when we are permitted to sail ships on equal terms with foreigners, we can not yet build them with as small a cost as England (which is proved by the very demand of the builders of iron vessels for the retention of protective duties), and our laws do not as yet allow us to buy ships abroad and sail them under our own flag.361
With regard to subsistence, the plea of the Protectionists has been so often and so triumphantly met, that it requires little notice here. That country is the most steadily as well as the most abundantly supplied with food which draws its supplies from the largest surface. It is ridiculous to found a general system of policy on so improbable a danger as that of being at war with all the nations of the world at once; or to [pg 612] suppose that, even if inferior at sea, a whole country could be blockaded like a town, or that the growers of food in other countries would not be as anxious not to lose an advantageous market as we should be not to be deprived of their corn.
In countries in which the system of Protection is declining, but not yet wholly given up, such as the United States, a doctrine has come into notice which is a sort of compromise between free trade and restriction, namely, that protection for protection's sake is improper, but that there is nothing objectionable in having as much protection as may incidentally result from a tariff framed solely for revenue. Even in England regret is sometimes expressed that a “moderate fixed duty” was not preserved on corn, on account of the revenue it would yield. Independently, however, of the general impolicy of taxes on the necessaries of life, this doctrine overlooks the fact that revenue is received only on the quantity imported, but that the tax is paid on the entire quantity consumed. To make the