Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by

ERASTUS B. BIGELOW,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

BOSTON:

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON,

23, SCHOOL STREET.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

THE TARIFF, at all times a subject of great and acknowledged importance, is now invested with new interest by recent Congressional action; by the comments, foreign and domestic, which that action has elicited; and by the present peculiar condition of the country. The exigencies of our situation, and the necessity, present and prospective, for greatly increased taxation, are compelling us to an carnest consideration of all matters connected with the national revenues. It seems, therefore, a fit time to present the question of customs-duties, not, as it has too often been presented, in a theoretical or partisan aspect, but in a practical manner, and under the clear light of facts and experience.

Among the great questions of legislation, there is probably not one which bears more directly on our future power and prosperity as a nation than that of the Tariff. Few will deny that we need, in this regard, a more settled policy, or that such policy should be founded on just views of the character, the relative importance, and the mutual inter-dependence, of our own American interests.

The vast and various commerce of Great Britain, and our own intimate relations with that commerce; the general tone of British statesmen and of the British press in reference to the commercial regulations of other countrics; the zeal and pertinacity with which the free-trade maxims and example of that great nation are commended to our adoption and imitation, not only by Englishmen, but by many among ourselves, — all unite to give especial interest and importance to the policy of England in regard to the Tariff Question. To understand that policy, we must study its history, and learn in what circumstances and by what necessities it has been modified and developed. To ascertain how far and in what particulars the political and commercial economy of

Great Britain can be safely taken as a guide to that of the United States, we must know, and be able to compare, the actual condition of the two countries, in respect to their agriculture, manufactures, commerce, industry, and finance.

case.

To aid in such an investigation, and to furnish the basis of safe inference and argument, I have put into tabular form, in an Appendix, the most important facts in the These tables are, for the most part, not mere copies or abstracts, but the result of labored and careful selection, comparison, and combination. They present, it is believed, a mass of valuable statistics essential to a right understanding of the Tariff Question, and nowhere else to be found in so accessible a form. In regard to the accuracy of the figures, I invite the severest scrutiny; and for the discussion which precedes them, and which rests its positions on the strong foundation of these unquestionable facts, I ask a careful comparison and a candid consideration.

To give the work additional value as a book of permanent reference, I have added some tables relating to matters not immediately connected with the main purpose.

For all the statements, the highest authorities have invariably been used; though, even among these, some discrepancies occur, as will hereafter be more fully noticed and explained.

BOSTON, February, 1862.

E. B. B.