t, I see very little relief to
those who are likely to be deprived of their employments, or who find
the prices of the commodities which they need raised, in any of the
alternatives which Mr. Speaker has presented. It is nothing to say that
they may, if they choose, continue to buy the foreign article; the
answer is, the price is augmented: nor that they may use the domestic
article; the price of that also is increased. Nor can they supply
themselves by the substitution of their own fabric. How can the
agriculturist make his own iron? How can the ship-owner grow his own
hemp?

But I have a yet stronger objection to the course of Mr. Speaker's
reasoning; which is, that he leaves out of the case all that has been
already done for the protection of manufactures, and argues the question
as if those interests were now for the first time to receive aid from
duties on imports. I can hardly express the surprise I feel that Mr.
Speaker should fall into the common mode of expression used elsewhere,
and ask if we will give our manufacturers no protection. Sir, look to
the history of our laws; look to the present state of our laws. Consider
that our whole revenue, with a trifling exception, is collected at the
custom-house, and always has been; and then say what propriety there is
in calling on the government for protection, as if no protection had
heretofore been afforded. The real question before us, in regard to all
the important clauses of the bill, is not whether we will _lay_ duties,
but whether we will _augment_ duties. The demand is for something more
than exists, and yet it is pressed as if nothing existed. It is wholly
forgotten that iron and hemp, for example, already pay a very heavy and
burdensome duty; and, in short, from the general tenor of Mr. Speaker's
observations, one would infer that, hitherto, we had rather taxed our
own manufactures than fostered them by taxes on those of other
countries. We hear of the fatal policy of the tariff of 1816; and yet
the law of 1816 was passed avowedly for the benefit of manufacturers,
and, with very few exceptions, imposed on imported articles very great
additions of tax; in some important instances, indeed, amounting to a
prohibition.

Sir, on this subject, it becomes us at least to understand the real
posture of the question. Let us not suppose that we are _beginning_ the
protection of manufactures, by duties on imports. What we are asked to
do is, to render those duties muc