it a far greater cargo of evils than of benefits. ”

“ Avaricious or ambitious authority, purchased by bribes or patronage, is opposed to honest authority, only sustained by truth. The inquisition itself was defended by this species of authority, because it was a mode of getting power and money. Thus, the authority of all writers on the side of justice, liberty, and good government, is invariably undermined. It is perpetually assailed by exclusive privileges, monopolies, frauds, ambition, and avarice, to deprive mankind of the only beacons which can warn them of the approach of those enemies, by which their prosperity and happiness are destroyed. ”

“ Capitalists will no longer invest their money in agriculture, because that very money demonstrates to them, that agriculture can no longer be profitable. Is it not highly unreasonable that the capitalists should be continually pressing for augmentations of income, when the agricultural occupation is already reduced by the transfers of its profits, to such a state, that they will not in this wide country, abounding in a choice of climates, soils, and products, venture their money in so hopeless a business? ”

“ The experience of five or six revolutions between the liberty of free exchanges, and the coercions, accidental or legal, creating a necessity for household manufactures, have convinced me of their inefficacy for producing wealth, when uncombined with foreign commerce. We are not obliged to elect between foreign manufactures and household manufactures. Let all be free to individual preference; let our eagle-eyed people choose and abstain for themselves. They generally strive to make some surplus annually, and know how to effect it better than the government can inform them. ”

“ If the contributions of industry to unproductive occupations happen to be doubled or trebled by the appreciation of money, I see no remedy for the unforeseen calamity, but a reduction of these contributions to what they substantially were when imposed. What legislature would propose a great and sudden augmentation of taxation, when the value of money was uncommonly high, and the price of products uncommonly low? There is some strange defect in the structure of society, if such an augmentation can be made without any legislative act at all. ”

“ Intricate as the science of political economy has been rendered, by the artificers of exclusive privileges, it yet contains some principles so undeniable, as to explode the whole mass of partial and perplexing calculations, used to conceal or evade them. Among these principles the most important is, that land is the only, or at least the most permanent source of profit; and its successful cultivation the best encourager of all other occupations, and the best security for national prosperity. ”

“ Malthus agrees with him, adding "that as the increase of the land-holder's capital increases population, improvements in agriculture, and the demand for raw materials by commerce, it seems scarcely possible to consider his interests as separated from those of the state and the people." It is therefore impossible that a mechanical surplus, should contribute more to the prosperity of a nation, than an agricultural surplus, even where they are equally attainable; but where they are not equally attainable, no policy can be worse than to break the right, and drive the wrong nail. ”

“ Is it not obvious that this very branch of western commerce, destined soon to become highly valuable on account of the cheapness of timber, and its dearness in foreign countries, depends for prosperity on foreign commerce? Would these ships and their cargoes be purchased and eaten by domestick factories, Western or Atlantick? Why do the Committee endeavour to inspire a hope so absurd, by adding, "that foreign commerce can present no preference over domestick?" Will an undeniable truth establish an undeniable error? ”

“ Confining the idea of competition to a rivalry between domestick factories, its great benefit, a reduction of prices is not to be expected. We cannot get manufactures cheaper by bribing capitalists, because these bribes are themselves an enhancement of price paid by the nation. If the factories should foolishly lose the bribes by a competition among themselves, yet a cheapness beyond that to be derived from keeping the whole field of competition open, could not be produced, because they would export their wares, if they should sell higher in foreign countries than at home. ”

“ The Committee, indeed, blinded by love, like a zealous and deluded cully, have selected a feature of their mistress, so beautiful as in their opinion to hide all her sores; and are transported by her enormous extravagance and taxation, as a masterly effort of human policy. One man often loathes what another loves. ”

“ Taxes are not burdens but blessings to this whole family, because they contribute less than they receive, and an increase of taxation is a new acquisition to them. Is it this fact which has influenced the United States to submit to the policy of a capitalist aristocracy? Neither bankers, nor pensioners, nor lenders to the public, nor receivers of factory bounties, pay any thing to the treasury as such, for their personal consumptions would exist if they were neither bankers, nor pensioners, nor lenders, nor receivers, of factory bounties. ”

“ These foreign and domestick armies are perpetually exclaiming to their governments, "more pay, more pay!" As pay only can win the victory, we must lose it, say our capitalists, unless our government augments our pay as fast, or faster, than the British do that of their army of capitalists. Can there be a finer war for the two armies? The effort is, which government can give its army most wages, or open most purses to their chaste and patriotic fingers. And this kind of war is called by the Committee, "protection to agriculture, which the people have a right to ask of the government." ”

“ To struggle with foreign industry is common to both occupations, and no legal disability to either. But the capitalists add insult to injury to roar out, whilst they are lashing agriculture and commerce with legal restrictions, like Sancho lashing the trees, that they are themselves receiving the blows they inflict. As the constitution designates no national interest in preference to another, it could not have designed that such preferences should be established by legislation, and a species of despotism created which it has carefully avoided and utterly neglected to provide for. ”

“ We have been long engaged in what is called a war of reciprocity, and by the Committee a free commerce. Blow begets blow, and wound follows wound, and commerce is gasping in the battle. Now, say the committee, let us try "whether the transportation from one part of the country to another, of materials to supply our manufactories, and of manufactures back to the raiser of materials, and the export of manufactures, might not employ as much shipping and as many seamen, as the importation of foreign supply." ”

“ If they increase their bounty, we must increase ours. The number of people in England and the United States is nearly equal, therefore their bounties to the respective capitalist armies, must be nearly equal also. But who pays these merry pipers — the people or their governments? Let us shrink from the idea, that our government can protect or enrich us, by transferring our property to capitalists, with a siren song. When nations depend on themselves for protection and wealth, it is a proof that they are free ”

“ For these enormous differences between the condition of the mechanicks in England and the United States, there must be some cause. What can it be, except that the factory and capitalist policy, deprives them of the erect attitude in society inspired by the freedom of industry, and bears hardest upon them, as the chief objects of its gripe? Has this policy bettered the condition of mechanicks, even whilst it was creating enormous fortunes for their masters? ”

“ Tonnage duties fall on consumptions and go into the Treasury; factory duties fall on consumptions, go into the pockets of capitalists; and, by expelling foreign ships, destroy or diminish the revenue drawn from them by tonnage duties. The design that foreign shipping should come here empty and pay a heavy tonnage, and that our shipping should return empty from foreign countries, having paid them a retaliating tonnage, is no bad epitome of the whole project. Have the Committee considered whether other nations will permit our ships to go to them loaded, if we force theirs to come to us empty? ”

“ Then this very accumulation has produced our national decline, by robbing agriculture of the capital by which only this decline can be prevented. Why has the accumulated capital been unable to find employment in our spacious country, where capital has been so successfully employed for two centuries, under provincial disadvantages, and all the sufferings from foreign restrictions? It is because exclusive privileges, which bestow the capital, are too wise to invest it in an occupation, the profits of which are tapped perpetually by their various gimlets. ”

“ The surplus of these is the whole fund for acquiring of foreign nations what we want, but the surplus of capitalists which we have created, acquires nothing. Commerce subsists by exchanges of indigenous for foreign surpluses, and though our surpluses of commodities may sell low, our surplus of capitalists will sell for nothing. By whatever regulation the exchange of our surplus for a foreign surplus is obstructed, national wealth is diminished, because it consists of things which we want, and not of things which we do not want. ”