The American System versus the English System

Henry Clay wrote
In Defense of the American System on

February 2, 3, and 6, 1832

From the nation's earliest days, Congress has struggled with the fundamental issue of the national government's proper role in fostering economic development. Henry Clay's "American System", devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. This "System" consisted of three mutually reenforcing parts: a

1. tariff to protect and promote American[i] industry; a

2. national bank to foster commerce; and

3. federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture.

Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System." In the years from 1816 to 1828, Congress enacted programs supporting each of the American System's major elements. …. Continued Here.

Two Systems are Before the World

- by Henry C. Carey (Lincoln’s advisor), Harmony of Interests, in 1856

The English doctrine of “ships, colonies, and commerce” is thus reproduced on this side of the Atlantic, and its adoption by the nation would be followed by effects similar to those which have been already described as existing in England. There, for a time, it gave the power to tax the world for the maintenance of fleets and armies, as had before been done by Athens and by Rome, and there it is now producing the same results that have elsewhere resulted from the same system, poverty, depopulation, exhaustion, and weakness.

But little study of our history is required to satisfy the inquirer that the power of the Union, and its magnificent position among the nations of the earth, are due to the fact that we have to so great an extent abstained from measures requiring the maintenance of fleets and armies.

The consequence has been that taxes have been light, capital has accumulated rapidly, labour has been productive, and the labourer has received wages that have enabled him to feed, clothe, and educate his children, and the nation has thus performed its true “mission” in elevating the condition of man. If we desire to find exceptions to this, we must look to those periods in which the policy of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson, was departed from, and when the government adopted measures tending to the maintenance of the English monopoly of machinery,

and there we shall find taxes more heavy, capital accumulating more slowly, labour more unproductive, and the wages of labour so much depressed that the labourer finds it difficult to feed or clothe his children, and still more difficult to educate them.

Two systems are before the world;

[The English ] one looks to increasing the proportion of persons and of capital engaged in trade and transportation, and therefore to diminishing the proportion engaged in producing commodities with which to trade, with necessarily diminished return to the labour of all; while

the other looks to increasing the proportion engaged in the work of production, and diminishing that engaged in trade and transportation, with increased return to all, giving to the labourer good wages, and to the owner of capital good profits.

[The English] One looks to increasing the quantity of raw materials to be exported, and diminishing the inducements to the import of men, thus impoverishing both farmer and planter by throwing on them the burden of freight; while

the other looks to increasing the import of men, and diminishing the export of raw materials, thereby enriching both planter and farmer by relieving them from the payment of freight.

[The English] One looks to giving the products of millions of acres of land and of the labour of millions of men for the services of hundreds of thousands of distant men;

the other to bringing the distant men to consume on the land the products of the land, exchanging day’s labour for day’s labour.

[The English] One looks to compelling the farmers and planters of the Union to continue their contributions for the support of the fleets and the armies, the paupers, the nobles, and the sovereigns of Europe;

the other to enabling ourselves to apply the same means to the moral and intellectual improvement of the sovereigns of America.

[The English] One looks to the continuance of that bastard freedom of trade which denies the principle of protection, yet doles it out as revenue duties;

the other to extending the area of legitimate free trade by the establishment of perfect protection[ii], followed by the annexation of individuals and communities, and ultimately by the abolition of custom-houses.

[The English] One looks to exporting men to occupy desert tracts, the sovereignty of which is obtained by aid of diplomacy or war;

the other to increasing the value of an immense extent of vacant land by importing men by millions for their occupation.

[The English] One looks to the centralization of wealth and power in a great commercial city that shall rival the great cities of modern times, which have been and are being supported by aid of contributions which have exhausted every nation subjected to them;

the other to concentration, by aid of which a market shall be made upon the land for the products of the land, and the farmer and planter be enriched.

[The English] One looks to increasing the necessity for commerce;

the other to increasing the power to maintain it.

[The English] One looks to underworking the Hindoo, and sinking the rest of the world to his level;

the other to raising the standard or man throughout the world to our level.

[The English] One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism;

the other to increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization.

[The English] One looks towards universal war;

the other towards universal peace.

One is the English system;

the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of ELEVATING while EQUALIZING the condition of man throughout the world.

SUCH is the true MISSION of the people of these United States.

To them has been granted a privilege never before granted to man, that of

the exercise of the right of perfect self-government;

but, as rights and duties are inseparable, with the grant of the former

came the obligation to perform the latter.

Happily their performance is pleasant and profitable, and involves no sacrifice.

• To raise the value of labour throughout the world, we need only to raise the value of our own.

• To raise the value of land throughout the world, it is needed only that we adopt measures that shall raise the value of our own.

• To diffuse intelligence and to promote the cause of morality throughout the world, we are required only to pursue the course that shall diffuse education throughout our own land, and shall enable every man more readily to acquire property, and with it respect for the rights of property.

• To improve the political condition of man throughout the world, it is needed that we ourselves should remain at peace, avoid taxation for the maintenance of fleets and armies, and become rich and prosperous.

• To raise the condition of woman throughout the world, it is required of us only that we pursue that course that enables men to remain at home and marry, that they may surround themselves with happy children and grand-children.

• To substitute true Christianity for the detestable system known as the Malthusian, it is needed that we prove to the world that it is population that makes the food come from the rich soils, and that food tends to increase more rapidly than population, thus vindicating the policy of God to man.

Doing these things, the addition to our population by immigration will speedily rise to millions, and with each and every year the desire for that perfect freedom of trade which results from incorporation within the Union, will be seen to spread and to increase in its intensity, leading gradually to the establishment of an empire the most extensive and magnificent the world has yet seen, based upon the principles of maintaining peace itself, and strong enough to insist upon the maintenance of peace by others, yet carried on without the aid of fleets, or armies, or taxes, the sales of public lands alone sufficing to pay the expenses of government.

To establish such an empire[iii]—to prove that among the people of the world, whether agriculturists, manufacturers, or merchants, there is perfect harmony of interests, and that the happiness of individuals, as well as the grandeur of nations, is to be promoted by perfect obedience to that greatest of all commands, “Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you,” — is the object and will be the result of that mission.

Whether that result shall be speedily attained, or whether it shall be postponed to a distant period, will depend greatly upon the men who are charged with the performance of the duties of government.

If their movements be governed by that enlightened self-interest which induces man to seek his happiness in the promotion of that of his fellow-man, it will come soon.

If, on the contrary, they be governed by that ignorant selfishness which leads to the belief that individuals, party, or national interests, are to be promoted by measures tending to the deterioration of the condition of others, it will be late.

THE END.

- by Henry C. Carey (Lincoln’s advisor), Harmony of Interests, 1856

What is this “strange partly British / partly American monarchy of the Americas”? At the best of times it was uplifted by the best constitutional traditions of America cited …. above, and at the worst of times it was a platform to spread British intrigues upon the world exemplified by the Montreal-based assassinations of American System leaders Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and John F. Kennedy in 1963. Today those intrigues are led by such Rhodes Scholars as Chrystia Freeland and the modern Round Table movement of Ben Rowswell who have together played leading roles in the overthrow of Venezuela, the protection of fascists in Ukraine and advance of NATO against Russia and China.

In Russia, American System follower Sergei Witte, Transport Minister and close advisor to Czar Alexander II, revolutionized the Russian economy with the American made trains that rolled across the Trans-Siberian Railway. Under the influence of Witte and other American System allies Czar Nicholas II endorsed the Bering Strait rail connection in 1905, though a tragic turn of fate sabotaged it from unfolding.

Not even the Ottoman Empire remained untouched by the inspiration for progress, as the Berlin to Baghdad Railway was begun with the intention of unleashing a bold program of modernization of southwest Asia.

The Following is from Matthew Ehret's 20190511 The American System vs The English System ++++.htm.

['American System':]

With the 15th century rediscovery of the efficient power of self-conscious reason as a knowable and self-developing potential in the soul of every human, the renaissance-humanist conception of mankind had blossomed. With that conception of imago viva dei (1) led in large measure by the unique discoveries and life`s devotion of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1460), a revolution in science, art and statecraft occurred. Natural law both in the sciences, in the arts and especially as a standard when shaping physical economic policy became accessible to self-consciousness.

With such discoveries came new principles of self-organization, such as the 1648 Peace of Westphalia that not only put an end to the oligarchy`s 30 year religious warfare, but established the principle of `The Benefit of the Other` as the basis of national sovereignty. From the 1648 Peace, a new platform was created upon which the next great revolution could begin with the 1776 American Declaration of Independence. With the 1776 Declaration and 1789 Constitution, a nation founded upon life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was instituted for the first time amongst men. By 1791, Alexander Hamilton, First Treasury Secretary and Benjamin Franklin protégé established his American System of Political Economy with his 1791 reports on the National Bank, Public Credit, and most importantly the Subject of Manufactures where Hamilton defined the purpose and value of economic planning, not according to “pleasure/pain, utility or money”, but rather “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. Even things in themselves not positively advantageous, sometimes become so, by their tendency to provoke exertion. Every new scene, which is opened to the busy nature of man to rouse and exert itself, is the addition of a new energy to the general stock of effort.”

This American System was the effect of rigorous studies of Platonic texts such as the Republic, and the French Cameralist (aka: Dirigist) economic school as applied by such leading organizers of the Westphalian Treaty as Cardinal Mazarin, and France’s Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, not to mention their spiritual heir, the great scientist and statesman Gottfried Leibniz. Nearly written out of today’s history books, these men played a direct role in the formation of the early colonies of the Americas and New France. In his 1984 So You Wish to Learn All About Economics?, a modern representative of this tradition, Lyndon H. LaRouche (1923-2019), credits Leibniz as also having been the founder of the science of Physical Economy and intellectual inspiration for the American System (2).

Notes on the following table:

There are not necessarily just two data columns to this table.
It is a matter of preference / taste which of the two columns is better for the USA.

Name	the American system	The Anglo-American Establishment [iv]
Brief Characterization	we may be proud to call [it] the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.
Alternate Name(s)	Democratic Republic or America or U.S.A. or the '1776 Project'	The English System of Empire Exported to the Americas
Intends/believes	looks to increasing the proportion engaged in the work of production, and diminishing that engaged in trade and transportation, with increased return to all, giving to the laborer good wages, and to the owner of capital good profits; faith in scientific and technological progress; [true] free trade;	looks to increasing the proportion of persons and of capital engaged in trade and transportation, and therefore to diminishing the proportion engaged in producing commodities with which to trade, with necessarily diminished return to the labor of all; [British] free trade[v]
Inclined towards / needs	universal peace; Physical Economy; creativity and its fruits of technological progress[vi]; national banking system; manufacturing (including protective tariffs); Zollverein (customs union); nationalism (not empire); 1930s New Deal; natural advantages via unrestricted[vii] free trade	universal war; single World government; ruling oligarchy; natural selection & social darwinism; genocide & eugenics; League of Nations; rentierism[viii]
Creator or Champion	Alexander Hamilton; Benjamin Franklin; George Washington; Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln; Franklin Delano Rosevelt[ix];	Ruskin, Rhodes, Milner[x], Oxford U, Rhodes Scholars; Andrew Mellon; Pierre Trudeau; Roundtable Member Winston "Iron Curtain" Churchill;
Facts	"… founded by U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and his mentor Benjamin Franklin,…"	Founded by Ruskin, Rhodes, Milner, …; Exhaustively documented by Carroll Quigley;
Conjectures		In 2019, is (still) the most powerful and far-reaching influence on the US Deep State.