or quality of inducements that can be held out to buyers in the community where the disturbance or disorder exists.

Suppose the Gulf of Mexico to be infested with pirates, so that the danger to life and risk of property should double the price of sugar brought from New Orleans to New York. This increase of price, caused by the cost of insurance against robbery and murder, so long as it lasted, would be a protection to that extent to the cultivation of maple sugar in the North.

War, under all circumstances, whatever the occasion or result, whether between different nations or parts of the same, always has the effect of disturbing trade, arresting all the healthful agencies of production, and disturbing the harmony of the economic world.

3d, The last of the modes of protection is what we have called legal. It is purely conventional, and arises with the direct purpose of affecting production, or, at least, with the expectation that such will be the result. This is effected, firstly, by the prohibition of imports from one or all nations; secondly, by a direct premium on the products of home industry; or, thirdly, by the imposition of duties on the foreign article.

The former method is so violent and extreme as to be entirely out of the sympathies of modern economy and statesmanship. In so far as it exists, it intends to destroy trade. It may arise during a state of war, or in greatly embittered controversies for purposes of injury or revenge; in which case its effects are to be regarded rather as belonging to a state of war, and as incidental to it, though brought in by specific enactment.

The second, though used at different times and in different countries, has never been a favorite with governments, although it is by far the most economical mode of giving encouragement to a particular branch of industry. An illustration of the great advantage of this mode of protec

tion over that of laying duty on exports will be given in our chapter on national taxation.

We shall have to do, then, only with that kind of legal protection which is secured by the imposition of duties on imports. This has been the practice of nations generally, in a greater or less degree, and so with more or less effect. England formerly laid taxes on four hundred articles brought into her ports from France. The United States has always maintained a system of import duties of a varying character, sometimes directed to one object and sometimes to another, as the popular feeling went.

CHAPTER III.

PROTECTION.

LEGAL protection may be imposed from one or more of four general reasons:

1st, To raise a revenue.

2d, To encourage the protection of certain commodities

at home.

3d, To support existing forms of production.

4th, To secure commercial independence.

All these will be examined in detail.

1st, To raise a revenue. So far as this is the only convenient way in which the state can raise a certain sum of money which it must have, it is but a mode of taxation, with which we have no present concern. So far as it also affects industry, it becomes a species of protection. We have not called it incidental, because its bearing on industry is known and considered in its imposition. So far as the element of protection remains, it should be subject to the judgment which shall be pronounced on what follows. If the "protection" of certain domestic products be found a good, then the revenue duties should be so disposed as to afford them

all possible assistance at the same time that it serves the public purse. If, on the other hand, it is decided to be mischievous to substitute man's law for Nature's, such revenue duties should, as far as may consist with the public safety, be imposed on articles where it will not mislead industry.

2d, To encourage the growth or manufacture of certain commodities at home. This is the field in which protection joins battle of choice with freedom of industry. In all the other particular reasons, its argument is, as we shall see, linked with some real or fancied necessity; but here protection takes ground freely and fairly, virtually making two propositions which it assumes to defend :

First, that the desires of man, as an industrial being, are so blind, so passionate, or so weak, as to require correction by the public will, enlightening, chastening, or stimulating.

Second, that the efforts of man, as an industrial being,. are not sufficient, of themselves, to achieve the satisfaction of desires, without the aid of law, coercing him to that which he would not voluntarily undertake.

What is industrially wanting, then, in man's nature, either individually or in voluntary association, is to be supplied by such enactments as are called protective.

We will inquire about the second of these propositions, with the view of reducing both to one.

Man's industrial efforts can never be assisted in production by any legal enactment. Deriving all value from labor, we have here an adamantine basis, which no sophistry can move. Laws may be supposed to stimulate desires, or to repress them; but they cannot lay hand on man's labor, except to hinder it. It is a power given by the Creator, to work upon the constant properties of matter. It has no fellow. in its work; its only tools are capital, its own creature, and nature, whose forces are fixed by God. Labor has its commission and its reward in itself. Just as surely as man cannot add one cubit to his stature, so is law impotent to help man's labor, except through man's desires.

There is another reason, more abstract, for reducing these two propositions to one. It is, that the efforts men will make are included in their desires. Those efforts are those desires going out after their objects. Man's work is man's want active.

We have thus to consider only the first proposition in the theory of protection; namely, that the desires of man, in the economic sense, need government by law. Men, as consumers, are to be shut off from certain objects to which they naturally incline; and, as capitalists or laborers, are to be shut up to certain efforts, which, so far as the legislation has any influence, are not the direct, simple, and proper means to the satisfaction of existing wants. And all this not at all in the interests of morality or good government, but wholly with a view to the greater wealth and industrial prosperity of the community. This proposition has its only basis in a want of confidence in the intelligence of the people to direct their own desires, and of the competency of labor to gratify such desires. The proposition here reaches a point where there is no argument. Consciousness and experience must affirm or deny sharply and decisively. Such wisdom or power, we believe, has not been vouchsafed to legislators, whether absolute or representing the will of a people.

Economically, it will ever remain true, that the government is best which governs least. The wants of a people are the sole proper, the sole possible, motives for production. Nothing can be substituted for them. Any thing that seems to take their place is merely a debasement of them. The interests of producers, whether laborers or capitalists, secure, better than any other possible means, the gratification of such wants. Their intelligence is always superior on such points to that of any foreign body. These we believe to be absolute affirmations of universal experience, not dependent on reasoning, not condescending to argument.

General proposition: There is no sense so subtile as that

with which a man detects his own wants. There is no spur so sharp as that which urges him to satisfy them.

This is all the defence it seems necessary to make against the direct attack of the protection theory. It will be more troublesome when we meet it in alliance with other interests, on ground not its own, and displaying uncertain colors.

If, then, protection is founded on false economical principles, we should expect to find it working mischief in its application to national industry, perverting the desires, crippling the efforts, and plundering the satisfactions of society.

Since the subject is of great practical importance and of great popular interest, we will take an illustration at length. from the history of American industry, exhibiting the principles thus far attained.

We choose the manufacture of iron, for six reasons:

1st, Because it may be produced in great amount in our own country, and is found in almost all others. There is, therefore, nothing of the nature of a monopoly about it.

2d, Because it enjoys the largest natural protection arising from its weight and bulk.

3d, Because it is one of the most simple of all manufactures.

4th, Because it has been tried on a large scale, affording material for great inductions, and freeing the results from any imputation of accident.

5th, Because the public attention has been turned to it for a long time, and it is better understood than any other we could name.

6th, Because a stronger argument can be made in favor of its receiving governmental protection than any other.

What is the fact in regard to the manufacture so described? At present, iron cannot be so cheaply and extensively produced in the United States as to exclude the foreign article. Why is this? We answer negatively :

1st, Not that we do not know how to make it.

Being, as