guaranteed a home market_, though such home market be one where all
goods cost more to the purchaser than similar goods bought elsewhere,
and this in order that the compact little band of sellers in the home
market may make their profit. This demand for protection was made by
those who had started manufactures during the years from 1808 to the end
of the war of 1815, when, as we have seen, imports were practically
excluded.

In 1816 their demand met explicit assent, for, in the tariff of that
year, duty for protection, not for revenue, was granted; and an average
of 25 per cent. duties for six years, to be followed by an average of 20
per cent. duties, was laid upon imports. For a few years bad bread crops
in Europe, demand for our cotton, and an inflation of our currency
delayed a panic.

But, we had started on our unreasoning course. We had tried to ignore
the laws of demand and supply, and had forgotten that it is also
artificial to attempt preventing purchases in the cheapest, and selling
in the highest markets; and to help a few manufacturers we had put up
prices for all that a large majority of our population,--the
agriculturists mainly--had to buy. In a short while the demand for what
the farmers had to sell fell away, and bills could not be met, and their
troubles were added to those of the minority of the consumers of the
country; the volume of business fell off, and a panic came in 1818. The
influences that led up to it continued until 1846, as follows: The great
factors in producing this state of affairs were the successive tariffs
of 1818, with its 25 per cent. duty upon cottons and woollens, and its
increased duties on all forms of manufactured iron, (the tariff of 1824
which increased duties considerably), and the tariff of 1828, imposing
an average of 50 per cent. duties, and in which the protective movement