Harriet Martineau condemns tariffs as a “vicious aristocratic principle” designed to harm the ordinary working man and woman (1861)
About this Quotation:
In the 19th century there were a number of popularisers of free market thinking who took the ideas of an Adam Smith or a Jean-Baptiste Say and made them more approachable to a broader audience. In England there was Richard Cobden, Harriet Martineau, and Thomas Hodgskin. In France there was the incomparable Frédéric Bastiat. Martineau is especially noteworthy for a number of of reasons, perhaps most notably because as a woman she found it particularly hard to make a living as a full-time author. She did not let her gender or her precarious way of life prevent her from being an outspoken and radical defender of free market ideas. For example, in 1861 the American Civil War divided English liberals into two camps, the free traders and states rights advocates who supported the South, and the anti-slavery abolitionists who favored the North (reluctantly perhaps because of its strong protectionist stance). Martineau took the radical position of arguing that, in supposedly “democratic” America, tariffs were class based and reflected a “vicious aristocratic principle” which benefited the “selfish interest of certain classes” at the expence of ordinatry working people.
Other quotes from this week:
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- 2008: Job rightly wants to know why he, “the just upright man is laughed to scorn” while robbers prosper (6thC BC)
- 2006: In Ecclesiastes there is the call to plant, to love, to live, and to work and then to enjoy the fruits of all one’s labors (3rdC BC)
- 2005: Hugo Grotius discusses the just causes of going to war, especially the idea that the capacity to wage war must be matched by the intent to do so (1625)
- 2004: Voltaire on the Benefits which Trade and Economic Abundance bring to People living in the Present Age (1736)
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- 2009: Frank Taussig argues for the reverse of a common misconception about the relationship between high wages and the use of machinery (1915)
- 2009: Condy Raguet lays out a set of basic principles of free trade among which is the idea that governments cannot create wealth by means of legislation and that individuals are better judges of the best way to use their capital and labor than governments (1835)
- 2009: John Ramsay McCulloch argues that smuggling is “wholly the result of vicious commercial and financial legislation” and that it could be ended immediately by abolishing this legislation (1899)
- 2009: Adam Smith argues that retaliation in a trade war can sometimes force the offending country to lower its tariffs, but more often than not the reverse happens (1776)
- 2008: Jean-Baptiste Say argues that there is a world of difference between private consumption and public consumption; an increase in the latter does nothing to increase public wealth (1803)
- 2008: Nassau Senior objected to any government regulation of factories which meant that a horde of inspectors would interfere with the organization of production (1837)
- 2007: Ludwig von Mises argues that monopolies are the direct result of government intervention and not the product of any inherent tendency within the capitalist system (1949)
- 2007: Ludwig von Mises argues that the division of labor and human cooperation are the two sides of the same coin and are not antagonistic to each other (1949)
- 2007: Lord Macaulay writes a devastating review of Southey’s Colloquies in which the Poet Laureate’s ignorance of the real condition of the working class in England is exposed (1830)
- 2006: Jane Haldimand Marcet, in a popular tale written for ordinary readers, shows the benefits to workers of foreign trade, especially at Christmas time (1833)
- 2006: Adam Ferguson observed that social structures of all kinds were not “the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design” (1782)
- 2006: Forrest McDonald argues that the Founding Fathers envisaged a new economic order based upon Lockean notions of private property and the creation of the largest contiguous area of free trade in the world (2006)
- 2006: Montesquieu thought that commerce improves manners and cures “the most destructive prejudices” (1748)
- 2005: Bernard Mandeville concludes his fable of the bees with a moral homily on the virtues of peace, hard work, and diligence (1705)
- 2005: Bernard Mandeville uses a fable about bees to show how prosperity and good order comes about through spontaneous order (1705)
- 2005: Adam Smith argued that the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” was inherent in human nature and gave rise to things such as the division of labour (1776)
- 2004: Voltaire on the Benefits which Trade and Economic Abundance bring to People living in the Present Age (1736)
- 2004: Adam Smith on the natural ordering Tendency of Free Markets, or what he called the “Invisible Hand” (1776)
17 September, 2007
 | Harriet Martineau condemns tariffs as a “vicious aristocratic principle” designed to harm the ordinary working man and woman (1861) |
In a series of letters written to Mrs. Chapman in 1861 Harriet Martineau argued that tariff protection not only harmed foreign workers but domestic American workers as well, by means of what she termed this "vicious aristrocratic principle":
I perceive you ground your disapprobation of the protective system on the injustice and unkindness to foreign peoples. This is a very strong and quite indisputable ground, but it is not the one I have at all had in view at this time, or wished to bring forward in discussing the matter in the “Standard” or elsewhere. I protest against the vicious aristocratic principle, and the rank oppression exercised over the American people at large, for the selfish interest of certain classes. It is true your shippers and merchants are concerned in and injured by every injury inflicted on foreign commerce; but it is a graver consideration to my mind that every workingman in the country is injured for the illicit benefit of wealthier classes. Popular ignorance alone can have permitted it thus long.
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
October 31, 1861.
I don’t believe Fremont will do for a hero. A man who has done, in such a way, what he has done, cannot be a statesman or a farsighted or adequate man in any way, unless a purely military way, which remains to be proved.
I perceive you ground your disapprobation of the protective system on the injustice and unkindness to foreign peoples. This is a very strong and quite indisputable ground, but it is not the one I have at all had in view at this time, or wished to bring forward in discussing the matter in the “Standard” or elsewhere. I protest against the vicious aristocratic principle, and the rank oppression exercised over the American people at large, for the selfish interest of certain classes. It is true your shippers and merchants are concerned in and injured by every injury inflicted on foreign commerce; but it is a graver consideration to my mind that every workingman in the country is injured for the illicit benefit of wealthier classes. Popular ignorance alone can have permitted it thus long. It is true the disposition to tyranny and greed, which is conspicuous wherever a democracy exists, has made protectionists of all or most democratic associations, such as the most stringent trades-unions, and other socialistic organizations; but still, it is inconceivable that, in a country full of workingmen like yours, a handful of monopolists will be permitted to saddle and bridle the industrial majority, as at present. When the case is understood, it is inconceivable that the majority will put up with it. I wish some Member of Congress, or other man who would be listened to, would propose, as a matter of economy, a handsome direct appropriation to the iron-masters and mill-owners, instead of preserving the tariff. It would be a vast, incalculable saving to pension them in a thoroughly handsome way and throw trade open. The proposal would open people’s eyes to the aggression they are submitting to.
I look anxiously for some sort of news of Anderson’s wife. I fear the poor fellow is in wearing suspense. C. Sumner has sent me his speech, which I am glad of, (but, entre nous, how very bad it is!)
Your
H. M.