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four millions. Now, if the whole duty fall upon the consu mer, it must be by the enhancement of the price fifty per cent. in the market, where the imported goods have to contend with the twenty-four millions of home manufactures. Can this be done? The answer is different in the North and the South.

331. Nor, is the state of the question, materially or permanently, changed, where the return for the exported commodities is in specie, which pays no duty. Specie has no fixed value; and its relative value is as dependent upon commercial restriction as any other commodity. Thus, if, in unrestricted trade, one dollar will purchase one yard of cloth, and under restrictions one dollar and a half be requisite for the same purpose, the value of specie as an equivalent for this article, would be degraded. In other words, the exchangeable value of specie, in the United States, would be diminished precisely in the degree that the other articles would be enhanced by the restriction and by the consequent importation of specie. For a season, the planter might find it his interest to import specie instead of manufactures, burdened with the duty. This operation would continue, until the relative value of manufactures in England and the United States, as compared with specie, should be so far changed, that it would be more advantageous to the exporter of cotton, to import manufactures, even under the high duties, than to import specie. This change in the relative value of manufactures in the two countries, would be produced by the diminution of the quantity of specie in England, and its accumulation in the United States, and after the distribution and adjustment of the precious metals relative to this state of things should have been effected, the importation of the protected articles would be so extensively resumed as to require further protecting duties.

332. The effect of this change in the value of money is to diminish the exchangeable value of the great staple exports of the South. Their money price in the United States is governed by their money price abroad, and as the latter cannot be increased by the duties upon the imports received in exchange, the money price of these staples will not be greater in the United States, under a system of protecting duties, than without it. The exchangeable value of these commodities, therefore, must be diminished, in the United States, preisely, in the degree that the value of specie is depreciated, as compared with other commodities, or as the average price

of all other articles is enhanced, by the protecting duties. Hence, it becomes of the utmost importance to the true understanding of this subject, to bear constantly in mind the distinction between the money price and the exchangeable value of the staples as affected by the protecting system.

333. But, suppose the planter receives money for his cotton, what is his condition? If he would buy cotton, woollen or iron, and other protected manufactures, he must pay for them, on an average, full forty-five per cent. The burden then is, unalterably, fixed upon the planter, as a producer, for he is compelled either to import these articles himself, in direct exchange for his cotton, and pay the duties on them out of his own pocket, or to receive money in exchange for his cotton. This money received by him, in England, is worth from forty to fifty per cent. more there, than here, for the use to which he would apply it. But, in transferring his purchases to the United States, that advantage is lost in the duties which he must pay. Still it is his interest to import, so long as tobacco, cotton or rice, is produced for exportation. When the tariff of 1828 was passed, it was supposed to be prohibitory to articles subject to the higher rate of duty. It was, temporarily, so, for many articles. But when the distribution of the precious metals or their substitutes became adjusted to the new state of things, importations were freely resumed, and as large an amount of protected articles came in, at an average of nearly fifty per cent., as had come in before, at the lower rates of the former tariff.

334. In whatever degree the increased price of protected articles arises from the depreciation in the value of money, all other commodities in the same commercial community will experience a corresponding increase of price. Hence, the northern farmers and labourers are less oppressed by the protecting system, than the people of the southern States, other than the planters. Whatever increases the profits of the leading employments of capital, in any community, increases the profits of subordinate employments and the wages of labour; Where the transfer of capital and labour from one employment to another, is easily effected, there cannot long continue different rates of profit and wages of labour. For if the protecting duties by the enhancement of price reduce the value of money, in whatever degree that takes place, in the same degree all other articles in the same region of country are enhanced also. While, therefore, the price of manufactures is increased forty or fifty per cent., by

the protecting duties, the price of all farming productions is probably increased twenty-five or thirty per cent. The burden upon the northern consumers, therefore, is only the difference between the price of the protected and the unprotected productions of that part of the Union.

335. For the same reason, that the prosperity of the great manufacturing interests of the North produces a corresponding prosperity in the other classes thère, the depressed condition of the southern planters must produce a corresponding depression, in all subordinate departments of southern industry. The protecting duties have a double operation upon them. They, at the same time, diminish the price of their great staples and increase the price of all the articles they have occasion to purchase, from other parts of the Union. Nor can they relieve themselves by entering upon the protected pursuits. Their population is not adapted to manufactures, nor can the population be removed to the manufacturing region.

336. The result of the whole, the southern statesmen sum up thus: "The annual product of the three great staples of the South, consumed both abroad and at home, amounts to at least 40 millions of dollars. The effect of the protecting system, is to depress the exchangeable value of this whole amount of production, as compared both with the manufaetures of the North and with foreign manufactures, in the exact degree that it enhances the price of those manufactures. In other words, upon all the exchanges of the planters at home and abroad, they pay an average of forty per cent. more for what they purchase, while the price of their staples is not at all increased; and this unequal state of their exchanges is exclusively produced by the protecting duties." "It is an annual legislative draft upon the productive industry of the planting States, in favour of the manufacturing States, for between ten and fifteen millions of dollars, signed by the presiding officers of the two Houses of Congress, and countersigned by the President of the United States."

337. The inequality of this taxation is rendered more burdensome by the place of the expenditure of the revenue. If taxes be spent in the districts within which they are raised, the burden may be easily borne; because, the operation is not to diminish the quantum of wealth, but to transfer it from one class to another. In a small country, like England, the transfer of the revenue from the place of collection to the place of expenditure, is scarcely felt. The burdens and the

benefits are so equally distributed, that the one almost counterbalances the other. But in the United States, it is the reverse. In South Carolina and Georgia, States which contribute nearly three times their proper quotas of taxes, amounting to upwards of five millions, there have not been annually expended $100,000 for the last ten years. Almost the whole of a revenue of twenty-four millions is distributed north of the Potomac, principally, among the manufacturing States, adding additional stimulus to their industry, already too highly stimulated by the enormous bounties of the protecting system.

338. The effect of the system on the South, is said to be most desolating. It has caused the entire destruction of its navigation; broken the merchants and mechanics; thrown commerce into the hands of foreigners, who bear off their profits to more favoured lands; real estate is falling in price, in the cities; in the country, the fields are abandoned, the hospitable mansions are deserted; agriculture droops; the slaves, as their masters, work harder, and fare worse; and the planter, whose earnest efforts have failed to avert his ruin, is driven from the scenes of his childhood and the bones of his fathers, to seek in the wilderness the reward of his industry. 339. It cannot be doubted, we think, that in both these expositions there is exaggeration. The protecting system is, certainly, among the efficient causes of the prosperity of the country, but, greater effect is ascribed to it, than it really produces. Were the duties diminished, the manufactures of the country might still be profitably sustained; but if the duties be wholly abrogated, many valuable branches of national industry must be destroyed. The evil operation of the protective system upon the South, is misrepresented, in degree as in kind. If increased population, and increased production of profitable staples, be evidence of prosperity, and certainly there can be none higher, the South must be in a prosperous condition. That region, including South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, has increased, in population, within ten years, from 1820 to 1830, under the tariff system, nearly fifty per cent., and its cotton product, alone, has grown one-half in value, and twofifths in quantity, and this article furnishes more than one-half of our domestic exports. During the latter portion of that period, South Carolina may have been less prosperous than in the former. The greatly increased production of cotton, reducing price, and the new lands of other States rendering

the culture there more profitable, must have much affected her interest in the market, and whilst she suffered from the general causes for depression of prices throughout the world, these causes have been peculiar to herself.

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340. We do not think the South has been much injured by the tariff system; but if she have, it has not been in the ways which have been averred. It has not had the effect to contract the market for her staples, nor to compel her, as the producer, to pay the duty, But she has been forced to pay higher for many articles of her consumption, without the advantages which make the system desirable, elsewhere. In considering this case, we must look at it under the regular and ordinary state of trade, when the demand and supply are duly apportioned; not when these relations are disturbed, by over production, whether in raw material or the manufacture, or by political or commercial convulsions. In the healthy state of trade, the grower of cotton, tobacco and rice, is enabled to export his products, and to import goods in return, more advantageously, generally, than he can import specie. If he import the latter, however, he does not import a degraded commodity. Specie can be depreciated, in a commercial country, only, when her balance of trade is against the world, and then not for a long period, because the depreciation will make it an exportable commodity. But depreciation of specie, can never be caused by a trade with a nation, as with Great Britain, where the balance is, constantly, millions against us. When the producer imports goods, however, he is burdened with a heavy duty, and so far as he consumes the goods himself, he becomes the actual and ultimate payer of such duty; but if he sell them, the usual case, the consumer pays the duty, in the price, consisting of cost, charges and profits; and no portion of the duty is paid by the producer or exporter. The planter is rarely the exporter or importer. His trade is limited to a sale, for money, to the merchant, and in this way he avoids much of the risk of loss which may flow from causes disturbing the general course of trade. He buys with his cash, the supplies for his plantation, and if in these there be any protected articles, he pays the duty. Of these articles, in proportion to its numerical population, the South consumes less than the North and West, and is, therefore, in proportion to its wealth, less heavily taxed. The master, to be sure, pays for his slaves, and, individually, pays more than the northern farmer; but let the master and slaves pay per capitum, and the northern man pays at least double the tax

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