Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 146-147 of the December 1828 Edinburgh Review article “The American Tariff,” as reprinted in volume 1 of Battles Over Free Trade (Mark Duckenfield, editor, 2008); this article is in response to U.S. enactment of the “Tariff of Abominations“:

But strange as it may seem, the best established scientific conclusions, the experience of all ages and nations, and their own progress, failed to convince the legislators of America of the expediency of pursuing that liberal line of policy, from the adoption of which they had already reaped so many advantages. Not satisfied with the progress they had already made, with the enjoyment of free and liberal institutions, and a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, they resolved to call custom-house regulations to their aid! Mistaking the effusions of a few miserable pamphleteers, and the speeches of the Newcastles and Kenyons of the day, for the wisdom of the British nation, they persuaded themselves that those very restrictions which had clogged and impeded our progress, had been the main causes of our advancement. Instead of dwelling on the advantages of free competition, their statesmen deemed it productive only of poverty and ruin…. Selfishness, patriotism, and ignorance, each lent its aid to the introduction of what has been pompously designated by its more ardent supporters, as the ‘American System.’

DBx: Protectionism, then as now, is the dogma that 10-2=15.