d manufacturing
nation are so linked in union together that no permanent cause of
prosperity to one of them can operate without extending its influence to
the others. All these interests are alike under the protecting power of
the legislative authority, and the duties of the representative bodies
are to conciliate them in harmony together. So far as the object of
taxation is to raise a revenue for discharging the debts and defraying
the expenses of the community, its operation should be adapted as much
as possible to suit the burden with equal hand upon all in proportion
with their ability of bearing it without oppression. But the legislation
of one nation is sometimes intentionally made to bear heavily upon the
interests of another. That legislation, adapted, as it is meant to be,
to the special interests of its own people, will often press most
unequally upon the several component interests of its neighbors. Thus
the legislation of Great Britain, when, as has recently been avowed,
adapted to the depression of a rival nation, will naturally abound with
regulations of interdict upon the productions of the soil or industry of
the other which come in competition with its own, and will present
encouragement, perhaps even bounty, to the raw material of the other
State which it can not produce itself, and which is essential for the
use of its manufactures, competitors in the markets of the world with
those of its commercial rival. Such is the state of the commercial
legislation of Great Britain as it bears upon our interests. It excludes
with interdicting duties all importation (except in time of approaching
famine) of the great staple of productions of our Middle and Western
States; it proscribes with equal rigor the bulkier lumber and live stock
of the same portion and also of the Northern and Eastern part of our
Union. It refuses even the rice of the South unless aggravated with a
charge of duty upon the Northern carrier who brings it to them. But the
cotton, indispensable for their looms, they will receive almost duty
free to weave it into a fabric for our own wear, to the destruction of
our own manufactures, which they are enabled thus to undersell.

Is the self-protecting energy of this nation so helpless that there
exists in the political institutions of our country no power to
counteract the bias of this foreign legislation; that the growers of
grain must submit to this exclusion from the foreign markets of their
pro