Many years later, he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan, "The making England entirely a free port would have been the wisest step ever taken for its advantage." In recent years, his _Wail of a Protected Manufacturer_ has been reprinted and widely circulated in England by the opponents of the Fair Trade movement: Suppose a country, X, which has three industries--cloth, silk, iron--and supplies three other countries--A, B, and C--therewith, wishes to increase the sale and raise the price of cloth in favour of its cloth-makers. To that end X prohibits the importation of cloth from A. In retaliation A prohibits silks coming from X. The workers in silk complain of the decline in their trade. To satisfy them X excludes silk from B. B, to retaliate, shuts out iron and hardware against X. Then the makers of iron and hardware cry out that their trades are being ruined. So X closes its doors against iron and hardware from C. In return C refuses to take cloth from X. Who is the gainer by all these prohibitions? Answer All the four countries have diminished their common fund of the enjoyments and conveniences of life. The open ports of the United States, after the conclusion of the American Revolution, were a source of keen gratification to Franklin. They had brought in, he thought, a vast plenty of foreign goods, and occasioned a demand for domestic produce; so that America enjoyed the double advantage of buying what they consumed cheap, and of selling what they could spare dear. The following views in a letter from him to Jared Eliot, as far back as the year 1747, sound like a recent tariff reform speech in Congress: First, I imagine that the Five Per Cent Duty on Goods imported from your Neighbouring Governments, tho' paid at first Hand by the Importer, will not upon the whole come out of his Pocket, but be paid in Fact by the Consumer; for the Importer will be sure to sell his Goods as much dearer as to reimburse himself; so that it is only another Mode of Taxing your own People tho' perhaps meant to raise Money on your Neighbours. But then follows what a free trader, using Franklin's own coarse phrase, might call "spitting in the soup." "Yet, if you can make some of the Goods, heretofore imported, among yourselves, the advanc'd price of five per cent may encourage your own Manufacture, and in time make the Importation of such Articles unnecessary, which will be an Advantage."