"For the more rapid the growth of a spirit of industrial invention and improvement, of social and political reform, the wider becomes the gap between stationary and progressive nations, and the more dangerous it is to remain on the further side."

“… the Union can grow powerful only by fostering the manufacturing interest. This, Sir, I think the true American political economy.”

“The nation … must sacrifice some present advantages in order to insure to itself future ones.”

“From the nation they draw all the benefits of civilisation, enlightenment, progress, and social and political institutions, as well as advances in the arts and sciences.”

“It is no more than fair that England, now that she has attained the culminating point of her industrial growth and progress, should restore again to the nations of a portion of those productive forces which she originally derived from them.”

“But politics demands, in the interests of each separate nation, guarantees for its independence and continued existence, special regulations to help its progress in culture, prosperity, and power, to build its society into a perfectly complete and harmoniously developed body politic, self-contained and independent.”

“… I believe it to be a duty of the General Convention of Harrisburg, not only to support the wool growers and wool manufacturers, but to lay the root at the axe of the tree, by declaring the system of Adam Smith to be erroneous – by declaring war against it on the part of the American System – ...”