stronger is old Adam than young Melancthon. Not merely
that his bread is apt to be coarse and his couch somewhat
rugged, — he was prepared for this, — but the intractibility
of ignorance, the stubbornness of prejudice, the thanklessness
of those arrested in a downhill career, the inefficiency of
effort, and " the heart-sickness of hope deferred," are indeed
appalling. Doubting, irresolute Hamlet may well be dis-
tracted, not so much by the fact that " the times are out of
joint," as that he seems to have been "born to set things
right." For the moral dangers of the Reformer's calling are
even more disheartening than its pecuniary discouragements.
" Do you know," said a broken-down ex-lecturer for Temper-
ance, Anti-Slavery, &c., &c., once to me, in a tone and with a
look of deep meaning, " that there is no life so unlicalthy as
that of a popular agitator?" The "patriot to a brewery"
may even enjoy it ; but for the proud, shy, home-bred man,
who would rather see the smile on the face of the loved one
than be the subject of a civic ovation, and rather hear the
idle prattle of his babes than the shouts of clustered thou-
sands responsive to his burning words, it is a cold, stern life
that he leads ; and he labors imder constant apprehensions
that, while he is striving to diffuse sentiments of benignity,
generosity, and mercy, the milk of human kindness, by rea-
son of those very efforts, is slowly drying up in his o^vn
breast, and he, while still struggling earnestly, though some-
what mechanically, to redeem the human race, is coming
gradually to dislike and despise them.

The most striking, perhaps the only general, tribute ever
paid to the position and merits of the tnie Reformer is that
embodied in the universal jeer and shout which announces
the exposure of the fallen aspirant or false pretender. As
there was never a villain who did not hail with hearty exul-
tation the exposure of a priest's lechery or a morahst's



522 MISCELLAyilES.

knavery, so the lazy, sensual, luxury-loving, money-grasping
million enjoy nothing more keenly than the tidings that one
who has reproved their selfishness and made them uncomfort-
able by his projects of social melioration or homilies on
human brotherhood has at length been tempted into sin* or
turned inside out by some casual revelation, and proved as
selfish and venal as themselves. As the news is rapidly dis-
seminated, the face of sensualism and self-seeking broadens
into one universal grin, — peal after peal of "unextinguished
laughter" disturbs the serenity of the atmosphere, — you
might suspect from hearing it that everybody's uncle had
died, and left him heir to a bounteous fortune. The grandest
Hebrew prophet, looking on such a spectacle, might forcibly
say, as of old: "Hell from beneath is stirred up to meet
thee ; it stirreth up its denizens to inquire exultingly, ' Art
thou also become as one of us ? ' " And thus the Eeformer
who, while he stood erect, seemed beneath the' meanest, —
more hated, reviled, and despised, — shall prove by his fall
that he was dreaded, and really honored, as well; that the
devils contemplated his efforts in the spirit which believes
and trembles ; that those who most defamed and misrepre-
sented, yet secretly respected and wished themselves virtuous
enough to be almost, if not altogether, such as he. And thus
a career which in its progress seemed despised and repro-
bated shall yet in its defeat and ruin prove to have been
really admired and honored, even by those who lacked virtue
to imitate or even commend it.

Yet this shout from the nethermost hades is by no means
justified by the fact on which it is based. Men are often
weak and fallible in action, even though their intellectual
perception of the right is of the deepest and clearest. Ba-
con's philosophy is sound and valuable, though Bacon was a
corrupt chancellor, a bribed judge. The earth docs move, in
accordance with Galileo's hypothesis, though Galileo himself
M^as induced by ghostly fulminations and personal perils to
recant it. Peter might have denied and blasphemed till
doomsday without belittling or confounding that salvation of



REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 523

which he had been chosen a witness and an apostle. Few
men are equal in their daily lives to the moral altitude of
their highest percej)tions ; and all the confessors and mart}TS
might apostatize, and heap shame on their own heads, with-
out detracting one iota from the worth of philanthropy or
Christianity. Man is a reed which the slightest breeze de-
flects, the feeblest step prostrates ; but Truth is adamant and
eternal.

Yes, it is a great thing to be truly a Reformer, even one
misinterpreted and scorned through life, as what genuine
Reformer ever failed to be. The tombs of the dead prophets
are built only of the stones hurled at them while living ; and
thus may we accurately measure the greatness of their daring,
the force and truth of their unprecedented utterances. To
speak firmly the word destined ultimately to heal Man's dead-
liest maladies, yet certain mstantly to evoke his direst curses
— this is a heroism whereof no other forlorn hope than that
of Humanity is capable. Idly, weakly, shall the timidly per-
spicacious hope to speak the great truth, yet not offend the
beneficiaries of current falsehoods : to declare the true God,
yet excite no uproar among Diana's silversmiths. The world
was never created, and is not governed, so that Policy and
Principle, Time and Eternity, God and Mammon, can all be
served together. If they could be, Virtue would be merely
shrewdness, and blindness the physical synonyme of evil.

But what then ? Do we say that the path of Rectitude is
thorny and craggy, and that tlie only verdure and balmy sun-
shine that approach it are those of the adjacent, alluring by-
ways of Luxury and Ease, leading down to the garden of Sen-
sual Pleasure ? By no means. AVliat is affirmed is not that
Truth's ser\dce is necessarily one of privation and suffering,
but that the true soldiers never choose it as the way of ease,
of ambition, or from any selfish consideration whatever, but
because it is the way of Right. " Necessity is uj^on me,"
says the trae Apostle ; his course is one dictated to him by



524 MISCELLANIES.

considerations higher than any hopes of heaven, deeper than
any fears of hell. Doubtless, to the eye of sense, his career
seems dwarfish, his aspirations baffled, his life a defeat and a
failure. But he has never ajipealed to the ordeal of sense, and
feels under no obligation to accept its judgments. Who shall
say that Nebuchadnezzar on his throne is happier than Daniel'
ill his prison ? or that Herod in his palace, gorged with Epi-
curean dainties, and gloating over voluptuous music and dan-
cing, is more blest than the uncouth, stern-souled Baptist,
striding in solitary hunger over sun-scorched deserts of rock
and sand, — very far from luxury, but very near to God, — or
contemplating his swiftly approaching death in a malefactor's
dungeon ? Jerusalem and the Temple, the Palace and its
gardens, are the possessions of the former ; but what are they
to the cefestial splendors, the eternal verities, which are present
to the rapt, adoring gaze of the latter, and gild the visions of
his rocky couch with a glory inconceivable to the apprehen-
sion of the Sadducee ?

These two can never understand each other while they
remain essentially as now. The unbelief that questions, and
cavils, and scruples, and doubts, and denies, seems to him
incomparably less virulent and fearful than that which makes
mitres and triple-crowns counters of a sordid ambition, and
shakes the keys of eternal bliss or woe in the face of long-
suffering milhons, to make them bow their necks passively
to the yoke of a soul-crushing despotism.

For, indeed, to the Eeformer's apprehension, nothing can
be more absurd than the dread of irreligion professed by men
whose daily lives are a proclamation of indifference to the
wants and ■v\Tongs of the benighted and destitute, — who are
.so intent on having the Poor evangelized, that they do not
ask how they are to be fed, — and who act as though a plen-
tiful distribution of tracts and Bibles would alone suffice to
banish evil from the earth.

To the Conservative, Eeligion would seem often a part of
the subordinate machinery of Police, having for its main



REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 525

object the instilling of proper humility into the abject, of
contentment into the breasts of the down-trodden, and of
enduing with a sacred reverence for Property those who have
no personal reason to think well of the sharp distinction of
Mine and Thine. The Eeformer, on the other hand, insists on
Humanity as the inevitable manifestation of all true Eeli-
gion, presses the best-beloved A^^ostle's searching question,
" If a man love not his brother, whom he has seen, how can
he love God, whom he has not seen " ? or, as a poet of our own
day has phrased it, afl&rms that there

" are infidels to Adam worse than infidels to God,"

and that the effective answer to an imperfect, halting faith, is
a devoted, loving life.

This earnest, angry strife shall yet be composed, — this
stormy clamor be hushed, — not through the absolute defeat
of either party, but through the recognition by each of the
truth af&rmed by the other, so that Conservatism and Eeform
shall take their places side by side on the same platform, and
Faith and Life, Humanity and Christianity, be recognized by
our enlarged ^dsion as halves of the same unit, planets re-
voh'ing around and lighted in turn by the same sun of Ever-
lasting Truth. Meantime, let us cherish the Eeformer ! for
his, and not the Conservative's, is the active, aggressive force
through which this ultimate harmonization of the Eeal with
the Ideal is to be achieved. Harsh and sweeping, rash and
destructive, he may seem, and often is ; but his fire, however
blind and indiscriminate its rage, will be found at last to have
left uuconsumed all that was really worth preserving. With
him, while we respect the proper force and legitimate function
of Conservatism, we must say —

" Standing still is childish folly ;
Going backward is a crime ;
None should patiently endiire
Any ill that he can cure :
. Onward ! keep the march of Time !
Onward ! while a wrong remains
To be conquered by the right,



526 MISCELLANIES.

While Oppression lifts a finger

To affront us by his might,
While an error clouds the reason

Of the universal heart,-
Or a slave awaits his freedom,

AcTiox is the wise man's part."

And to him our final word of gratitude and cheer shall
fitly be—

" We thank thee, watcher on the lonely tower.
For all thou tellest of the coming hour
When Error shall decay and Truth grow strong,
And Right shall rule supreme and vanquish Wrong."

And, indeed, though the life of the Reformer may seem
rugged and arduous, it were hard to say considerately that
any other were worth living at aU. Who can thoughtfully
af&rm that the career of the conquering, desolating, subju-
gating warrior, — of the devotee of Gold, or Pomp, or Sensual
Joys ; the Monarch in his purple, the Miser by his chest,
the wassailer over his bowl, — is not a libel on Humanity
and an offence against God ? But the earnest, unselfish Re-
former, — born into a state of darkness, evil, and suffering,
and honestly striving to replace these by light, and purity,
and happiness, — he may fall and die, as so many have done
before him, but he cannot fail. His vindication shall gleam
from the walls of his hovel, his dungeon, his tomb ; it shall
shine in the radiant eyes of uncorrupted Childhood, and fall
in blessings from the lips of high-hearted, generous Youth.
As the untimely death of the good is our strongest moral
assurance of the Resurrection, so the life wearily worn out in
doubtful and perilous conflict with Wrong and Woe is our
most conclusive evidence that Wrong and Woe shall yet
vanish forever. Luther, dying amid the agonizing tears and
wild consternation of all Protestant Germany, — Columbus,
borne in regal pomp to his grave by the satellites of the royal
miscreant whose ingratitude and perfidy had broken his
mighty heart, — Lovejoy, pouring out his life-blood beside
the Press whose freedom he had so gallantly defended, — yes,
and not less majestic, certainly not less tragic, than either, the



REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 527

lowly and lonely couch of the dying ' Uncle Tom/ Tvhose
whole life had been a brave and Christian battle against
monstrous injustice and crime, — these teach us, at least, thnt
all true greatness is ripened, and tempered, and proved, in
life-long struggle against vicious beliefs, traditions, practices,
institutions ; and that not to have been a Eeformer is not to
have truly lived. Life is a bubble which any breath may
dissolve ; Wealth or Power a snow-flake, melting momently
into the treacherous deep across whose waves we are floated
on to our unseen destiny ; but to have lived so that one less
orphan is called to choose between starvation and infamy,

— one less slave feels the lash applied in mere wantonness or
cruelty, — to have lived so that some eyes of those whom
Fame shall never know are brigfhtened and others suffused at
the name of the beloved one, — so that the few who knew
him truly shall recognize him as a bright, warm, cheering
presence, which was here for a season and left the world no
worse for his stay in it, — this surely is to have really lived,

— and not wholly in vain.



THE GROUNDS OF PROTECTION.*



I



Mr. President and Eespected Auditors : —

T has devolved on me, as junior advocate for the cause of
Protection, to open the discussion of this question. I do
this with less diffidence than I should feel in meeting able
opponents and practised disputants on almost any other topic,
because I am strongly confident that you, my hearers, will
regard this as a subject demanding logic rather than rhetoric,
the exhibition and proper treatment of homely truths, ratlier
than the indulgence of flights of fancy. As sensible as you can
be of my deficiencies as a debater, I have chosen to put my
views on paper, in order that I may present them in as con-
cise a manner as possible, and not consume my hour before
commencing my argument. You have nothing of oratory to
lose by this course ; I will hope that something may be gained
to my cause in clearness and force. And here let me say that,
wliile the hours I have been enabled to give to preparation
for this debate have been few indeed, I feel the less regret in
that my life has been in some measure a preparation. If there
beany subject to which I have devoted time, and thought, and
patient study, in a spirit of anxious desire to learn and follow
the truth, it is this very question of Protection ; if I have
totally misapprehended its character and bearings, then am

* Speech at the Tabernacle, New York, February 10, 1843, in public debate
on this resolution : —

Resolved, That a Protective Tariff is conducive to our National Prosperity.
AflBrmative : Joseph Blunt, Negative: Samuel J. Tildek,

HoKACK Gkeeley. Parke Godwin.



THE GROUNDS OF PROTECTION. 529

I ignorant, hopelessly ignorant indeed. And, while I may not
hope to set before you, in the brief space allotted me, all tliat
is essential to a full understanding of a question which spans
the whole arch of Political Economy, — on which abler men
have ^\Titten volumes without at all exhausting it, — I do
entertain a sanguine hope that I shall be able to set before
you considerations conclusive to the candid and unbiassed
mind of the policy and necessity of Protection.

Let us not waste our time on non-essentials. That un-^-ise
and unjust measures have been adopted under the 'prcUncc of
Protection, I stand not here to deny; that laws intended to be
Protective have sometimes been injurious in their tendency,
I need not dispute. The logic which would thence infer the
futility or the danger of Protective Legislation would just as
easily prove all laws and all policy mischievous and destruc-
tive. Political Economy is one of the latest-born of the
Sciences ; the very fact that we meet here this evening to
discuss a question so fundamental as this proves it to be yet
in its comparative infancy. The sole favor I shall ask of my
opponents, therefore, is that they will not waste their efforts
and your time in attacking positions that we do not maintain,
and hewing down straw giants of their o^vn manufacture, but
meet directly the arguments which I shall advance, and
which, for the sake of simplicity and clearness, I will f)roceed
to put before you in the form of Propositions and their Illus-
trations, as follows : —

Proposition I. A Nation which would be prosperous,

MUST PROSECUTE VARIOUS BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY, AND SUPPLY

ITS VITAL Wants mainly by the Labor of its own Hands.

Cast your eyes where you will over the face of the earth,
trace back the History of Man and of Nations to the
earliest recorded periods, and I think you vnW. find this rule
uniformly prevaihng, that the nation which is eminently Agri-
cultural and Grain-exporting, — which depends mainly or
principally on other nations for its regular supplies of Manu-
factured fabrics, — has been comparatively a 2^oor nation, and

34



530 MISCELLANIES.

ultimately a dependent nation. I do not say tliat this is the
instant result of exchanging the rude staples of Agriculture
for the more delicate fabrics of Art ; but I maintain that it is
the inevitable tendency. The Agricultural nation falls in
debt, becomes impoverished, and ultimately subject. The
palaces of " merchant princes " may emblazon its harbors and
overshadow its navigable waters ; there may be a mighty
Alexandria, but a miserable Egypt behind it ; a flourisliing
Odessa or Dantzic, but a rude, thinly peopled southern Eussia
or Poland ; the exchangers may flourish and roll in luxury,
but the producers famish and die. Indeed, few old and
civilized countries become largely exporters of grain until
they have lost, or by corruption are prepared to surrender,
their independence ; and these often present the spectacle of
the laborer starving on the fields he has tilled, in the midst
of their fertility and promise. These appearances rest upon
and indicate a law, which I shall endeavor hereafter to ex-
plain. I pass now to my

Proposition II. There is a natural tendency est a com-
paratively NEW Country to become and continue an
Exporter of Grain and other rude Staples and an Im-
porter OF Manufactures.

I think I hardly need waste time in demonstrating this
proposition, since it is illustrated and confirmed by universal
experience, and rests on obvious laws. The new country has
abundant and fertile soil, and produces Grain with remarkable
facility ; also. Meats, Timber, Ashes, and most rude and bulky
articles. Labor is there in demand, being required to clear,
to build, to open roads, &c., and the laborers are comparatively
few ; while, in older countries. Labor is abundant and cheap,
as also are Capital, Machinery, and all the means of the
cheap production of Manufactured fabrics. I surely need not
waste words to show that, in the absence of any counteracting
policy, the new coimtry will import, and continue to import,
largely of the fabrics of older countries, and to pay for them,
so far as she may, with her Agricultural staples. I will



THE GROUNDS OF PROTECTION. 531

endeavor to sliow liereafter that she will continue to do this
long- after she has attained a condition to manufacture them
as cheaply for herself, even regarding the money cost alone.
But that does not come under the present head. The wliole
history of our country, and especially from 17S2 to '90, when
we had no Tariff and scarcely any Paper IMoney, — proves
that, whatever may be the Currency or the internal condi-
tion of the new country, it will continue to draw its chief
supplies from the old, — large or small according to its meas-
ure of ability to pay or obtain credit for them ; but still,
putting Duties on Imports out of the question, it will con-
tinue to buy its Manufactures abroad, whether in prosperity
or adversity, inflation or depression.

I now advance to my

Proposition III. It is injurious to the New Country

THUS TO CONTINUE DEPENDENT FOR ITS SUPPLIES OF CLOTHING

AND Manufactured Fabrics on the Old.

As this is probably the point on which the doctrines of
Protection first come directly in collision with those of Free
Trade, I will treat it more deliberately, and endeavor to illus-
trate and demonstrate it.

I presume I need not waste time in proving that the ruling
.price of Grain (as of any Manufacture) in a region whence
it is considerably exported, wiU be its price at the point to
which it is exported, less the cost of such transportation. For
instance : the cost of transporting ^^^[leat hither from large
grain-growing sections of Illinois was last fall sixty cents ;
and, New York being their most available market, and the
price here ninety cents, the market there at once settled at
thirty cents. As this adjustment of prices rests on a law
obvious, immutable as gravitation, I presume I need not waste
words in establishing it.

I proceed, then, to my next point. The average price of
Wheat throughout the world is something less than one dollar
per bushel; higher where the consumption largely exceeds



532 MISCELLANIES.

the adjacent production, — lower where the production largely
exceeds the immediate consumption (I put out of view in this
statement the inequalities created by Tariffs, as I choose at
this point to argue the question on the basis of universal Free
Trade, which is of course the basis most favorable to my
opponents). I say, then, if all Tariffs were abolished to-mor-
row, the price of Wheat in England — that being the most
considerable ultimate market of surpluses, and the chief sup-
plier of our manufactures — would go^•ern the price in this
country, while it would be itself governed by the price at
which that staple could be procured in sufficiency from other
grain-growing regions. Now, Southern Eussia and Central
Poland produce AVlieat for exportation at thirty to fifty cents
per bushel ; but the price is so increased by the cost of trans-
portation that at Dantzic it averages some ninety and at
Odessa some eighty cents per bushel. The cost of importa-
tion to England from these ports being ten and fifteen cents
respectively, the actual cost of the article in England, all
charges paid, and allo^ving for a small increase of price con-
sequent on the increased demand, would not, in the absence
of all Tariffs whatever, exceed one dollar and ten cents per
bushel ; and this would be the average price at which we must
sell it in England in order to buy thence the great bulk of
our IVIanufactures. I think no man ^^•ill dispute or seriously
vary this calculation. Neither can any reflecting man seri-
ously contend that we could purchase forty or fifty millions'
worth or more of Foreign JManufactures per annum, and pay
for them in additional products of our Slave Labor — in Cot-
ton and Tobacco. The consumption of these articles is now
pressed to its utmost limit, — that of Cotton especially is
borne down by the immense weight of the crops annually
thrown upon it, and almost constantly on the verge of a glut.
If we are to buy our Manufactures principally from Europe,
we must pay for the additional amount mainly in tlie jiro-
ducts of Northern Agricultural industry, — that is imiversally
agreed on. The point to be determined is, whether we could
obtain them abroad cheaper — really and positively cheaj)er,



THE GROUNDS OF PROTECTION. 533

all Tarififs being abrogated — than under an efficient system of
Protection.

Let us closely scan this question. Illinois and Indiana,
natural grain-growing States, need Cloths ; and, in the absence
of all Tariffs, these can be transported to them from England
for two to three per cent, of their value. It follows, then,
that, in order to undersell any American competition, the Brit-
ish Manufacturer need only put his cloths at his factory ^ve
per cent, below the wholesale price of such cloths in Illinois, in
order to command the American market. That is, allowing
a fair broadcloth to be manufactured in or near Illinois for
three dollars and a quarter per yard, cash price, in the face
of British rivalry, and paying American prices for materials
and labor, the British manufacturer has only to make that
same cloth at three dollars per yard in Leeds or Huddersfield,