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Excerpt from Special Report on the Customs-Tariff Legislation of the United States: With Appendixes Sir: From the days of Alexander Hamilton to those of the present Secretary of the Treasury, customs-tariff legislation has been a subject of absorbing interest. It has engaged the attention of the greatest minds of the past generation. Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Wright, and Hayne, among the giant intellects of those days, devoted to it their diligent study, as well as their glowing eloquence and their profound logic. Although the various opinions entertained and expressed upon questions connected with tariff legislation were of an economical rather than of a political character, yet, the parties in favor of protection and of free trade, respectively, were, at one period, except in the Southern States, nearly identical with the then political parties, viz, whigs and democrats. That political partisanship was not of so comparatively mild a type then as it is now, those who are advanced in years may well remember. Nor were the discussions on the tariff at that time mere forensic displays, but were conducted with greater acrimony than political questions of a party character, and with an intensity of feeling compared with which the exciting debates on the same subject at the present day seem but as the amenities of social intercourse. It is not surprising that such excitement should be manifested when the fact is considered that a large portion of the people of the Northern States regarded the success of their manufactures as dependent upon tariff legislation. Capital and labor, the two chief agencies in the production of wealth, relied to a great extent upon such legislation for remunerative employment. On the other hand, two classes of persons were opposed to all legislation designed to change the industry of the nation into new channels: First, the mercantile class, who feared that such legislation, so far as effective, must diminish the commerce of the nation; and, secondly, those who did not believe that the wealth of a nation could be promoted except by securing the most perfect freedom of labor and exchange; those who believed that the most natural and untrammeled industry must be the most profitable, and that so far as any attempt was made to force the labor of the country from one branch of production to another, it could only be done to the disadvantage of both the capitalist and laborer. The last decade has been more prolific of tariff legislation than any preceding one, owing to the exigencies of the civil war. The great point aimed at during the period when heavy demands were made upon the Treasury was to secure the largest possible revenue, and, consequently, very heavy duties were imposed, so that when the war closed the tariff was not only regarded by many as oppressively high, but conflicting in its provisions, and injurious in many of its bearings upon the industrial interests of the nation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.