| THE STATE IN THE MARYLAND ECONOMY, 177&1907 95
tures would be best until more experience could be gained.
The editor of the Baltimore Maryland Gazette warned that
luxuries should not be manufactured since the manufacture
of luxuries depended upon " fashion and caprice " not upon
the real values of life. Laborers in such industries were apt
to be frequently out of employment and to become a " dan-
gerous burden on the commonwealth." 23
Soon after the peace treaty normalized commerce and trade
relations between the United States and Great Britain, Mary-
land publicists and artisans pleaded for encouragement of
manufacturing in Maryland by means of protection of local
products and suggested several methods by which it might be
done. A Baltimore writer, noting that the British and French
had promoted their manufactures by " high duties, prohibi-
tions, pains, and penalties," proposed that Maryland summon
similar aids to its own manufacturing. While these duties
might cause higher prices, he maintained that, as it had in Eng-
land and France, " general benefit silences particular clam-
our." 24 " A Friend to Equal justice " appealed to mechanics
with the thought that a tariff would not only guarantee the
future prosperity of the United States but would ensure me-
chanics " a decent and moderate profit." 25
These programs of the 'eighties might be considered as hav-
ing been offered as solutions to the depression, which they
sometimes were, but even in more prosperous times plans
for encouraging Maryland manufacturing were presented. As
late as 1794, at least one newspaper writer was still urging the
total prohibition of imported goods on the ground that Amer-
icans would have been thousands of pounds richer had impor-
tation been stopped at the close of the Revolution. It was bet-
ter, he thought, to pay higher prices for American goods be-
cause the money stayed in the country. He claimed that im-
portation also tended to create idleness, and the more indus-
trious a state, the happier it was.2B Others, writing shortly
after the Revolution, saw that total exclusion of imports was
'e Ibid., July 18, 1788, p. 3.
2' Ibid., Jan. 9, 178'7, " An Enthusiast in Trade."
$e Ibid, July 13, 1787, " To the Inhabitants of the Precincts of Baltimore-
town." -
" Md. J., Feb. 28, 1794, "Queries."
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