If such be the state of our commerce and navigation, what is the condition of our home manufactures? How are they amidst the general depression? Do they need further protection? and if any, how much? On all these points, we have had much general statement, but little precise information. In the very elaborate speech of Mr. Speaker, we are not supplied with satisfactory grounds of judging with respect to these various particulars. Who can tell, from any thing yet before the committee, whether the proposed duty be too high or too low on any one article? Gentlemen tell us, that they are in favor of domestic industry; so am I. They would give it protection; so would I. But then all domestic industry is not confined to manufactures. The employments of agriculture, commerce, and navigation are all branches of the same domestic industry; they all furnish employment for American capital and American labor. And when the question is, whether new duties shall be laid, for the purpose of giving further encouragement to particular manufactures, every reasonable man must ask himself, both whether the proposed new encouragement be necessary, and whether it can be given without injustice to other branches of industry.
It is desirable to know, also, somewhat more distinctly, how the proposed means will produce the intended effect. One great object proposed, for example, is the increase of the home market for the consumption of agricultural products. This certainly is much to be desired; but what provisions of the bill are expected wholly or principally to produce this, is not stated. I would not deny that some increase of the home market may follow, from the adoption of this bill, but all its provisions have not an equal tendency to produce this effect. Those manufactures which employ most labor, create, of course, most demand for articles of consumption; and those create least in the production of which capital and skill enter as the chief ingredients of cost. I cannot, Sir, take this bill merely because a committee has recommended it. I cannot espouse a side, and fight under a flag. I wholly repel the idea that we must take this law, or pass no law on the subject. What should hinder us from exercising our own judgments upon these provisions, singly and severally? Who has the power to place us, or why should we place ourselves, in a condition where we cannot give to every measure, that is distinct and separate in itself, a separate and distinct consideration? Sir, I presume no member of the committee will withhold his assent from what he thinks right, until others will yield their assent to what they think wrong. There are many things in this bill acceptable, probably, to the general sense of the House. Why should not these provisions be passed into a law, and others left to be decided upon their own merits, as a majority of the House shall see fit? To some of these provisions I am myself decidedly favorable; to others I have great objections; and I should have been very glad of an opportunity of giving my own vote distinctly on propositions which are, in their own nature, essentially and substantially distinct from one another.