IN FAVOUR OF TRADE WITH BRITAIN
SMITH, William.
The Speeches of Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, in January, 1794, on the Subject of certain commercial Regulations, proposed by Mr. Madison, in the Committee of the whole, on the Report of the Secretary of State.
Philadelphia printed, London reprinted for John Stockdale, 1794.
8vo, pp. 75, [1], with a large folding table of ‘The Comparative Footing of the Commerce of the United States with the Dominions of France and Great Britain’ (short marginal tear); small closed tear to title-page (a little dusty), but a very good copy, sometime disbound, with the inscription to the title-page of the Masters of Arts Subscription Coffee Room (item No. 1029), dated 11 November 179[4], with their printed book label laid in; modern plain wrappers.
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The Speeches of Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, in January, 1794, on the Subject of certain commercial Regulations, proposed by Mr. Madison, in the Committee of the whole, on the Report of the Secretary of State.
First London edition, a rebuff to the punitive anti-British tariffs proposed by the future President James Madison, first printed in Philadelphia in the same year and also reprinted in Edinburgh.
During 1793–6, Madison was actively critical of the administration’s neutral position towards the Anglo-French conflict playing out in Europe; he wrote a series of public papers, and, in 1794, introduced into the House of Representatives resolutions advising commercial retaliation against Great Britain and discrimination in favour of France, namely tariffs on wool, tin and steel and navigation. In his series of Speeches here, William Smith, a South Carolina congressman, state senator and judge who had fought in the War of Independence, argued that it would be a commercial disaster to favour France in this manner: ‘We find … upon a comprehensive and particular investigation of the system of Great Britain, that instead of its wearing an aspect particularly unfriendly towards us, it has, in fact, a contrary aspect; that compared with other foreign nations, it makes numerous and substantial discriminations in our favor’.
Goldsmiths’ 16037; Kress B.2836; Sabin 84836.