Excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's Contemporaries: John C. Calhoun; Excerpts From Newspapers and Other Sources It hays been objected to this bill, that it will injure our marine, and conse quently impair our naval stren 11. How far it is fairly'liable to this charge he was not prepared to say. E hoped and believed it would not, at least, to any alarming extent, have-that effect immediately; and he firmly believed that its lasting Operation would be highly beneficial to our commerce; The trade to the East Indies would certainly be much affected; but it was stated in debate, that the whole of that trade employed but 6900 sailors. What ever might be the loss in this, or other branches of our foreign commerce, he trusted it would be amply compensated in our coasting trade; a branch of navigation wholly in our own hands. It has at all times employed a reat amount of tonnage, something more, he believed, than one-third'of the w ole; nor is it liable to the imputation thrown out by a member from North Caroli na, (mr. Gaston) that 1tfproduced inferior sailors. It required long and dangerous voyages; and i his information was correct; no branch of trade made better or more skilful seamen. The fact that it is wholly in our own hands, is a very important one, _while every branch of our foreign trade must suffer from competition with other nations. Other objections of a political character were made to the encouragement of manufactures. It is said they destroy the moral and physical powerbof the people. This might for merl y have been true to a considerable extent, before the perfection of ma chinery, and when the success of manufactures depended on the minute sub division of labour. At that time it required a large proportion of the popu lation of a country to be engaged in them; and every minute subdivision of labour is undoubtedly unfavourable to the intellect; but the great perfection of machinery has in a c'onsiderabledegree obviated these objections. In fact. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.