Friedman’s opinion does not negate the FACT that Hamilton’s program was designed to fund the government
Except you are stating "FACT," arrogantsob. You are stating your own highly biased and near-delusional idolization of Hamilton as you wish him to be, not as he actually was.
Specifically:
- It is a FACT that Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures" laid out a thorough case and policy prescription for infant industry protectionism, utilizing (1) favorable tariff rates and (2) subsidies or "bounties" to import-competing industries.
- It is a FACT that his tariff was NOT intended to maximize revenue, because it gave favorable protective rates to a select group of manufactured goods that were explicitly intended to discourage the importation of their foreign competitors through a heavier tax rate than most other imports.
-It is a FACT that a true revenue-based tariff system would have imposed a low uniform flat impost rate of about 2% on all goods, essentially making it a "sales tax on imports."
- It is a FACT that James Madison originally proposed that low uniform single-rate tariff inthe first Congress as a competitor bill to Hamilton's graduated protective tariff plan.
- And it is a FACT that all political policy that is economic in nature is also inherently economic policy for self-evident reasons. But it is NOT a fact that Hamilton was simply trying to generate revenue. That is the opposite of a fact, and we know that it is the opposite of a fact because Hamilton himself espoused the use of the tariff system for purposes OTHER THAN revenue.
Though you seem incapable of finding the data he gathered by writing to people all over the nation it is all there in his papers. The Report on Manufactures and the supporting information takes up two volumes of almost 500 pages each in his papers.
“As the responses to his inquiries poured in and he put the facts together, he came to understand BETTER THAN ANY MAN IN THE COUNTRY what the real problems were and how to surmount them.” He knew we needed a thriving internal market to remove our reliance on foreign markets (which plagues underdeveloped and emerging nations) particularly when war made free trade impossible. He knew we needed to attract more labor and not to the farms but to manufacturing. Unlike the agriculturalists who hated him Hamilton was concentrating on the future. He was also dedicated to developing human potential “To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted.” Certainly this generated great fear among the slavers since stimulating their slaves’ minds was anathema to them.
So you are correct that Hamilton's program was not only concerned with revenue but as much with the development of human capabilities. This was far more than simple protectionism. He was attempting to correct the malformation of the American economy created over the 150+ yrs of its subordination to the British Empire and its policies. It was not an ordinary situation.
And, unlike his enemies, he clearly understood the mutual dependence of agriculture and industry and that they would rise and fall together. Encouraging and promoting industry would increase demand for the produces of agriculture and reduce its almost total dependency on foreign demand.