In the years 1802, 3, and 4, memorials were presented to congress from almost every description of manufacturers, praying for further protection. In the two first years they were treated with utter slight, and nothing was done whatever.

In 1804, the committee on commerce and manufactures made a very superficial report, from which I submit the following extract as a specimen of the sagacity of its authors.

“There may be some danger in refusing to admit the manufactures of foreign countries; for by the adoption of such a measure, we should have no market abroad, and industry would lose one of its chief incentives at home.”

This paragraph is superlatively absurd, and indeed more than absurd. It is wicked. In order to defeat the object of the memorialists, it assumes for them requisitions which they did not contemplate, and which of course their memorials did not warrant. No sound man in the United States ever contemplated the total “exclusion of foreign manufactures.” It was merely requested that the memorialists should not themselves be “excluded” from the domestic market by foreign rivals—and that the industry of our citizens should be so far patronized, that they might be enabled to supply a portion of the thirty millions of dollars, principally of clothing, imported that year.