THE TARIFF BILL OF 1870.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, APRIL 1, 1870.

AFTER the failure of the attempt to increase the customs duties, made under the leadership of Mr. J. S. Morrill in 1866, there was no further attempt to legislate comprehensively or systematically upon the tariff until the second session of the Forty-first Congress. February 1, 1870, Chairman Schenck, of the Committee of Ways and Means, introduced a bill to amend existing laws relating to the duty on imports, and for other purposes. The situation had greatly changed since 1866. The temper of the public mind called imperatively for a reduction in the customs duties. Accordingly, the Schenck bill was a reduction measure. Pending this bill in Committee of the Whole, Mr. Garfield delivered the following speech.

The charge that Mr. Garfield was a free-trader, at one time current, finds more to support it in this speech, and in his remarks and votes pending the bill, than in anything else in his public record. The careful reader of the speech, and of Mr. Garfield's whole record touching it, will see that he recognized the fact that the condition of the country and the state of the public mind demanded some relief from customs taxation, and that the state of the Treasury, as well as the condition of national industries, would justify some reduction; but that in no sense did he give up the protective principle, and that the great question with him was, Granted a given reduction in taxation, how can it be best distributed? His historical outline of the growth of free commerce, and his reference to the state of the Western mind touching protection, were brought forward rather to induce protectionists to consent to reduction than to establish the doctrine of free trade.

The debate on the bill dragged wearily on towards the end of the session. At last, when it became morally certain that it could not be carried through the House, as a whole, for want of time if for no other reason, material portions of it were added to the Internal Tax Bill. The

latter bill, as amended, finally passed both houses at the end of the session. In the Statutes at Large its caption is, "An Act to reduce Internal Taxes, and for other Purposes," approved July 14, 1870.

MR.

R. CHAIRMAN, -You will doubtless agree with me that any man deserves the sympathy of this House who rises to add one more to the forty-two speeches which have already been made on this subject, and to fill the two hundred and first column of the Daily Globe with his suggestions; but I congratulate the House that we are so near the end of this general debate and the beginning of the bill.

The debate has been able and searching. I have listened carefully to the various and conflicting views, and have tried to consider them impartially. An unusual amount of valuable information has been communicated to the House, but I am compelled to say that much of the argument has had reference to abstract theories rather than to the practical issues involved in the bill.

A great philosopher once said that abstract definitions had done more injury to the human race than war, famine, and pestilence combined; and I am not sure but a philosophical history of the struggles and difficulties through which the civilized world has passed would prove the truth of his observation. I trust no such disasters are likely to result from this discussion, and yet I think we are approaching the verge of a great danger from a similar cause. The most acrimonious utterances that we have heard in these forty-two speeches were made concerning the abstract ideas of free trade and protection; and I fully agree with my colleague in his declaration that a large part of the debate has not applied to the bill, but to abstractions.

There is, no doubt, a real and substantial difference of opinion among those who have debated this subject, a difference which discloses itself in almost every practical proposition contained in the bill; but I am convinced that the terms used and the theories advocated do not to any considerable extent represent practical issues. There are, indeed, two points of the greatest importance involved in this bill and all bills relating to taxes. One is the necessity of providing revenue for the government, and the other 1 Mr. Schenck.

is the necessities and wants of American industry. These are not abstractions, but present imperative realities. As an abstract theory of political economy, free trade has many advocates, and much can be said in its favor; nor will it be denied that the scholarship of modern times is largely on that side; that a large majority of the great thinkers of the present day are leading in the direction of what is called free trade.

MR. KELLEY. The gentleman says no man will deny that the tendency of opinion among scholars is toward free trade. I beg leave to deny it, and do most positively. The tendency of opinion among the scholars of the Continent is very decidedly toward protection. This is strikingly illustrated by the recent publication in six of the languages of the Continent of the voluminous writings of Henry C. Carey, and their adoption as text-books in the schools of Prussia. I think the gentleman's proposition is true of the English-speaking people of the world, but that the preponderant tendency is the other way.

With the qualification which the gentleman makes, we do not greatly differ. Take the English-speaking people out of the world, and civilization has lost at least half its strength. I detract nothing from the great ability and the acknowledged fame of Mr. Carey when I say that on this subject he represents a minority among the financial writers of our day. I am trying to state as fairly as I can the present condition of the question; and in doing so I affirm that the tendency of modern thought is toward free trade. While this is true, it is equally undeniable that the principle of protection has always been recognized and adopted in some form or other by all nations, and is to-day to a greater or less extent the policy of every civilized government.

In order to exhibit the relation of these opposing doctrines to each other, I invite the attention of the committee to a brief review of the history of protection in the United States. Our industry, like our liberty, has come up to its present strength through a long and desperate struggle. We learned our industrial lessons under a severe master. England taught us, not by precept alone, but by the severest and sternest examples. The history of our pupilage is full of interest, for it gave birth both to our government and our industry. The economic doctrines known as the Mercantile System, which prevailed throughout Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, gave

shape and character to the colonial policy of all European governments for two hundred years. It is a mistake to suppose that in planting colonies in the New World the nations of Europe were moved mainly by a philanthropic impulse to extend the area of liberty and civilization. Colonies were planted for the purpose of raising up customers for home trade. It was a matter of business and speculation, carried on by joint stock companies for the benefit of corporations. The proof of this may be seen in many pages of Bancroft and the other historians of the period. While our Revolution was in progress, Adam Smith, when discussing and condemning the colonial system, declared that England had founded in America a great empire "for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers who should be obliged to buy from the shops of our different producers all the goods with which these could supply them." 1

When the Colonies had increased in numbers and wealth, the purpose of the mother country was disclosed in the legislation and regulations by which the Colonies were governed. The British Navigation Laws, beginning in 1660, and extending onward in a series of twenty-nine separate acts, each forming a round in the ladder which reached from the depths of Colonial servitude to Bunker Hill and American independence, form no incomplete synopsis of the causes of our Revolution. The act of 1660 provided that no article of Colonial produce or of British manufacture should be carried in any but British ships, and that all the officers and two thirds of the crew engaged in the carrying trade should be British sailors. This act also enumerated a long list of raw materials produced in the Colonies, and declared that none should be shipped to any but British ports. It provided that the Colonies should be allowed to purchase only in British markets any manufactured article which England had to sell. In short, the Colonist was compelled to trade with England on her own terms; and, whether buying or selling, the product must be carried only in British bottoms at the carrier's own price. In addition to this a revenue tax of five per cent was imposed on all Colonial exports and imports.

A recent writer, in reviewing this period of our history, has said: "Henceforth they [the Colonists] were to work for her; to grow strong, that they might add to her strength; to grow rich, that they might aid her in heaping up riches; but not to

1 Wealth of Nations, Book IV. Chap. VIII.

grow either in strength or in wealth except by the means and in the direction that she prescribed." It was in this spirit and in pursuance of this policy that a royal order of 1696 permanently intrusted to the Commissioners of the Board of Trade the management of the Colonies, which were regarded only as a part of the interests of commerce.

But the vigilant "nation of shopkeepers" was not content with watching and controlling the shipping and trade of American ports. Our cherishing mother laid her heavy hand on all the domestic industries of the Colonies. Colonial governors were directed to discourage all American attempts at manufacturing any article which England could furnish. In response to such an order, Governor Spotswood of Virginia wrote to the King this apology: "The people [of Virginia], more of necessity than of inclination, attempt to clothe themselves with their own manufactures. . . . . It is certainly necessary to divert their application to some commodity less prejudicial to the trade of Great Britain." 2

In 1701 a government agent was sent to examine and report whether the conquest of Canada from the French would be profitable to England. His advice to the King was in these words: "The English need not fear to conquer Canada. Where the cold is extreme and snow lies so long on the ground, sheep will never thrive so as to make the woollen manufactures possible, which is the only thing that can make a plantation unprofitable to the Crown."

But reports and recommendations were not sufficient to prevent the Colonists, especially of New England, from attempting to clothe themselves. The power of Parliament was therefore invoked, and in the tenth year of William and Mary an act was passed which declared in its preamble that "Colonial industry will inevitably sink the value of lands in England." The nineteenth section is so remarkable that I will quote it entire: —

"After the 1st of December, 1699, no wool or manufacture made or mixed with wool, being the produce or manufacture of any of the English plantations in America, shall be loaden in any ship or vessel upon any pretence whatsoever, nor loaden upon any horse, cart, or other carriage, to be carried out of the English plantations to any other of the said plantations, or to any other place whatsoever." 8

1 Greene, Historical View of the American Revolution, p. 38 (Boston, 1865). 2 Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. III. p. 107.

8 Ibid., Vol. III. p. 106.