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of the Union, cannot now, by any possibility, be shrouded from the public view. It is as follows:

(Mr. J. K. Polk to Mr. J. K. Kane.)

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COLUMBIA, Tenn., June 19th, 1844. "Dear Sir-I have received recently several letters in reference to my opinions on the subject of the Tariff; and among others yours of the 10th ultimo. My opin. ions on this subject have been often given to the public. They are to be found in my public acts and in the public discussions in which I have participated. I am in favor of a tariff for revenue, such a one as will yield a sufficient amount to the Treasury to defray the expenses of Government economically administered. In adjusting the details of a revenue tariff, I have heretofore sanctioned such moderate, discriminating duties, as would produce the amount of revenue needed, and at the same time afford reasonable incidental protection to our home industry. I am opposed to a tariff for protection merely, and not for revenue. Acting upon these general principles, it is well known that I gave my support to the policy of General Jackson's administration on this subject. I voted against the Tariff

act of 1828. I voted for the act of 1832, which contained modifications of some of

the objectionable provisions of the act of 1828. As a member of the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, I gave my assent to a bill reported by that committee in December, 1832, making further modifications of the act of 1825, and making also discriminations in the imposition of the duties which it proposed. That bill did not pass, but was superseded by the bill commonly called the Compromise Bill, for which I voted. In my judgment, it is the duty of the Government to extend, as far as it may be practicable to do so, by its revenue laws and all other means within its power, fair and just protection to all the great interests of the whole Union, embracing Agriculture, Manufactures, and the Mechanic Arts, Com merce and Navigation. I heartily approve the resolutions upon this subject passed by the Democratic National Convention, lately

assembled at Baltimore.

I am, with great respect,
Dear Sir, your ob't servant,
JAMES K. POLK.
"JOHN K. KANE, Esq., Philadelphia."

Such was the ground on which Mr. Polk deliberately planted himself in the canvass in which he was a prominent candidate for the Presidency. Surely, no honest man-no decent pretender to honesty will insist that it is practicable to reconcile all the words here used with hostility to the Tariff of '42 and the prin

ciples on which that Tariff is based. No such man can ask us to shut our eyes to the fact that this letter was written to Pennsylvania, and written too, most obviously, to remove doubts or unfavorabeen subjected in that State by the posible impressions to which Mr. Polk had tive and industrious assertions of the Whigs that the candidate of their opponents was a Free Trader, and thus hostile to that policy which Pennsylvania had ever sturdily, unflinchingly upheld. The gist of Mr. Kane's cautiously suppressed letter must evidently have been this: "Mr. Polk, our adversaries in this stubbornly tariff State are making capital out of your anti-protective votes and speeches in former years. You must write us something calculated to counteract the impression they are making, or Pennsylvania is lost to you-must be carried for Clay." Thus prompted, Mr. Polk writes the letter above quoted, and the party" in Pennsylvania are satisfied and strengthened. To all gainsayers and doubters, the letter to Kane is triumphantly exhibited as settling the ques

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tion.

"Here he avows himself in favor

of fair and equal Protection;-does any body want that which is unfair and unequal? He is for protecting all our great interests alike: would you have one interest pampered at the expense of all the rest? If Yea, vote for Clay, who goes altogether for the spinning-jennies and cloth-factories; but if you want all protected, equally and abundantly, vote for Mr. Polk!" This is no surmise, no far-drawn inference. It is a part of the history of the canvass of '44 that Mr. Buchanan traveled through Pennsylva nia, addressing the people and assuring them that the cause of Protection was safe in the hands of Mr. Polk-that Mr. Dallas spoke pointedly though briefly to the same effect, and that the lesser luminaries, McCandless, Hughes, Black, &c., &c., met the Whigs boldly (impudently were perhaps the more appropriate adjective) in public discussions, wherein they maintained, and were held by thousands to have proved, Mr. Polk a more decided and reliable advocate of Protection than Mr. Clay! Men who regard successful knavery as a proper incitement to mirth may smile at this whole matter-may deride, as does the Charleston Mercury, the ignorance and stupidity of Pennsylvania-but must not the thoughtful patriot be driven to mournful auguries for the Future when he re

flects that among the fruits of these representations are the Presidency of Mr. Polk, the Annexation of Texas, the Mexican War and the Tariff of '46 ?

If it were necessary to adduce one particle of testimony, beyond that which this letter and its results have furnished, of the gigantic fraud whereof the Kane manœuvre was a chief instrument-the skeleton key wherewith Mr. Polk picked his way into the White House-the recent and present attitude of Pennsylvania-we mean of the dominant party there would be conclusive. Her two Senators, with eleven of her twelve Representatives who electioneered and voted for Mr. Polk and the great mass of her journals of like faith, unite in saying, "This Tariff of '46 is by no means consistent with the Kane letter as we understood and still understand it-it is utterly incompatible therewith. We have been grossly deceived. We assured our people that Mr. Polk friendly to Protection, as the Kane letter plainly asserted. If we duped them, it was only because we ourselves were duped!" Bear in mind that while they were using this Kane letter to prove Mr. Polk a protectionist, he was an attentive and by no means indifferent spectator of the canvass. Whether they knew that they were deceiving those who put faith in their representations or not, he could not fail to know it. Could an honest man have stood mute while such a serious misapprehension was being industriously propagated-propagated for his benefit, and credited to another man's prejudice? Surely, the answer of all pure hearts, of all unsullied consciences, must be uniform on this point.

was

But the drama is played out-the actors have stripped off their masks-the end is achieved. By the President whom Pennsylvania elected, of whose Cabinet the most eminent certifier in 1844 of Mr. Polk's tariff orthodoxy is chief-whose Secretary of the Treasury was born on her soil, and is now the most conspicuous and thorough antagonist of her longcherished principles-the overthrow of the Protective Policy has been accomplished. And, as if to make the work complete, the Vice-President so indulgently awarded her by the Baltimore Convention as a hostage for the party's fidelity to her interests-whose election was urged on the ground that it would give her three votes in the Senate on every question affecting her cherished poli

cy-George M. Dallas himself, has given the decisive vote against Protection and in favor of the Tariff of '46! Let us patiently wait and see whether this be indeed the end.

Before entering upon any particular observations on the character, provisions and probable effects of the Tariff of 1846, we may be indulged in a few general suggestions bearing on the Tariff controversy at large.

And, first, we remark that none of those who have so ably discussed this subject, either in the formidable tomes which are too generally regarded as infallible text-books of Political Economy, or in the able debates of the last session of Congress, seem to us to have contemplated directly and given sufficient weight to the peculiarities of our National condition. We are one people, but diffused over a rapidly widening area which far exceeds the civilized portion of the Old World. Our country presents a diversity of soil and climate, of capacities and products, which all Europe combined cannot rival. It is quite common to see arguments pass unchallenged which rest on such bases as these-France injures herself in refusing the Iron and Coal, Spain in rejecting the Cottons, Russia in declining the Woolens of Great Britain; ergo, we ought not to protect our own Iron, Coal, Cottons and Woolens! the logic falls short; if admitted in all its legitimate force, it would only prove the expediency of a Free Trade between the various sections or States of our own vast empire, which nobody is disputing. Prove that nations separated but by an imaginary line, or a few hundred miles at most, may advantageously exchange products, and you have barely begun to prove a like advantage in exchanges of commodities, bulky at least on one side, between nations whose shores are thousands of miles distant.

But

But in truth no intelligent advocate of Protection contends for anything like the exclusion of British Coal from France and of French Wines and Silks from Great Britain-assuming such to exist. The flippant aphorisms and sorry jests of our adversaries averring the absurdity of attempting to grow grapes in Nova Zembla and fabricate ice in Ceylon—to make sugar at Labrador or extract sunbeams from cucumbers-are based on an entire misapprehension or culpable perversion of our views. What we do maintain, as

we have a thousand times re-stated, is, that sound policy dictates to each country-or at least to each country so vast and so versatile in capacity of production as our own-the expediency of producing within its own limits all articles requisite to its own sustenance and comfort so far as Nature has interposed no obstacle. If, for example, Nature has decreed that the tea-plant shall flourish only in China and its vicinity, unless by an extraordinary bestowment of labor and care, then the production of Tea ought to be nowhere else an object of National solicitude and protection. But prove to us that Tea will grow in parts of this country as well as in the corresponding latitudes of Eastern Asia, and we would urge the immediate imposition of a Protective duty on Tea sufficiently stringent to encourage our people to engage in this branch of industry and to enable them to overcome the difficulties and disappointments always incident to such an enterprise. Admit that our annual supply of the fragrant herb would for a time be enhanced in cost by nearly the amount of the duty, (the difference mainly going into the Federal Treasury,) and we could not doubt that the ultimate reduction in cost consequent on production within the neighborhood of the consumer would more than compensate the original disad⚫ vantage of Protection, looking at the matter merely in the narrowest mercantile point of view. Dear-bought and farfetched" is an axiom the truth of which but partially depends on the cost of transportation. Wherever A and B, producers respectively of articles desirable to each other, are neighbors and exchange their respective surpluses directly, the cost of such exchange is usually trifling and the product of their united labor is shared between them. But place them a few hundred miles apart, and you have now not only transportation, but reciprocal risks of damage or decay and the profits of two or three trafficking intermediates to subtract from the joint products of their labor before you arrive at the amount left for their enjoyment. Increase this distance to thousands of miles, and place formidable barriers of mountain and valley as well as more pliable water between them, and you have greatly increased the proportion of their joint product which must be subtracted to satisfy the legitimate demands of Commerce. Hence the circumstance that the naturalization of new branches of Indus

try has scarcely ever failed to reduce the cost to the domestic consumers of the

articles produced thereby. Thus, while the whole of Europe and Western Asia for century after century procured their Silks from India and China by slow, expensive, perilous overland journeys of caravans, the cost of a pound of Silk averaged nearly a pound of Gold, though Gold was more valuable then than at present. Probably it cost a good deal more than this to produce the first pound, or the first hundred pounds, of Silk grown in Europe; but after the Silk Culture and Manufacture had been thoroughly established there, the price of the product inevitably declined, and is now as low as in China. So with hundreds of other articles in all parts of the world.

But we deny that the mercantile is the only light in which this subject should be viewed. Suppose it were true that our Cloths and Wares would for many years cost twenty-five per cent. more if made here than if brought from England

would it therefore be proved advantageous to buy them abroad? We say it would not, for these among other rea

sons:

1. Because the price of Agricultural staples is enhanced and the productiveness of Farming increased by the creation of markets of consumption in the midst of our rural population. Does any doubt this? Let him compare the value of a farm in Hamilton County, Ohio, wherein is Cincinnati, with that of an equally good farm in Richland or Stark County, in the northern part of the State. The character of the population is not materially different; their industry and thrift are much alike. Yet the Hamilton Coun.. ty farm is worth thrice to ten times its Richland rival. And why? Flour or Pork is no dearer in Hamilton, but the immediate vicinity of a populous community, who consume but do not produce food, enables the farmer here to secure thrice as great a return from each acre of ground as he could obtain in Richland. His fields are not more fertile, but he can here sell fruits, vegetables and other prodacts-more profitable to him than Pork or Flour-for which he could find but a capricious or no market in Richland. So everywhere; so will it be wherever manufactures are extensively introduced. Yet Free Traders look only to the price of such great staples as Pork, Beef, Flour, &c., and if these have not advanced in price they argue that the

farmers have derived no benefit from Protection! Do they not clearly affirm upon insufficient and unreliable premises?

2. Again the difference in position between an old and a new country is never fairly considered by those who argue against Protection. We are a new people, inhabiting a country as yet not onetenth redeemed from the primitive wilderness. In such a country, if rapidly increasing in population and improving in the arts of life, labor is generally in demand and paid higher than in older communities. Interest also is high, and the temptation of buying goods on credit and reserving available means to be employed, as is calculated, more advantageously, is with difficulty resisted. Those of her people who engage in manufactures do so under the great disadvantages of imperfect experience, less skillful workmen higher paid, and every extraneous condition favoring their foreign rivals. They are judged by their first achievements, and the judgment is naturally unfavorable. In time, if successful, all these conditions are improved, but the prejudice so created remains. Home products are supposed to be ruder, dearer, less serviceable, long after they have, through persevering endeavors, Iceased to be so. The defect has ceased, but its evil consequences continue. Whoever will consider impartially the circumstances under which manufactures have sprung up in our midst must wonder rather that they have so early attained such excellence than that they have not yet all achieved perfection both in excellence and cheapness. Show us any five years of steady and efficient Protection in which they have not made rapid advances in both respects, and an argument will be found against a farther and steady persistence in that policy.

A word on the recent change of policy in Great Britain, and we pass to notice the peculiar features of the New Tariff. That Great Britain has reduced most duties is true, but has she done so in any instance to the prejudice or peril of her own Manufactures? Suppose there were no other nations on the earth but the United States and Mexico, would our country deserve any credit for liberality in repealing her duties on Cotton fabrics? Would she evince a hearty conversion to the principle of universal Free Trade? Would it be quite fair in her to urge Mexico to do likewise be

cause of her example? Now if England, after a hundred years' efficient Protection, finds herself in a condition to undersell other nations in nearly every ar ticle she produces, we cannot consider her course fairly held up as an example for others. Grant that she has acted wisely, it by no means follows that others may wisely follow her example. If it be said that her prospective free importation of Grain is in point, we answer that Great Britain can and does produce Grain about as cheaply as any other country on the face of the earth. If her prices are higher, it is because of the enormous rents paid for her arable soil. These rents may be reduced, but her Agriculture can never be really undersold. The bulkiness and perishable nature of Grain, &c., give an advantage to the Home producer equal to twenty-five and thence to fifty and seventy-five per cent. The wheat grower of central Illinois or Wisconsin must sell his product at twenty-five to fifty cents a bushel in order that it may be taken to England and sold there, in the absence of any duty whatever, as cheaply as the English wheat for which the grower receives one dollar to one and a quarter per bushel. The cotton-spinner in Illinois, on the other hand, must produce his fabric within five to ten per cent. of the cost in England, or he will be rivaled by British fabrics at his very door. The fact that Grain, &c., are not affected by changes of fashions or the appetite for novelty and rarity, as with textile fabrics, also tends to take their case out of the same category with fabrics of Cotton, Silk, &c.

And now to a more immediate consideration of the merits of the New Tariff. Three important principles are laid down in the Report of Secretary Walker, with the approbation of President Polk, as the bases of the new system which this act is designed to establish :

1. That no duty should be levied on any article above the rate which will produce the maximum amount of revenue.

2. That the duties levied shall always be assessed at so much per centum on the value at the place whence imported, and that all specific or minimum duties be abolished.

3. That any duty imposed on the importation of an article not only enhances by so much the cost of said article to the consumer, but also that of all domestic products which compete with it in our own markets of consumption.

The first of these principles is simply a broad denial of the policy or justice of Protection in any case, and an attempt to reconcile the assumptions of Free Trade with the maintenance of any Tariff on Imports whatever. But the two are in fact irreconcilable, as a glance at the third proposition will establish. Duties for Revenue on articles rivaled by Home Labor are even more impolitic, in the view of genuine and thorough Free Trade, than duties avowedly and abundantly Protective. For if it be true, as laid down in No. 3, that all duties on articles imported, when these articles are rivaled at home, enhance by so much the cost to the consumer of the domestic rival as well as of the imported fabric, then surely a Revenue duty on such articles must not only put two dollars unjustly into the pockets of our own manufacturers for every one it puts into the Treasury, but really, (as Mr. Walker's follower, The Globe, has asserted,) tax the consumers ten dollars for every one it secures to the Revenue. Admit Mr. Walker's primary assumption, and you prove Mr. Walker's Tariff a most audacious and wasteful engine of robbery. If a duty be so high as to prohibit importation, the Secretary admits that his theory no longer holds; the duty now determines nothing with regard to the price; but, so long as the article continues to be imported, the duty is added to the natural price of the domestic as well as of the foreign fabric. How could a Secretary who really believed this recommend, how could a Congress who held with him enact, the imposition or continuance of any duties at all on such articles as Iron, Sugar, Coal, Cotton and Woolen fabrics, &c., &c.? All these, assuming the soundness of the Secretary's theory, take four or five dollars out of the consumers' pockets for every one they put into the Treasury: yet these are subjected to duties of thirty and twentyfive per cent. while Tea and Coffee wholly imported, and therefore certain to yield to the Treasury the full amount abstracted from the consumers by the impost-are admitted without duty! How shall the public be asked to put faith in theories which their proclaimers repudiate the moment they are required to put them in practice? What need of elaborate replies to the Secretary's assumptions when neither he nor any follower treats them with the least practical deference or respect?

But the Secretary's first principle is scouted in the New Tariff before us as well as his third. This act imposes duties notoriously above the maximum he contends for. To say nothing of the one hundred per cent. imposed on Spirits, Liquors and Cordials, will any man contend that the forty per cent. on imported Cigars, Snuff, and all forms of Manufactured Tobacco, is a simple Revenue duty? Bear in mind that ours is the most extensive Tobacco-growing country in the world, and that our Tobacco Manufactures are scarcely exceeded by any other. On what principle is this forty per cent. imposed, when our fabrics of Cotton, Silk, Woolen, &c., are exposed to foreign competition at rates varying from twenty to thirty per cent.? If the effect of duties be such as is laid down by the Secretary, (in No. 3,) then at least ten dollars will be taken from our consumers of Tobacco for every dollar brought into the Treasury. What means this antagonism of principle and prac tice?

The second principle above set forth is consistently adhered to throughout the new act. We are to have none but Ad Valorem duties after December next, and these levied on the foreign cost of the article imported. This is an important innovation in our Revenue system. No tariff hitherto framed has attempted anything of the kind. The Compromise Act of 1833 did indeed contemplate a uniform ad valorem rate of duty after 1842; but this was a duty assessed by our own officers on the actual value of the goods in our own markets, without regard to the cost abroad. Here was no incitement to undervaluation, no avenue opened to fraud; the true amount of duty could generally be ascertained by a mere reference to the Prices Current of the day. And yet the enemies of Protection have seized upon a passage in one of Mr. Clay's speeches in favor of ad valorem duties on this basis and perverted it into an affirmation of and argument for ad valorem duties computed on the basis of the Foreign or Invoice Valuation! The two systems are radically diverse. What we desire and seek to secure by Specific duties is the levying of duties which shall bear alike on the American Importer and the Foreign Agent located in our marts of commerce-on the man of moderate means and his rival who buys by millions' worth. Now the amount to be paid under an ad valorem duty, not based

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