ue
duties, our manufacturers in several leading branches are extending
their business, giving evidence of great ingenuity and skill and of
their ability to compete, with increased prospect of success, for the
open market of the world. Domestic manufactures to the value of several
millions of dollars, which can not find a market at home, are annually
exported to foreign countries. With such rates of duty as those
established by the existing law the system will probably be permanent,
and capitalists who are made or shall hereafter make their investments
in manufactures will know upon what to rely. The country will be
satisfied with these rates, because the advantages which the
manufacturers still enjoy result necessarily from the collection of
revenue for the support of Government. High protective duties, from
their unjust operation upon the masses of the people, can not fail to
give rise to extensive dissatisfaction and complaint and to constant
efforts to change or repeal them, rendering all investments in
manufactures uncertain and precarious. Lower and more permanent rates of
duty, at the same time that they will yield to the manufacturer fair and
remunerating profits, will secure him against the danger of frequent
changes in the system, which can not fail to ruinously affect his
interests.

Simultaneously with the relaxation of the restrictive policy by the
United States, Great Britain, from whose example we derived the system,
has relaxed hers. She has modified her corn laws and reduced many other
duties to moderate revenue rates. After ages of experience the statesmen
of that country have been constrained by a stern necessity and by a
public opinion having its deep foundation in the sufferings and wants of
impoverished millions to abandon a system the effect of which was to
build up immense fortunes in the hands of the few and to reduce the
laboring millions to pauperism and misery. Nearly in the same ratio that
labor was depressed capital was increased and concentrated by the
British protective policy.

The evils of the system in Great Britain were at length rendered
intolerable, and it has been abandoned, but not without a severe
struggle on the part of the protected and favored classes to retain the
unjust advantages which they have so long enjoyed. It was to be expected
that a similar struggle would be made by the same classes in the United
States whenever an attempt was made to modify or abolish the same unj