… is from page 70 of Henry Simons’s posthumous 1948 collection, Economic Policy for a Free Society; specifically, it’s from Simons’s famous 1934 pamphlet, A Positive Program for Laissez Faire:
A nation which wishes to preserve democratic institutions cannot afford to allow its legislatures to become engaged on a large scale in the promiscuous distribution of special subsidies and special favors. Once this occurs, there is no protecting the interests of the community at large, and, what is more important, there is no protecting the political institutions themselves. Tariff legislation is politically the first step in the degeneration of popular government into the warfare of each group against all.
