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more and more fabrics, were asked, was in itself positive proof against them. But the unanswerable argument was the fact, that the system was a wholesale spoliation of the self-supporting producers of the land, and destructive of their best interests. Is it not plain, that, since every soundly progressive stage of social development is but the entirety of the various industrial, skilful, and economic elements composing it, that therefore everything that lowers and dwarfs these elements, must make each social stage of development less than it would be, if those reducing causes did not exist? And that is exactly, what protective tariffs do, because under them there is less skill, less industry, and less economy than under free-trade.

The economic side of the attitude of South Carolina, though not clearly presented, was universally admitted by 1832, but how to concede it, without yielding to the political heresies that accompanied it, was the ticklish question? It was well for the country, that a Jackson was at the head, and that he had unlearned the many false politico and economic notions, which disfigured his letters and speeches between 1823 and 1828. Henry Clay was also half ready to abandon his so-called American system. So he proposed a compromise, which was accepted by Webster and Jackson; and it, on being passed by the Senate, pacified South Carolina. It was: that the tariff should be gradually reduced, so that by 1841 there should be no higher. rate than twenty per cent. The national debt was paid from the proceeds thereof by 1835, and then it accumulated by 1839 a surplus of some thirty-nine millions, which was divided according to representation among the states. These simple facts prove, how little the public men of the period understood how to adjust federal taxation upon a sound basis. We may thank them for averting commotion and war, but must blame them for neglecting to do fully right. The punishment came through the election of 1840, when a befogged and misled people defeated Van Buren and brought in Harrison. In 1842 the compromise of 1832 was wantonly broken by Clay himself, and a new protective tariff enacted.

A salutary change had, however, taken place between 183644 in the press, and through it in public opinion. It used to be formed exclusively by partisan newspapers, and especially those at Washington, Baltimore, and the capitals of the states; but now the journals at the commercial centres, especially New York, took the lead, and the public mind was now fed, beside the dry husks of partisan dialectics, also on economic truths. The mercantile spirit, always more enlightened than that of parties, was now infused, and with it came a closer contact with

modern European thought. The newspapers themselves underwent a change: they brought not only more news, but more scientific truth.

So, when in 1845 Robert Walker became Secretary of the Treasury, he found the public mind prepared for the repeal of the tariff of 1842 and the substitution of a revenue tariff. Its average rate was twenty-four per cent., and it—mark the fact-yielded increased revenue. In 1857 it was revised, but not brought up fully to the pure revenue standard. The protective heresy was still in it, and was never eradicated, as it had been from English legislation, by the free-trade league. In 1861 came the inauguration of Lincoln, a protectionist, with a Cabinet, that was loose on every economic question, but intensely bent upon partisan and personal success. It was now seen, that the American mind was, as a nationality, still sadly behind the wise economic spirit of the age, and it was used for the perpetration of all kinds of financial follies.

It was then found out, that the American people could be bled copiously both for government and protective (private) purposes, provided the press fanned some real or pretended patriotic, windy motive into a public passion. Thirty-two years previous the land had been startled with the cry, that there was a "union between the blackleg and the puritan;" now it took readily to the much worse union of the shoddies and puritan partisans. It was wonderful, what a crop of mushroom financiers, generals, statesmen sprung up night after night! After a brief hesitancy, yea, we may say, delinquency, Mr. Chase plunged headlong into every species of taxation, but each with imperfect ways and at hap-hazard rates. At the same time the states and the municipalities increased their exactions of the public. All were astounded at the ease with which millions upon millions were collected and expended. The amount thus consumed of the wealth of the country, in six years, was, as we estimate it after careful calculations, at least 15,000 millions; so that in the ten years between 1861-71 full one-half of the entire wealth of the country passed through the sieves of our governments. The only instance in history, that exceeds this plundering of a people, was that of Wallenstein, who, according to Schiller, levied 60,000 millions of thalers on one-half of Germany through military levies and confiscations. America held a financial hate-not love-feast, at which the partisan press fiddled, the politicians danced, and society groaned, but called itself a Nation.

Nor can any section of the Union or special portion of the population, claim exemption from the folly; for it was as bad in the south as in the north, in the lower as in the higher circles.

of society. And Bismarck's statement, that "errors and vices are chemically mixed in society, and do not lay in strata," was fully exemplified. In estimating the total amount, we took into account not merely the burthens imposed by law for federal state and municipal purposes, but also the manifold-halfvoluntary and half-compulsory-contributions drawn from society for the "drafts" and "soldiers." We computed also the amounts taken from consumers of fabrics through protective tariffs, and the whisky excises, the greater part of which never reached the treasury. The worst effects were produced by such prospective levies or excises. The government would, say in June 1862, enact a tax of $1.00 per gallon on whisky, but exempt from it all then on hand as well as all that would be made until February 1863. The tax was, of course, no revenue measure, but an outright robbery of one portion of the people by another. This process was repeated until the tax reached two dollars per gallon. In this way 1500 millions were filched from the consumers by whisky taxes alone. So there were large sums by those levied on tobacco and beer. The cotton speculations took several thousand millions, and it seemed, as if the Union authorities were in a combination with those of the confederates, to fleece all users of the cotton fabrics. Europe was astonishingly blind upon this whole subject; it applauded us in our follies, because slavery was fought by them.

Add to this sort of indirect, in fact wild, taxation, the interspoliations of some dozen forms of public credit, some being at interest and some not, and no two at like rates. They were therefore never even par with each other, but bore premiums in the stock market or were subjected to discounts, through gamblings in the money market; the government aiding and abetting them. There was also much smuggling both as to imports as well as whisky and cotton. Take beside these the frauds and briberies in freeing men from drafts, and our total estimate of 15,000 millions will not be deemed too large. Suppose now, that we assume, that of this sum 5000 millions were legitimate expenses-and by legitimate we mean the amount that it would have cost if we had had an intelligent, economic, and well-disciplined government to carry on the war -and we have 10,000 millions to be charged to ignorance in finance and to maladministration in fiscal matters. This is the cost of a government that ruled by exciting popular passions; got them voted into the ballot-box, and then abused the confidence placed in it, by all kinds of jobbery and false taxation. That the people could be thus abused indicates a popular weakness from which the world had believed America exempt. And

though it pains to write it down, nevertheless it is true, that this very belief on the part of Europe made it possible, for the American corruptionists to perpetrate their villanies.

Here it was partisanism, that blinded the people, as well as the government. It had begun with Hamilton and Jefferson, and was only largest and intensest under Chase. No administration inquired for or understood the truth, which science would have pointed out on public questions. The elections stood ever before the eyes of the politicians, and they had to cater nolens volens to a popular cynicism on questions of taxation. And that is the reason, why systems of revenue were so much in vogue, in which the hands of the government were hid, and the amount really collected was never known. Twice as much (at least) was paid by the people, than would have sufficed to maintain the government. And if our readers will simply take the pains to see who, in the United States, lent the south and west money for public buildings and works, they will find, who was the beneficiary of the sums taken from the people through indirect taxation, the proceeds of which were never received into the treasury. We have tried hard to ascertain the amount thus surreptitiously taken from the consumers of goods, since the first tariff was enacted, but were unable to find the respective amounts of imported and domestic (protected) merchandize, before 1829. From the best data, since accessible, we have compiled the following table as between 1829 and 1838, the period when the surplus of thirty-nine millions, that had been collected under the tariff of 1828 and Clay's compromise, was divided among the states:

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We do not claim perfect accuracy for our estimates, but give them to bring before the eye of the reader, in figures, the immensity of the false distributions of wealth, that were then and are now perpetrated in the United States under the plea of protecting American industry. We estimate from this basis, that the total amount so drawn from the consumers, during the first hundred years of our national existence, was 2000 millions. And this amount represents the degree of retardation that has been borne by the west and south; they being deprived of that amount of the capital, which their soil and labor had created.

With this estimate of protective tariff spoliation before us, we call to mind the fact, that during all this period the American people and their government were busy to devise means for roads, canals, and eventually also railroads, and to construct them don't laugh!" constitutionally." The presidential messages, the public orations, and the press are full of plans and projects as well as disquisitions on the Constitution, but in none of them do we find a clear comprehension of the resources of the country, that were at the disposal of government, nor an economic scheme for their disposition. We read, indeed, much of "inexhaustible resources," but right alongside are passages, that read as if the country was in a state of exhaustion. The truth was, that there were neither inexhaustible resources, nor any exhaustion. There was simply a want of courage in the public men to find the right ways to utilize and to apply the means, that actually existed in strict accordance with our peculiar institutions, so that each would discharge its proper functions. Had this been done, and the amounts necessary for all public wants, being fairly distributed by wise taxation and fair assessments, could have been easily brought out for public use, and would have led to a much better general and permanent enhancement of American society, than there was.

And this brings us again to the chief impediment in all politico-economic researches in reference to this country, to wit: America grows with all its pernicious systems of taxation and incompetent public administrations! And the social and political scientist is pointed to this general and augmenting prosperity as the unanswerable proof of the error of his admonitions. The facility, with which the constant growth, that exists in spite of political errors and wrongs, is used to make the people believe again and again, that this or that man, or this or that measure or policy, could be the highest and best attainable in America or any other nation, is perfectly marvellous, when we must see, how frequently these false assumptions have had

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