posing duties on tunnage," or a navigation act. The duties were as follows:

On ships or vessels owned wholly by citizens of the United States, at the rate of 6 cents per tun. On ships or vessels thereafter built in the United States, owned wholly or in part by subjects of foreign Powers, 30 cents per tun. On all other vessels, 50 cents per tun. American vessels employed in the coasting trade, were to pay tunnage no oftener than once a year. Foreign vessels in the coastwise transportation of American produce or manufactures, were to pay 50 cents a tun, on each entry.

Thus we see how promptly Congress exercised the powers granted by the Constitution, to lay duties for revenue and the regulation of commerce; a power, the want of which had been so severely felt under the confederation, and had, as we have seen, more than any other cause, led to the calling of the convention that framed the Constitution. This is the more deserving of notice, from the fact that the power of Congress to encourage domestic manufactures by protective duties, which seems to have been then universally conceded, has, since that time, leen seriously questioned.

CHAPTER II.

The Secretary of the Treasury ordered to report a plan for the encouragement of manufactures. Mr. Hamilton's report.

CONGRESS having continued in session until the 29th of September without completing its business, the two Houses agreed to a recess to continue until the 1st Monday in January, 1790; on which day they again assembled.

The President, in his Message, calls the attention of Congress to "the advancement of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures." And on the 15th of January, the House of Representatives ordered the Secretary of the Treasury "to report a proper plan, conformably to the recommendation of the President, for the encouragement and promotion of such manufactures as would tend to render the United States independent of other nations for essential, particularly for military supplies."

At the last session of the 2d Congress, begun at Philadel phia, October 24th, 1791, Secretary Hamilton made an elaborate report on the subject of manufactures, which, in point of clearness and force of argument, has probably never been surpassed by any state paper on this subject.*

Of the author of this and other official reports, an American statesman, [Charles J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, in an address before the American Institute, in 1835,] speaks thus: "If any one man more than many others is entitled to be called the author of this golden age of navigation, he lived and died in this city, [New York] prematurely, by a violent death, a victim to soldierly pride; who, when hardly of age, was deemed by Washington worthy to be his bosom counselor; when little more than thirty years old, composed those masterly reports on the domestic industry, the commerce, and navigation of the United States, which have ever since been the precepts of all his successors in the Treasury; who, after a youth of signalized service in the field, and early manhood in the cabinet, where he was equally eminent, in middle life, turned to take the lead at once among powerful competitors in a learned profession; who, as a soldier, a statesman, a lawyer, and an orator, had no superior in his day,-Alexander Hamilton.

"It may be affirmed, that industry, as encouraged and protected by his providence, doubled the value of every foot of ground in the inhabited parts of the United States; and that, if his services could have been paid as a private agent, instead of a statesman, a small per centage taken from

A few pages here may be profitably occupied with extracts from Mr. Hamilton's report. Having shown" that manufacturing industry has been improperly represented as unproductive in itself, and that the establishment and diffusion of manufactures have the effect of rendering the total mass of useful and productive labor in a community greater than it otherwise would be," he thus proceeds:

"It is now proper to proceed a step further, and to enumerate the principal circumstances from which it may be inferred, that establishments not only occasion a positive augmentation of the produce and revenue of the society, but that they contribute essentially to rendering them greater than they could possibly be without such establishments.

"These circumstances are

"I. The division of labor. There is scarcely anything of greater moment in the economy of a nation, than the proper division of labor. The separation of occupations causes each to be carried to a much greater perfection than it could possibly acquire if they were blended. This arises principally from three causes :

"1st. The greater skill and dexterity naturally resulting from a constant and undivided application to a single object. "2d. The economy of time, by avoiding the loss of it, incidental to a frequent transition from one operation to another of a different nature.

"3d. An extension of the use of machinery. A man occupied on a single object will have it more in his power, and will be more naturally led to exert his imagination in devising methods to facilitate and abridge labor, than if he were perplexed by a variety of independent and dissimilar operations. Besides this, the fabrication of machines, in numerous instances, becoming itself a distinct trade, the artist who follows it, has all the advantages which have been enumer ated for improvement in his particular art, and in both ways the invention and application of machinery are extended.

"And from these causes united, the mere separation of the cultivator from that of the artificer, has the effect of augment

what he added to every man's property, would have made him the richest man in the world. The mantle of protection he left on navigation, and recommended for manufactures, was warmly applied to their infancy by several acts of Congress, after that second and effectual era of American independence, the war of 1812."

ing the productive powers of labor, and with them the total mass of the produce or revenue of a country. In this single view of the subject, therefore, the utility of artificers or manu facturers towards promoting an increase of productive industry, is apparent.

"II. The next circumstance to be noticed is an extension of the use of machinery, a point which, though partly anticipated, requires to be placed in one or two additional lights.

The employment of machinery forms an item of importance in the general mass of national industry. It is an artificial force brought in aid of the natural force of man; and, to all the purposes of labor, is an increase of hands; an accession of the strength, unencumbered, too, by the expense of maintaining the laborer. May it not, therefore, be fairly inferred, that those occupations which give greater scope to the use of this auxiliary, contribute most to the general stock of industrious effort, and, in consequence, to the general product of industry?

"It shall be taken for granted, that manufacturing pursuits are susceptible, in a greater degree, of the application of machinery, than those of agriculture. If so, all the difference is lost to a community, which, instead of manufacturing for itself, procures the fabrics requisite to its supply from other countries. The substitution of foreign for domestic manufactures, is a transfer to foreign nations of the advantages accruing from the advantages of machinery, in the modes in which it is capable of being employed, with most utility, and to the greatest extent.

"The cotton mill invented in England within the last twenty years, is a signal illustration of the proposition which has been just advanced. In consequence of it, all the different processes for spinning cotton are performed by means of machines which are put in motion by water, and attended chiefly by women and children, and by a smaller number of persons, in the whole, than are requisite in the ordinary mode of spinning. And it is an advantage of great moment that the operations of this mill continue, with convenience, during the night as well as through the day. The prodigious effect of such a machine is easily conceived. To this invention is to be attributed, essentially, the immense progress which has been so suddenly made in Great Britain in the various fabrics

of cotton.

"III. The additional employment of classes of the com munity not engaged in the particular business

"In places where manufacturing institutions prevail, besides the persons regularly engaged in them, they afford occasional and extra employment to industrious individuals and families, who are willing to devote the leisure resulting from the intermissions of their ordinary pursuits to collateral labors, as a resource for multiplying their acquisitions or their enjoyments. The husbandman himself experiences a new source of profit and support from the increased industry of his wife and daughters, invited and stimulated by the demands of the neighboring manufactories. Another advantage is the employment of persons who would otherwise be idle, (and in many cases a burden on the community,) either from the bias of temper, habit, infirmity of body, or some other cause, indisposing or disqualifying them for the toils of the country.

"IV. The promoting of emigration from foreign countries. “If it be true, that it is the interest of the United States to open every possible avenue to emigration from abroad, it affords a weighty argument for the encouragement of manufactures, which will have the strongest tendency to multiply the inducements to it.

"Here is perceived an important resource, not only for extending the population, and with it the useful and the productive labor of the country, but likewise for the prosecution of manufactures, without deducting from the number of hands which might otherwise be drawn to tillage. Many whom manufacturing views would induce to emigrate, would afterwards yield to the temptations which the particular situation of this country holds out to agricultural pursuits. And while agriculture would in other respects derive many signal advantages from the growth of manufactures, it is a problem. whether it would gain or lose as to the article of the number of persons employed in carrying it on.

V. The furnishing of greater scope for the diversity of talents and dispositions which discriminate men from each other.

"It is a just observation, that minds of the strongest and most active powers for their proper objects, fall below mediocrity, and labor without effect, if confined to uncongenial pursuits. And it is thence to be inferred, that the results of human exertion may be immensely increased by diversifying its objects. When all the different kinds of industry obtain in a community, each individual can find his proper element, and can call into activity the whole vigor of