assistance was derived from the duties on imports.363
The following explanation by Mr. Mill364 of the meaning put upon his argument of protection to young industries by those who have applied it to the United States will be of no slight interest:
“The passage has been made use of to show the inapplicability of free trade to the United States, and for similar purpose in the Australian colonies, erroneously in my opinion, but certainly with more plausibility than can be the case in the United States, for Australia really is a new country whose capabilities for carrying on manufactures can not yet be said to have been tested; but the manufacturing parts of the United States—New England and Pennsylvania—are no longer new countries; they have carried on manufactures on a large scale, and with the benefit of high protecting duties, for at least two generations; their operatives have had full time to acquire the manufacturing skill in which those of England had preceded them; there has been ample experience to prove that the alleged inability of their manufactures to compete in the American market with those of Great Britain does not arise merely from the more recent date of their establishment, but from the fact that American labor and capital can, in the present circumstances of America, be employed with greater return, and greater advantage to the national wealth, in the production of other articles. I have never for a moment recommended or countenanced any protecting industry except for the purpose of enabling the protected branch of industry, in a very moderate time, to become independent of protection. That moderate time in the [pg 615] United States has been exceeded, and if the cotton and iron of America still need protection against those of the other hemisphere, it is in my eyes a complete proof that they aught not to have it, and that the longer it is continued the greater the injustice and the