The markets in the Southwest, now so important, were then quite limited. As the protective system, coupled with the contemplated internal improvements, if successfully accomplished, would inevitably tend to enhance the price of agricultural products; while the free trade and anti-internal improvement policy, would as certainly reduce their value; the two systems were long considered so antagonistic, that the success of the one must sound the knell of the other. Indeed, so fully was Ohio impressed with the necessity of promoting manufactures, that all capital thus employed, was for many years entirely exempt from taxation.
It was in vain that the friends of protection appealed to the fact, that the duties levied on foreign goods did not necessarily enhance their cost to the consumer; that the competition among home manufacturers, and between them and foreigners, had greatly reduced the price of nearly every article properly protected; that foreign manufacturers always had, and always would advance their prices according to our dependence upon them; that domestic competition was the only safety the country had against foreign imposition; that it was necessary we should become our own manufacturers, in a fair degree, to render ourselves independent of other nations in times of war, as well as to guard against the vacillations in foreign legislation; that the South would be vastly the gainer by having the market for its products at its own doors, to avoid the cost of their transit across the Atlantic; that, in the event of the repression or want of proper extension of our manufactures, by the adoption of the free trade system, the imports of foreign goods, to meet the public wants, would soon exceed the ability of the people to pay, and, inevitably, involve the country in bankruptcy.