The Morrill Tariff in Europe — its effect up-
on English trade.
[From the London Times, of the 5th.]
At a moment when the destinies of the great American Union are trembling in the balance and the Republic is menaced with the worst catastrophes of civil was, its Legislature is engaged upon a measure which seems calculated at once to attenuate foreign nations, to embitter domestic strife, and to provide an inexhaustible aliment for the antagonism unhappily subsisting between the two sections of the Confederacy.
The bill called Morrill Tariff Bill is an Act for the establishment of protective duties on a most extravagant scale.
If it were designed to condemn the very principles of Free Trade, and to introduce those of Protection, as forming the only true theory of international commerce, it could not be more strongly framed.
The duties imposed by the bill are not only immoderately high, but they are levied upon imports of the first necessity.
The articles taxed are not mere luxuries, or commodities entering into the consumption of the opulent alone.--It is upon cotton goods, woolen goods, and hardware, that the imposts will fall, and so enormous are the duties proposed that the result can be little short of absolute prohibition.
Cutlery is to be taxed upwards of 50 per cent. in the lowest instance, in the highest nearly 250.
In addition to this, the bill enacts so many complicated arrangements, and throws such interminable obstructions in the way of business, that commerce will be next to impossible under conditions so difficult.--We need not enter into the particulars of the Act, which is said to be scarcely intelligible even to Americans themselves, out we can convey a very good idea of its character and purpose by observing, that if it should be passed it will almost prohibit all imports into the United States from England, France, and Germany.
That, and no less, is the effect anticipated from the measure in New York itself.
Of our own position under such circumstances, we shall presently speak; but, as the consequences of the measure, would be felt most deeply by the Americans themselves, we may give them the precedence in our remarks upon the subject. It has been asserted in some quarters with considerable emphasis that Europe has entirely misapprehended the controversy between the Northern and Southern States of the Union. We are assured that the slavery question does not constitute the essence of the quarrel; that it has been merely introduced as a blind, or as an instrument of provocation, and that the real point of contention lies in the national Tariff. We do not believe in this explanation. We are convinced that the contest for territory is the real contest between North and South, but at the same time it would be impossible to deny that the South has always conceived its interests, in the matter of tariffs, to be opposed to those of the North, and that its desire to regulate its customs' duties for itself has had a strong influence in determining its recent movements. The Southern States are agricultural and exporting countries. Free trade is their natural system, and visibly so. The cotton planters perfectly understand that the commerce between the manufacturing States of Europe and the exporting States of America cannot be too free. They have always consistently objected to the Tariffs and Navigation Laws of the North. They do not wish to protect Pennsylvanian ironmaster or favor the factories of Lowell.--They comprehend the views of the North in these respects, but do not share them. They have only one object, which is to get the highest price for the greatest quantity of cotton, and they wish accordingly for cheap freights and free trade. A fortnight ago the President of the new Southern Confederacy addressed his constituents in an inaugural speech, and, after touching upon the perils of the crisis, and the possible obligations of the seceders, he proceeded to declare that the separation just consummated was, in reality, a political necessity, arising from the natural discordance between Northern and Southern interests.--He argued deliberately and dispassionately that there was not enough congruity of interest to keep North and South together, that an antagonism had been unavoidably created between them by the very nature of things, and that a dissolution of the Union was not only a necessary, But an advantageous, result. We shall not attempt any analysis of these arguments. It will be sufficient for our purpose to remark that they are, at any rate, founded to some extent on fact, and they will receive an enormous accession of force from the tariff bill now before Congress. That bill would be far more detrimental to the interests of America than to those of Europe.--The blow would do little damage to this country, but such a proposal at such a moment would look like a new sacrifice of the Southern States to the exigencies of the Northern, and will intensify the quarrel between them by jealousies which will survive after the political tempest has rolled away.
It has now become perfectly known that protection in these matters is only another word for suicide, and that when a State establishes a prohibitory tariff it is itself the sufferer from its own ordinances. If the backwoodsmen of America are to be deprived of good axes, and settlers of cheap clothing, the penalty will be paid by them. At the same time, however, though we shall not think the worse of America for this measure, except as regards her financial wisdom, we must needs remark that, as amity follows free trade, so is estrangement or indifference likely to follow commercial seclusion. It is rather an extra-ordinary reflection that what we have just been endeavoring to do at some cost as regards France, America should be proposing to undo as regards us. If friendship follows in the wake of trade, it must needs be exposed to decay when trade is prohibited. The Americans are at present not only our nearest kinsfolk, but our best customers, and whenever there has been difference between us we have always remembered with peculiar gratification that a commercial interest bound us indissolubly together. We should be very sorry to loose this bond. We do not suppose, indeed, but what we can be as good friends as before; but unless the principles accepted on this subject are altogether false, the connexion between the two countries must be weakened, and the interchange of opinions, as well as commodities, be somewhat disturbed.
