Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v3.djvu/123

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1847]
NOTES ON PROTECTION
101

and that to make them always successful needs but to get them all to the polls and to vote unitedly. This is the great desideratum. Let us make every effort to attain it. At every election, let every Whig act as though he knew the result to depend upon his action. In the great contest of 1840, some more than twenty-one hundred thousand votes were cast, and so surely as there shall be that many, with the ordinary increase added, cast in 1844, that surely will a Whig be elected President of the United States.

 

A. Lincoln,
S. T. Logan,
A. T. Bledsoe.

March 4, 1843.


The Home Market and Other Advantages of a Protective Tariff.

Notes Jotted Down While Congressman-Elect. About December 1, 1847.

Whether the protective policy shall be finally abandoned is now the question.—Discussion and experience already had, and question now in greater dispute than ever.—Has there not been some great error in the mode of discussion?—Propose a single issue of fact, namely: From 1816 to the present, have protected articles cost us more of labor during the higher than during the lower duties upon them?—Introduce the evidence.—Analyze this issue, and try to show that it embraces the true and the whole question of the protective policy.—Intended as a test of experience.—The period selected is fair, because it is a period of peace—a period sufficiently long