In Opposition to the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures

Background: The role of the government in promoting the national economy was a fiercely contested topic in the early national period. In general, Federalists like Alexander Hamilton favored active federal promotion and involvement in the manufacturing sector, whereas Democratic-Republicans like Thomas Jefferson believed in conserving the predominantly agrarian system of the time. Influential politicians on both sides produced copious writings on the subject, including this letter published by prominent Philadelphia physician George Logan, which outlines his strong opposition to Hamilton’s economic plan to incentivize industrialization.

The Secretary of the Treasury, and his friends in New-York, have already prepared the way, by procuring one of the most unjust and arbitrary laws to be enacted by the Commonwealth of New-Jersey, that ever disgraced the government of a free people—A law granting to a few wealthy men the exclusive jurisdiction of six miles square, and a variety of unconstitutional privileges, highly injurious to the citizens of that state. This law merits your attention, not as a pattern of justice, but to convince you how dangerous it is for a free people to place their whole political safety on the conduct of any set of Legislators, when surrounded by artful and designing men. Is it reasonable—is it just, that a numerous class of citizens, whose knowledge in mechanics and manufactures, not less necessary for the support of their families, than usefulto their country, should be sacrificed to a wealthy few, who have no other object in view than to add to their ill-gotten and enormous wealth? Such being the nature of this corporation, can it be doubted, whether it violates the spirit of all just laws? Whether it subverts the principles of that equality of which freemen ought to be so jealous? Whether it establishes a class of citizens with distinct interests from their fellow citizens? Will it not, by fostering an inequality of fortune, prove the destruction of the equality of rights, and tend strongly to an aristocracy? 

Source: George Logan, “Letter II” in Five letters, addressed to the yeomanry of the United States containing some observations on the dangerous scheme of Governor Duer and Mr. Secretary Hamilton, to establish national manufactories. (Philadelphia: Printed by Eleazer Oswald, 1792), 9–11.