ABSTRACT
Mr. Stewart said he regretted that this great question of national protection, the most important that could possibly occupy the attention of American statesmen, was constantly resolved by gentlemen on the other side into a mere question of party. Separated from the pernicious influences of party, he was sure there could be but one opinion upon the subject. The contest was for the American market. Foreigners, and especially the British, were the parties on the one side, and the Americans on the other; and the only question was, which side should we take? By adopting “free trade,” we give our markets and our money to foreigners; by adhering to protection, we secure both to our own people. Disguise it as you will, this is the true and only question to be decided, and the fate of the country depends on the result. He trusted gentlemen would decide in favor of their own country—in favor of their own farmers, mechanics, and laboring men—that they would protect their own people employed in the fields and in the workshops, in the conversion of our own agricultural produce into articles for use, instead of importing them from abroad; for it was demonstrable that more than one-half of the hundred millions of dollars annually sent abroad to purchase foreign goods, went to pay for foreign agricultural produce worked up in these goods by labor employed and fed in foreign countries, instead of our own.
