Mr. Chairman, the best apology for laws of prohibition and laws of monopoly will be found in that state of society, not only unenlightened but sluggish, in which they are most generally established.  Private industry, in those days, required strong provocatives, which governments were seeking to administer by these means.  Something was wanted to actuate and stimulate men, and the prospects of such profits as would, in our times, excite unbounded competition, would hardly move the sloth of former ages.  In some instances, no doubt, these laws produced an effect, which, in that period, would not have taken place without them.  But our age is of a wholly different character, and its legislation takes another turn.  Society is full of excitement; competition comes in place of monopoly; and intelligence and industry ask only for fair play and an open field.  Profits, indeed, in such a state of things, will be small, but they will be extensively diffused; prices will be low, and the great body of the people prosperous and happy.  It is worthy of remark, that, from the operation of these causes, commercial wealth, while it is increased beyond calculation in its general aggregate, is, at the same time, broken and diminished in its subdivisions.  Commercial prosperity should be judged of, therefore, rather from the extent of trade, than from the magnitude of its apparent profits.  It has been remarked, that Spain, certainly one of the poorest nations, made very great profits on the amount of her trade; but with little other benefit than the enriching of a few individuals and companies.  Profits to the English merchants engaged in the Levant and Turkey trade were formerly very great, and there were richer merchants in England some centuries ago, considering the comparative value of money, than at the present highly commercial period.  When the diminution of profits arises from the extent of competition, it indicates rather a salutary than an injurious change.[8]

The true course then, Sir, for us to pursue, is, in my opinion, to consider what our situation is; what our means are; and how they can be best applied.  What amount of population have we in comparison with our extent of soil, what amount of capital, and labor at what price?  As to skill, knowledge, and enterprise, we may safely take it for granted that in these particulars we are on an equality with others.  Keeping these considerations in view, allow me to examine two or three of those provisions of the bill to which I feel the strongest objections.

To begin with the article of iron.  Our whole annual consumption of this article is supposed by the chairman of the committee to be forty-eight or fifty thousand tons.  Let us suppose the latter.  The amount of our own manufacture he estimates, I think, at seventeen thousand tons.  The present duty on the imported article is $15 per ton, and as this duty causes, of course, an equivalent augmentation of the price of the home manufacture, the whole increase