The Online Library of Liberty

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• Foreword
• A Note On the Text
• Preface to the First Edition
• Tyranny Unmasked
• Section One: Unmasking the Protecting-tariff Policy and Its Advocates From Many Perspectives
• Section Two: Arguments Against the Protecting Duty Summarized Through an Analysis of Its Major Consequences
• 1.: Protecting Duties Are Unconstitutional
• 2.: Manufactures Are Injurious to Morals, and Produce Pauperism
• 3.: No Further Protection Necessary
• 4.: The Increase of Duties Will Lead to Smuggling
• 5.: A Tax On the Many, a Bounty to the Few
• 6.: A Restrictive System
• 7.: Destroy Revenue
• 8.: Ruin Commerce
• 9.: Destroy Agriculture
• Section Three: a General Discussion of Tyranny and the Choice That Americans Face

4.

The Increase of Duties Will Lead to Smuggling

And it might have been added, that it will inculcate an opinion, that smuggling is a virtue; and that the smuggler, if not an actual, is at least a comparative patriot. How an impartial casuist might determine the degrees of immorality between the two cases of pilfering industry, to enrich capitalists, or of supplying it by pilfering the pilferers, with necessaries and comforts at a cheaper rate than it could otherwise procure them, I shall not enquire; and only suggest that the parties interested will never believe themselves to be less moral than the capitalists, in uniting to defeat a monopoly operating upon themselves. The smuggler does not pilfer industry, but buys and sells under the check of free will, and the consumer only retains his own property by buying cheaper than the monopoly will sell to him; yet they both commit the crime of evading an oppressive and fraudulent law. If the enhancement of price is moderate, and is only produced by the fair object of revenue, both the parties will view it in a different light; nor will the temptation be of the same extent, as when it is magnified by the avarice of exclusive privileges. We need not go with the Committee in search of affidavits, to determine whether smuggling and high duties are allied; we need not call upon the casuist to decide whether the tempter or the tempted is most wicked; and we need not look for truth either in a cup of tea, or in the Isle of Man, though it is somewhat larger than the teacup; when it has been ascertained by unchangeable principles. Some people will for ever believe that there is no immorality in eluding oppression; others will for ever be tempted by pecuniary acquisition to pardon their consciences, especially if they can get a law to sear them; and commercial restrictions will for ever multiply smugglers and watchers of smugglers. I know not which of these occupations will do most harm. It often happens that not a single case of smuggling can be proved, whilst a country abounds with interpolated commodities, and the treasury announces its extent, by an enormous defalcation. What but intemperate zeal could deny the inseparable association of smuggling with the system advocated by the Committee; and who can consider it as at all important, whether the tax imposed upon his industry goes into the pockets of the smuggler, the capitalist, or the watchers of smugglers?