manufactured at home for eight dollars, it is evident that a tariff of one dollar and a quarter on the imported yard would protect the home manufacture in time of peace, and avoid a tax of one dollar and a half imposed by a state of war.
It cannot be said that the manufactures which could not support themselves against foreign competition, in periods of peace, would spring up of themselves at the recurrence of war prices. It must be obvious to every one, that, apart from the difficulty of great and sudden changes of employment, no prudent capitalists would engage in expensive establishments of any sort, at the commencement of a war of uncertain duration, with a certainty of having them crushed by the return of peace.
The strictest economy, therefore, suggests, as exceptions to the general rule, an estimate, in every given case, of war and peace, periods and prices, with inferences therefrom of the amount of a tariff which might be afforded during peace, in order to avoid the tax resulting from war; and it will occur at once that the inferences will be strengthened by adding, to the supposition of wars wholly foreign, that of wars in which our own country might be a party.
3. It is an opinion in which all must agree, that no nation ought to be unnecessarily dependent on others for the munitions of public defence, or for the materials essential to a naval force, where the nation has a maritime frontier, or a foreign commerce, to protect. To this class of exceptions to the theory may be added the instruments of agriculture, and of the mechanic arts which supply the other primary wants of the community. The time has been, when many of these were derived from a foreign source, and some of them might relapse into that dependence, were the encouragement of the fabrication of them at home withdrawn. But, as all foreign sources must be liable to interruptions too inconvenient to be hazarded, a provident policy would favor an internal and independent source, as a reasonable exception to the general rule of consulting cheapness alone.
4. There are cases where a nation may be so far advanced in the prerequisites for a particular branch of manufactures, that this, if once brought into existence, would support itself; and yet, unless aided, in its nascent and infant state, by public encouragement and a confidence in public protection, might remain, if not altogether, for a long time, unattempted without success. Is not our cotton manufacture a fair example? However favored by an advantageous command of the raw material, and a machinery which dispenses in so extraordinary a proportion with manual labor, it is quite probable that, without the impulse given by a war cutting off foreign supplies, and the patronage of an early tariff, it might not even yet have established itself; and pretty certain that it would be far short of the prosperous condition which enables it to face, in foreign markets, the fabrics of a nation that defies all other competitors. The number must be small that would now pronounce this manufacturing boon not to have been cheaply purchased by the tariff which nursed it into its present maturity.
5. Should it happen, as has been suspected, to be an object, though not of a foreign government itself, of its great manufacturing capitalists, to strangle in the cradle the infant manufactures of an extensive customer, or an anticipated rival, it would surely, in such a case, be incumbent on the suffering party so far to make an exception to the "let alone" policy, as to parry the evil by opposite regulations of its foreign commerce.
6. It is a common objection to the public encouragement of particular branches of industry, that it calls off laborers from other branches found to be more profitable; and the objection is in general a weighty one. But it loses that character in proportion to the effect of the encouragement in attracting skillful laborers from abroad. Something of this sort has already taken place among ourselves, and much more of it is in prospect; and, as far as it has taken or may take place, it forms an exception to the general policy ill question.
The history of manufactures in Great Britain, the greatest manufacturing nation in the world, informs us that the woolen branch—till of late her greatest branch—owed both its original and subsequent growths to persecuted
