Secession brings protection to the Virginia manufacturer.
The most impotent of all the arguments against secession, is that which pretends that the manufacturing interests of
Virginia will suffer under the liberal, free trade principles of the Southern Confederacy.
It is not pretended that these principles will be enforced to the absolute release of all impost duties upon foreign merchandize.
A Federal revenue will be as necessary to the
Government at
Montgomery, as it has been to that at
Washington.
A tariff for revenue will be an essential institution of the new Government; and its tariff policy will only differ from that of the old Union in being devised exclusively for revenue, and not at all for protection.
A tariff for revenue will scarcely be lower than an average of fifteen per cent. Doubtless ten per cent, would produce all the revenue demanded for the ordinary requirements of the
Government; but there are contingencies for war, armament, fortifications, and public debt that will probably bring up the rate of impost to an average of fifteen per cent. Not that the revenue principle will require a horizontal duty upon all imports, of fifteen per cent.; for a tariff, levied for revenue, must needs differ in its rates with the various goods on which it is levied; and probably this discrimination would produce a rate of impost on articles in which
Virginia is interested, of twenty or twenty-five, or even thirty per cent.
Under the revenue policy of the Southern Confederacy,
Virginia would certainly find an advantage over the foreign manufacturer of from 15 to 30 per cent. But who in that case would be embraced under the designation of foreigner, and have to bear the burden of this impost duty?
Why, it would not merely be the Englishman, the Frenchman, and the German, but it would be the
Yankee also, the man who has heretofore sold his goods in
Virginia, and to her Southern customers,
duty free. The quantity of merchandize, of foreign manufacture, consumed per annum by the
South, has been about $110,000,000; while the quantity of Northern merchandize which she has consumed has been $300,000,000--three times as much.
Under the old Union the
Virginia manufacturer was protected to the extent of about thirty-five per cent, on one dollar against the foreigner; and subjected to free competition with the
Yankee on three dollars in every four of importations.
Under the Southern Confederacy he would be protected not only against the foreigner, but, what is vastly more important to him, against the
Northerner also, to the extent of from 15 to 50 per cent. Is there anybody so stolid as not to see that, on the question of protection, and of prosperity to her manufacturers, the interest of
Virginia are largely in favor of secession?
It is the misfortune of men engaged in upholding a wrong cause, always to bring forward arguments for their course, which, if rightly applied, beat out their own brains. --This argument of submitting to the
North, for the sake of securing protection to
Virginia manufacturers, is precisely a case of this sort — it is a club furnished by the submissionists for their own braining.
We must remain, forsooth, in free trade with the
North, who sell us and our Southern customers $300,000,000 of their wares duty free, in order that our
Virginia manufacturer may get the benefit of a tariff which only applies to one-third that quantity of merchandize imported from abroad!
The stupidity of the argument is sublime.
A fifteen or twenty per cent, duty on the enormous quantity of Northern merchandize which is sent to the
South, would be equivalent to a bonds of that amount paid to the
Virginia manufacturer, where he now gets.
nothing. Suppose
Virginia to furnish the
South only fifty millions of this three hundred, a duty of fifteen per cent. would give her a profit of seven millions and a half of dollars; a duty of twenty per cent, a profit of ten millions of dollars, where she now gets nothings.
The Yankee is the chief competitor of the manufacturer of the
South every where in her borders.
It is he that undersells him; it is he that destroys his market, and ruins his investments in manufacturing enterprise.--Under the old Union he came down, free of all duty and all taxes, to peddle his goods up and down, high and low, throughout the land.
Lean, hungry, and penurious, ravenous as a wolf, and cunning as a fox, he entered the market, everywhere underselling and driving out his more honest and less impertinent and importunate competitor.
Secession will build a wall against him on
Mason's and
Dixon's line — a wall of imposts' more effectual for the protection of the
Virginia manufacturer than the wall of stone which the ancient
Romans built to hold back the barbarous Picts and
Scotts, from those depredations, plunderings and thievings with which that ravenous people were wont to afflict the Lowlanders of
Great Britain.
