which the nations to whom our products are sent maintain a competition in the supply of their own markets, principally fall upon us and form material deductions from the primitive value of the articles furnished. The charges on manufactured supplies brought from Europe are greatly enhanced by the same circumstances of distance. These charges, again, in the cases in which our own industry maintains no competition in our own markets, also principally fall upon us and are an additional cause of extraordinary deduction from the primitive value of our own products, these being the materials of exchange for the foreign fabrics which we consume.
The equality and moderation of individual property and the growing settlements of new districts occasion in this country an unusual demand for coarse manufactures, the charges of which, being greater in proportion to their greater bulk, augment the disadvantage which has just been described.
As in most countries domestic supplies maintain a very considerable competition with such foreign productions of the soil as are imported for sale, if the extensive establishment of manufactories in the United States does not create a similar competition in respect to manufactured articles it appears to be clearly deducible from the considerations which have been mentioned that they must sustain a double loss in their exchanges with foreign nations strongly conducive to an unfavorable balance of trade and very prejudicial to their interests.
These disadvantages press with no small weight on the landed interest of the country. In seasons of peace they cause a serious deduction from the intrinsic value of the products of the soil. In the time of a war which should either involve ourselves or another nation possessing a considerable share of our foreign trade, the charges on the transportation of our commodities, bulky as most of them are, could hardly fail to prove a grievous burden to the farmer while obliged to depend in so great a degree, as he now does, upon foreign markets for the vent of the surplus of his labor.
As far as the prosperity of the fisheries of the United States is impeded by the want of an adequate market, there arises another special reason for desiring the extension of manufactures. Besides the fish, which in many places would be likely to make a part of the subsistence of the persons employed, it is known that the oils, bones, and skins of marine animals are of extensive use in various manufactures. Hence the prospect of an additional demand for the produce of the fisheries.
One more point of view only remains in which to consider the expediency of encouraging manufactures in the United States.
It is not uncommon to meet with an opinion that though the promoting of manufactures may be the interest of a part of the Union, it is contrary to that of another part. The northern and southern regions are sometimes represented as having adverse interests in this respect. Those are called manufacturing, these agricultural States, and a species of opposition is imagined to subsist between the manufacturing and agricultural interests.
This idea of an opposition between those two interests is the common error of the early periods of every country, but experience gradually dissipates it. Indeed, they are perceived so often to succor and befriend each other that they come at length to be considered as
