duced to bankruptcy; our markets were glutted with foreign products; prices fell; our manufacturers, generally, were ruined; our laborers beggared; our artisans without employment; our merchants insolvent, and our farmers necessarily followed all these classes into the vorte of general financial destruction.

'Depreciation seized upon every species of property. Legal pressure to enforce payment of debts caused alarming sacrifices of both personal and real-state; spread distress far and wide among the masses of the people; aroused in the hearts of the sufferers the bitterest feelings against lawyers, the courts and the whole creditor class; led to a popular clamor for staylaws and various other radical measures of supposed relief, and finally filled the whole land with excitement, apprehension and sense of weakness and a tendency to despair of the Republic. Inability to pay even necessary taxes became general, and often these could be collected only by levy and sale of the homestead."-MASON.

Such were the ruinous results that necessarily followed the adoption of a free trade policy under the Confederacy.

A writer of that period says: "We are poor, with a profusion of material wealth in our possession. That we are poor, needs no other proo than our prisons, bankruptcies, judgments, executions, auctions, mort gages, etc., and the shameless quantity of business in our courts of law."

HILDRETH'S HISTORY at page 465-68, Vol. III, speaking of this period, has this true but terrible indictment: "The large importation of foreign goods, subject to little or no duty, and sold at peace prices, was proving ruinous to all those domestic manufactures and mechanical employments which the non-consumption agreements and the war hac created and fostered. Immediately after the peace, the country had beer flooded with imported goods, and debts had been unwarily contracted, fo which there was no means to pay."

Our imports from Great Britain alone were $30,000,000 in 1784–85, while our exports to her were only $9,000,000-a frightful balance on the wrong side. They drained us of our last dollar and left us, for a circulating medium, only orders on State tax-collectors and depreciated certificates of State and Federal debt, themselves worthless.

OTHER CALAMITOUS RESULTS.-The distress became universal and calamitous.

In the District of Maine, a Convention was held for the purpose of revolting from the State of Massachusetts. In New Hampshire, the people surrounded the building where the Legislature was in session and declared that it should not adjourn till it had passed measures to abolish debt, or to relieve the people in some other way.

In Massachusetts, fully one-third of the population joined in Shay's Rebellion on account of the abject poverty and distress of the people, and nothing less than military force was able to repress all these lawless demonstrations and revolts.

Among the causes that led to Shay's Rebellion Hildreth mentions: "the want of a certain and remunerative market for the produce of the

farmer, and the depression of domestic manufactures by competition from abroad."

The French minister at that period after relating the foregoing disturbances, adds: "It must be agreed that these insurrections are, in a great part, due to the scarcity of specie."

In Connecticut, more than five hundred farms were offered for sale for arrears of taxes, which the owners were too poor to pay; and in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina, matters were scarcely any better.

There was no market for real-estate, and debtors, who were compelled to sell their lands, were ruined, without paying one-fourth of the demands against them.

Men universally distrusted each other. The bonds of men whose competency should have been unquestioned could not be negotiated, except at a discount of thirty, forty, or even fifty per cent.

was

FREE TRADE THE REAL CAUSE OF THESE EVILS. It generally understood and agreed, by the writers and statesmen of that distressful period, that the widespread and almost universal ruin which then involved the States in general disorder, revolt and rebellion, were in great part, if not wholly, due to the scarcity of specie, or good money.

In his "History of the Insurrection," Minot regards as one of the leading causes that led to those troubles: "The loss of many markets to which Americans had formerly resorted with their produce. Thus was the usual means of remittance by articles of the growth of the country almost annihilated, and little else than specie remained to answer the demands incurred by importations. The money, of course, was drawn off, and this being inadequate to the purpose of discharging the whole amount of foreign contracts, the rest was chiefly sunk by the bankruptcies of the importers. The scarcity of specie, arising principaily from this cause, was attended with evident consequences; it checked commercial intercourse through the community, and furnished reluctant debtors with an apology for withholding their dues both from individuals and the public."

But the scarcity of specie, or money, was due, as has already been shown, to the free trade policy of that period, which allowed and encouraged such enormous excess of imports over exports, and thus necessitated the withdrawal of the gold and silver from the country to pay such excess.

"Had there been no free trade, there would have been no inundation of foreign goods; had there been no inundation of foreign goods, there would have been no drain of specie; had there been no drain of specie, there would have been no lack of a circulating medium; had there been no such distress, there would have been no impulse toward insubordination to the State." (Mason).

Consequently, it follows legitimately, that free trade was the principal source or cause of the widespread discontent, distress, and the demoralization of that period.

A SUMMARY OF THESE EVIL RESULTS.-Free trade was the starting point. It was quickly followed by imports largely in excess of

exports; then by a glut of foreign productions; then by suspension of our own manufactures of all kinds; then by a gradual, but complete, loss of all our specie; then by the necessary stoppage of most of our business; then by the enforced idleness of our laborers and artisans; then by universal debt; then by a crushing depreciation of real-estate; then by a positive inability on the part of nearly everybody to pay their debts; then by general distress and financial ruin; and finally, by insurrections and rebellions which threatened destruction to the life and liberties of the nation.

"As this was the closest approach to absolute free trade ever tried by this country, so there was the largest harvest of dangers and calamities ever experienced by the American People." (Mason).

For this reason I have dwelt more at length upon the period of the Confederacy, and for the further reason that the causes of the terrible sufferings and disasters of our forefathers, under the free trade policy of that period, are so little understood and appreciated.

THE INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH TEACHINGS.-Lured on by these false doctrines of political economy, our people had been drawing closer and closer to the brink of individual and national bankruptcy, and consequent political annihilation; and at last they stood where another step in that direction was impossible without plunging into that bottomless abyss. If they would survive as a nation, there was but one thing for them to do, or that they could do—and that was to turn away from free trade and lay hold on protection.

Our forefathers were not fools, though they acted very foolishly. They had been educated, as just stated, in the false doctrines of political economy as taught in England-the most swinishly selfish system ever formulated by man; and these doctrines had been so firmly established in their minds that nothing less than the bitter school of adversity, I have just outlined, could correct and eradicate them.

But standing there upon that brink of sure destruction, they had the good sense to see the truth, and to declare that, while they were willing to give up everything, even to life itself, to maintain liberty and national independence, they could not see any good reason why they should sacrifice themselves to maintain a doctrine (free trade) that had brought to them only distress, misery and financial ruin.

DEMAND FOR A NATIONAL CONSTITUTION.-And now having discovered their impending danger; and the cause of it; having been convinced of the false and ruinous commercial policy of England toward them-the policy of practical free trade and having comprehended the fact that a home market and home protection affords the only real safety for the American people, they took immediate steps to convene a Constitutional Convention, to draft a Constitution which should secure these great blessings, with others, to them and their posterity forever. They had learned that a strong central power was necessary, and that many rights, then reserved to the States, must be delegated to this central power.

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THE LEADING QUESTION.-There were other great questions to be discussed and settled, but the leading question was: 'How shall we secure protection to home industries?"

"The people of this country demanded a Union stronger than the Confederation, for the very purpose of shielding home industries from the prostrating assaults of foreign competition, through the regulation of commerce with other nations, so as to check or to prohibit the importation of commodities that interfered with the growth and prosperity of domestic manufactures; and so as to give native productions an impetus which would develop all the resources inherent within the boundaries of the nation, essential for the supply and consumption of the population at all times. No fact is more securely established than is this." (Mason).

In the debate on the first tariff bill in 1789, Fisher Ames, one of the ablest men in that Congress, said:

"I conceive, sir, that the present Constitution was dictated by commercial necessity more than by any other cause. The want of an efficient government to secure the manufacturing interest, and to advance our commerce, was long seen by men of judgment and pointed out by patriots solicitous to promote our general welfare."

The historian, Bancroft, says: "The necessity for regulating commerce (i.e., for providing a proper tariff) gave the immediate impulse to a more perfect Constitution."—(Vol. I., page 146.)

Daniel Webster, historically known, as "the Great Expounder of the Constitution," in a speech at Buffalo, June, 1833, declared: "The protection of American labor against the injurious competition of foreign labor, so far at least as respects general handicraft productions, is known historically to have been one end designed to be obtained by establishing the Constitution."

Years later he repeated this idea, but much clearer and stronger in a speech at Albany, in August, 1844, when he said:

"In Colonial times, and during the time of the Convention, the idea was held up, that domestic industry could not prosper, manufactures and the mechanic arts could not advance, the condition of the common country could not be carried up to any considerable elevation, unless there should be one government to lay one rate of duty upon imports throughout the Union; regard to be had, in laying this duty, to the protection of American labor and industry.

“I defy the man in any degree conversant with the history, in any degree acquainted with the annals of this country from 1787 to 1789, when the Constitution was adopted, to say that protection of American labor and industry, was not a leading, I might almost say, the leading motive, South as well as North, for the formation of the new government. Without that provision in the Constitution, it never could have been adopted."

Another remarkable man who made a careful study of this matter (Rufus Choate), declared: “A whole people, a whole generation of our fathers, had in view, as one grand end and purpose of their new govern

ment, the acquisition of the means of restraining, by governmental action, the importation of foreign manufactures, for the encouragement of manufactures and of labor at home; and desired and meant to do this by clothing the new government with this specific power of regulating commerce. This whole country, with one voice, demanded to have inserted in the Constitution the power to enact protective legislation, a power which they held as another declaration of independence—a power by which we are able to protect all our children of labor. This power must not be surrendered, must not sleep, until the Union flag shall be hauled down from the last mast-head-a slight which, I trust, neither we nor our children to the thousandth generation are doomed to see."

If there were room, this position could be fortified with other quotations from Fisher Ames, Edward Everett, James Madison and many others, but they must be omitted at this time.

The Convention was held; the Constitution was drafted, accepted, and adopted. The First Congress was elected under its provisions, and by this Congress, the splendid machinery of the Constitution was set in motion.

CHAPTER II.

FIRST PROTECTION PERIOD-1789 TO 1816.

1789.-THE TARIFF THE FIRST QUESTION.--The tariff question was the very first subject discussed by the First Congress; and for more than one hundred years has been the one subject that has never been finally settled.

Nullification, Secession, Banks, Slavery, and Reconstruction, have had their times of fierce discussion, and have all been forever settled, but the tariff was never a more vital question than it is to-day.

The first Act of the First Congress regulated the form of the oath to be taken by officials, and was merely formal, but the first Act of that Congress affecting the country was the Act establishing a Protective Tariff, passed and signed by George Washington, July 4th, 1789.

The discussion was long and earnest. It was participated in by such men as James Madison, R. H. Lee, Charles Carroll, Rufus King, Oliver Ellsworth, Fisher Ames, Roger Sherman, J. Trumbull, and others; and a Congress composed of such men passed a Tariff Act in the interest of protection and not for " revenue only," for in the Preamble to the Act, occur these words: "Whereas, it is necessary for the support of the government, for the discharge of the debt of the United States, and for the encouragement and protection of manufactures, that duties be laid on imported goods, etc., therefore be it enacted," etc.

It may be remarked in passing that a large majority of that First Congress were farmers; but they saw the necessity of encouraging and protecting manufactures, in order that they might be free from servile and