nted
by new and indissoluble ties"--he says: "Shall we suppress the impost
and give that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures. On a few
articles of more general and necessary use, the suppression in due
season, will doubtless be right; but the great mass of the articles on
which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who
are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them." But his embargo
and other retaliatory measures, put in force in 1807 and 1808, and the
War of 1812-15 with Great Britain, which closely followed, furnished
Protection in another manner, by shutting the door to foreign imports
and throwing our people upon their own resources, and contributed
greatly to the encouragement and increase of our home manufactures
--especially those of wool, cotton, and hemp.
At the close of that War the traders of Great Britain determined, even
at a temporary loss to themselves, to glut our market with their goods
and thus break down forever, as they hoped, our infant manufactures.
Their purpose and object were boldly announced in the House of Commons
by Mr. Brougham, when he said: "Is it worth while to incur a loss upon
the first importation, in order by the glut to stifle in the cradle
those rising manufactures in the United States which the War had forced
into existence contrary to the natural course of things." Against this
threatened ruin, our manufacturers all over the United States--the sugar
planters of Louisiana among them--clamored for Protection, and Congress
at once responded with the Tariff Act of 1816.
This law greatly extended and increased specific duties on, and
diminished the application of the ad valorem principle to, foreign
imports; and it has been well described as "the practical foundation of
the American policy of encouragement of home manufactures--the practical
establishment of the great industrial system upon which rests our
present National wealth, and the power and the prosperity and happiness
of our whole people." While Henry Clay of Kentucky, William Loundes of
South Carolina, and Henry St. George Tucker of Virginia supported the
Bill most effectively, no man labored harder and did more effective
service in securing its passage than John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.
The contention on their part was not for a mere "incidental protection"
--much less a "Tariff for revenue only"--but for "Protection" in its
broadest sense, and especially the protection of
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