rapidly to bring the maximum
rate on any article down to about 20 per cent.[2] These changes, while
as yet incompleted had, in 1840, brought the average rates on dutiable
goods down to but 30 per cent and on free and dutiable together to 15
per cent. The 20 per cent rate, however, remained in effect only two
months in 1842, when it was replaced by a tariff with higher rates
distinctly protective, passed by the Whig party and which remained in
force four years.

Sec. 6. #The tariff, 1846-1860.# The Democratic party coming into power,
passed the Act of 1846, called the Walker tariff, after the Secretary
of the Treasury. As he was a believer in free trade, this act is often
mistakenly described as a free-trade measure. It was, in truth, far
from that. Most of the rates were indeed lower than those that had
been in force between 1816 and 1846 (with the exception of those
between 1840 and 1842), but still some of the rates were high (a few
as high as 100 per cent) and many of them were strongly protective in
nature. The fact that tea and coffee were on the free list is marked
evidence that considerations of revenue did not dominate. The rate
on cotton goods was 25 per cent and the rates on many of the most
important other protected articles (iron, woolen goods, manufactures
of iron, leather, paper, glass, and wood) were 30 per cent. The
average rates under the act for its last eight years (to 1857) were
on dutiable 26 per cent, on free and dutiable 23 per cent. The country
prospered for eleven years under this tariff. In 1857, rates were
again reduced, the more important protective rates from 30 per cent
to a level of 24 per cent. This time partizan considerations played
no part in the discussion. The revenues of the government had been
excessive and the need of a reduction was admitted by nearly every
one. The average _ad valorem_ rates under the nearly four years of the
act of 1857 were about 20 per cent on dutiable and 16 per cent on free
and dutiable (the lowest in the century between 1812 and 1913).

Sec. 7. #The tariff, 1861-1871.# The reduction of rates in 1857 was
made just at the time when the country was at the height of a wave of
prosperity and of speculation which culminated in the financial crisis
of that year.[3] As always at such times, the government's revenues
fell greatly. The first purpose in the revision of the tariff in 1861
was simply to restore the rates in the act of 1846. But the Morrill
act which