ON PROTECTION TO HOME INDUSTRY.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, APRIL 26, 1820.

[The bill to protect and foster the Productive Labor of the United States, by im posing higher duties on the importation of Foreign Goods, especially Manufactures, being under consideration in Committee of the Whole, Mr. CLAY addressed the Committee as follows:]

MR. CHAIRMAN:- -Whatever may be the value of my opinions on the interesting subject now before us, they have not been hastily formed. It may possibly be recollected by some gentlemen, that I expressed them when the existing tariff was adopted; and that I then urged, that the period of the termination of the war, during which the manufacturing industry of the country had received a powerful spring, was precisely that period when government was alike impelled, by duty and interest, to protect it against the free admission of foreign fabrics, consequent upon a state of peace. insisted, on that occasion, that a less measure of protection would prove more efficacious, at that time, than one of greater extent at a future day. My wishes prevailed only in part; and we are now called upon to decide whether we will correct the error which, I think, we then committed.

In considering the subject, the first important inquiry that we should make is, whether it be desirable that such a portion of the capital and labor of the country should be employed, in the business of manufacturing, as would furnish a supply of our necessary wants? Since the first colonization of America, the principal direction of the labor and capital of the inhabitants has been to produce raw materials for the consumption or fabrication of foreign nations. We have always had, in great abundance, the means of subsistence, but we have derived chiefly from other countries our clothes, and the instruments

of defence. Except during those interruptions of commerce arising from a state of war, of from measures adopted for vindicating our commercial rights, we have experienced no very great inconvenience heretofore from this mode of supply. The limited amount of our surplus produce, resulting from the smallness of our numbers, and the long and arduous convulsions of Europe, secured us good markets for that surplus in her ports or those of her colonies. But those convulsions have now ceased, and our population has reached nearly ten millions. A new epoch has arisen; and it becomes us deliberately to contemplate our own actual condition, and the relations which are likely to exist between us and the other parts of the world. The actual state of our population, and the ratio of its progressive increase when compared with the ratio of the increase of the population of the countries which have hitherto consumed our raw produce, seem, to me, alone to demonstrate the necessity of diverting some portion of our industry from its accustomed channel. We double our population in about the term of twenty-five years. If there be no change in the mode of exerting our industry, we shall double, during the same term, the amount of our exportable produce. Europe, including such of her colonies as we have free access to, taken altogether, does not duplicate her population in a shorter term, probably, than one hundred years. The ratio of the increase of her capacity of consumption, therefore, is, to that of our capacity of production, as one is to four. And it is manifest, from the simple exhibition of the powers of the consuming countries, compared with those of the supplying country, that the former are inadequate to the latter. It is certainly true, that a portion of the mass of our raw produce, which we transmit to her, reverts to us in a fabricated form, and that this return augments with our increasing population. This is, however, a very inconsiderable addition to her actual ability to afford a market for the produce of our industry.

I believe that we are already beginning to experience the want of capacity in Europe to consume our surplus produce. Take the articles of cotton, tobacco, and bread-stuffs. For the latter we have scarcely any foreign demand. And is there not reason to believe that we have reached, if we have not passed, the maximum of the foreign demand for the other two articles? Considerations connected with the cheapness of cotton, as a raw material, and the facility with which it can be fabricated, will probably make it be more and more used as

a substitute for other materials. But, after you allow to the demand for it the utmost extension of which it is susceptible, it is yet quite limited-limited by the number of persons who use it, by their wants, and their ability to supply them. If we have not reached, therefore, the maximum of the foreign demand, (as I believe we have,) we must soon fully satisfy it. With respect to tobacco, that article affording an enjoyment not necessary, as food and clothes are, to human existence, the foreign demand for it is still more precarious, and I apprehend that we have already passed its limits. It appears to me, then, that, if we consult our interest merely, we ought to encourage home manufactures. But there are other motives to recom

mend it, of not less importance.

The wants of man may be classed under three heads-food, raiment, and defence. They are felt alike in the state of barbarism and of civilization. He must be defended against the ferocious beasts of prey in the one condition, and against the ambition, violence, and injustice, incident to the other. If he seeks to obtain a supply of those wants without giving an equivalent, he is a beggar or a robber; if by promising an equivalent which he cannot give, he is fraudulent; and if by a commerce, in which there is perfect freedom on his side, whilst he meets with nothing but restrictions on the other, he submits to an unjust and degrading inequality. What is true of individuals is equally so of nations. The country, then, which relies upon foreign nations for either of those great essentials, is not, in fact, independent. Nor is it any consolation for our dependance upon other nations, that they are also dependant upon us, even were it true. Every nation should anxiously endeavor to establish its absolute independence, and consequently be able to feed, and clothe, and defend itself. If it rely upon a foreign supply, that may be cut off by the caprice of the nation yielding it, by war with it, or even by war with other nations: it cannot be independent. But it is not true that any other nations depend upon us in a degree any thing like equal to that of our dependance upon them for the great necessaries to which I have referred. Every other nation seeks to supply itself with them from its own resources; and, so strong is the desire which they feel to accomplish this purpose, that they exclude the cheaper foreign article for the dearer home production. Witness the English policy in regard to corn. So selfish, in this respect, is the conduct of other powers, that, in some instances, they even prohibit the pro

duce of the industry of their own colonies, when it comes int. competition with the produce of the parent country. All other countries but our own exclude, by high duties, or absolute prohibitions, whatever they can respectively produce within themselves. The truth is, and it is in vain to disguise it, that we are a sort of independent colonies of England-politically free, commercially slaves. Gentlemen tell us of the advantages of a free exchange of the produce of the world. But they tell us of what has never existed, does not exist, and perhaps never will exist. They invoke us to give perfect freedom on our side, whilst in the ports of every other nation, we are met with a code of odious restrictions, shutting out entirely a great part of our produce, and letting in only so much as they cannot possibly do without. I will hereafter examine their favorite maxim, of leaving things to themselves, more particularly. At present I will only say that I too am a friend to free trade, but it must be a free trade of perfect rociprocity. If the governing consideration were cheapness; if national independence were to weigh nothing; if honor nothing; why not subsidize foreign powers to defend us? why not hire Swiss or Hessian mercenaries to protect us? why not get our arms of all kinds, as we do, in part, the blankets and clothing of our soldiers, from abroad? We should probably consult economy by these dangerous expedients.

But, say gentlemen, there are to the manufacturing system some inherent objections, which should induce us to avoid its introduction into this country; and we are warned by the example of England, by her pauperism, by the vices of her population, her wars, &c. would be a strange order of Providence, if it were true, that he should create necessary and indispensable wants, and yet should render us unable to supply them without the degradation or contamination of our species.

Pauperism is, in general, the effect of an overflowing population. Manufactures may undoubtedly produce a redundant population; but so may commerce, and so may agriculture. In this respect they are alike; and from whatever cause the disproportion of a population to the subsisting faculty of a country may proceed, its effect of pauperism is the same. Many parts of Asia would exhibit, perhaps, as afflicting effects of an extreme prosecution of the agricultural system, as England can possibly furnish, respecting the manufacturing. It

is not, however, fair to argue from these extreme cases, against either the one system or the other. There are abuses incident to every branch of industry, to every profession. It would not be thought very just or wise to arraign the honorable professions of law and physic, because the one produces the pettifogger, and the other the quack. Even in England it has been established, by the diligent search of Colquhoun, from the most authentic evidence, the judicial records of the country, that the instances of crime were much more numerous in the agricultural than in the manufacturing districts; thus proving that the cause of wretchedness and vice in that country was to be sought for, not in this or that system, so much as in the fact of the density of its population. France resembles this country more than England, in respect to the employments of her population; and we do not find that there is anything in the condition of the manufacturing portion of it, which ought to dissuade us from the introduction of it into our own country. But even France has not that great security against the abuses of the manufacturing system, against the effects of too great a density of population, which we possess in our waste lands. While this resource exists, we have nothing to apprehend. Do capitalists give too low wages; are the laborers too crowded, and in danger of starving?-the unsettled lands will draw off the redundancy, and leave the others better provided for. If an unsettled province, such as Texas, for example, could, by some convulsion of nature, be wafted alongside of, and attached to, the island of Great Britain, the instantaneous effect would be, to draw off the redundant portion of the population, and to render more comfortable both the emigrants and those whom they would leave behind. I am aware that while the public domain is an acknowledged security against the abuses of the manufacturing, or any other system, it constitutes, at the same time, an impediment, in the opinion of some, to the success of manufacturing industry, by its tendency to prevent the reduction of the wages of labor. Those who urge this objection have their eyes too much fixed on the ancient system of manufacturing, when manual labor was the principal instrument which it employed. During the last half century, since the inventions of Arkwright, and the long train of improvements which followed, the labor of machinery is principally used. I have understood, from sources of information which I believe to be accurate, that the combined force of all the machinery employed by Great Britain, in manufacturing, is equal to the labor of one hundred millions of able-bodied men. If we suppose the