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Every increase of protective duties is necessarily followed, in the present condition of our country, by an expansion of the currency, which must continue to increase till the increased price of production, caused by the expansion, shall be equal to the duty imposed, when a new tariff will be required.

As history has repeatedly proven, one trade tariff begets another, then another - until you've got a full-blown trade war. No one ever wins, and consumers always get screwed.

Many attempts had been made by colonial legislatures to cut off or to tax the importation of slaves.

Besides, we had a large debt, contracted at home and abroad in our War of Independence; therefore the great power of taxation was conferred upon this Government.

The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.

I don't think we can go back to the old days. But I think that what the government needs to do is it needs to make sure that the pricing is fair, that you don't have monopolies out there, so that people don't have a chance to compete fairly.

If we were starting from scratch, there's no question a simple retail consumption tax with protections for those with lower incomes would drive the economy the best and be the simplest to administer.

Every dollar of tax imposed on our exchanges in the shape of duties impairs, to that extent, our capacity to meet the severe competition to which we are exposed; and nothing but a system of high protective duties, long continued, can prevent us from meeting it successfully. It is that which we have to fear.