And here, Mr. Chairman, before proceeding to those parts of the bill to which I most strenuously object, I will be so presumptuous as to take up a challenge which Mr. Speaker has thrown down.  He has asked us, in a tone of interrogatory indicative of the feeling of anticipated triumph, to mention any country in which manufactures have flourished without the aid of prohibitory laws.  He has demanded if it be not policy, protection, ay, and prohibition, that have carried other states to the height of their prosperity, and whether any one has succeeded with such tame and inert legislation as ours.  Sir, I am ready to answer this inquiry.

There is a country, not undistinguished among the nations, in which the progress of manufactures has been far more rapid than in any other, and yet unaided by prohibitions or unnatural restrictions.  That country, the happiest which the sun shines on, is our own.

The woollen manufactures of England have existed from the early ages of the monarchy.  Provisions designed to aid and foster them are in the black-letter statutes of the Edwards and the Henrys.  Ours, on the contrary, are but of yesterday; and yet, with no more than the protection of existing laws, they are already at the point of close and promising competition.  Sir, nothing is more unphilosophical than to refer us, on these subjects, to the policy adopted by other nations in a very different state of society, or to infer that what was judged expedient by them, in their early history, must also be expedient for us, in this early part of our own.  This would be reckoning our age chronologically, and estimating our advance by our number of years; when, in truth, we should regard only the state of society, the knowledge, the skill, the capital, and the enterprise which belong to our times.  We have been transferred from the stock of Europe, in a comparatively enlightened age, and our civilization and improvement date as far back as her own.  Her original history is also our original history; and if, since the moment of separation, she has gone ahead of us in some respects, it may be said, without violating truth, that we have kept up in others, and, in others again, are ahead ourselves.  We are to legislate, then, with regard to the present actual state of society; and our own experience shows us, that, commencing manufactures at the present highly enlightened and emulous moment, we need not resort to the clumsy helps with which, in less auspicious times, governments have sought to enable the ingenuity and industry of their people to hobble along.

The English cotton manufactures began about the commencement of the last reign.  Ours can hardly be said to have commenced with any earnestness, until the application of the power-loom, in 1814, not more than ten years ago.  Now, Sir, I hardly need again speak of its progress, its present extent, or its assurance of future enlargement.  In some sorts of fabrics we are already exporters, and the products of our factories are, at this moment, in the South American markets.  We see, then, what can be done without prohibition or extraordinary protection, because we see what has been done; and I venture to predict, that, in a few years, it will be thought wonderful that these branches of manufactures, at least, should have been thought to require additional aid from government.