ages. In some instances, no doubt, these laws produced an
effect, which, in that period, would not have taken place without them.
But our age is of a wholly different character, and its legislation
takes another turn. Society is full of excitement; competition comes in
place of monopoly; and intelligence and industry ask only for fair play
and an open field. Profits, indeed, in such a state of things, will be
small, but they will be extensively diffused; prices will be low, and
the great body of the people prosperous and happy. It is worthy of
remark, that, from the operation of these causes, commercial wealth,
while it is increased beyond calculation in its general aggregate, is,
at the same time, broken and diminished in its subdivisions. Commercial
prosperity should be judged of, therefore, rather from the extent of
trade, than from the magnitude of its apparent profits. It has been
remarked, that Spain, certainly one of the poorest nations, made very
great profits on the amount of her trade; but with little other benefit
than the enriching of a few individuals and companies. Profits to the
English merchants engaged in the Levant and Turkey trade were formerly
very great, and there were richer merchants in England some centuries
ago, considering the comparative value of money, than at the present
highly commercial period. When the diminution of profits arises from the
extent of competition, it indicates rather a salutary than an injurious
change.[8]

The true course then, Sir, for us to pursue, is, in my opinion, to
consider what our situation is; what our means are; and how they can be
best applied. What amount of population have we in comparison with our
extent of soil, what amount of capital, and labor at what price? As to
skill, knowledge, and enterprise, we may safely take it for granted that
in these particulars we are on an equality with others. Keeping these
considerations in view, allow me to examine two or three of those
provisions of the bill to which I feel the strongest objections.

To begin with the article of iron. Our whole annual consumption of this
article is supposed by the chairman of the committee to be forty-eight
or fifty thousand tons. Let us suppose the latter. The amount of our own
manufacture he estimates, I think, at seventeen thousand tons. The
present duty on the imported article is $15 per ton, and as this duty
causes, of course, an equivalent augmentation of the price of the home
man