Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: taminates public opinion. But, Sir, under the operation of heavy duties only, it is reversed. Interest, it is true, controls opinion in this, as well as in the other cases, but it produces the opposite effect. Here the smuggler is ranked with the thief, or with that description of men, who, hi violation of the law, live on the honest gains of others. From the merchant, the rest of the community takes the impression, and the smuggler becomes universally odious. Interest has wonderful control over sentiment. Even the more refined and elevated?the moral and religious sentiment?may be considered as ultimately resting on it; not, it is true, on that of any one individual, or class of men, but on the enlarged interest of our kind. Correspondent to public sentiment will be the laws, or, what is of more importance, their execution. In all free governments the laws, or their execution, cannot be much above the tone of public opinion. Under the restrictive system, the laws are either cried down for oppression, or are not executed. Under the operation of duties only, the merchant himself demands severe laws, and aids in their rigid execution. He is a party concerned with his country, and has a common interest with government. He sees in the laws a friend and protector, and not an oppressor. Sir, I think the conclusion is strong, that you cannot extend your commercial pressure on the enemy, beyond, or at least much beyond, the operation of high duties. It ecems to me to be the ultimate point; arid, if it is a fact that the double duties are as high as can be borne (of which pretend not to have certain knowledge), then, the continuation of the Non-Importation Act will not give much additional pressure. The repeal, so far from relieving the English manufacturer, will be scarcely felt in t...