difications that it may claim to be original. It endeavours to combine opposing principles, to reconcile contradictions; to make manufactures cheap by raising the price of raw materials and of labour-for it was among the lures it held out to labourers, that employment, under this system, would be more abundant and wages higher-but it was a great object to buy, in its infancy, golden opinions from all men. The leaders of the project were not at all deceived in the bearing of the measure, but they hoped if the yoke could once be fairly fixed on the country, that it might easily afterwards be arranged and adjusted to suit the interest it was intended to subserve. Hence, in order to lower the price of woollen goods, and make, by this means, the system popular throughout the country, a high duty was laid on imported wool, and the price necessarily enhanced. But how else could the wool-growers be enlisted, and bribed to throw their weight into the scale. It was sup

posed that at a future, and not far distant day, it would not be difficult to prove that this part of the scheme was incorrect, and inconsistent with the true faith of protection, and that the combined power of the manufacturers would be able, easily, to remove this obstruction as one of their own creation, and one, therefore, that ought to be modified at their discretion. While pressing this measure forward, they were willing that the nominal duty on the importation of cotton should continue unaltered; they would even, if it had not been too obvious a farce, have proposed duties on the importation of grain to cajole the farmers with the expectation of an improved price on their staples. If this were not done, it was only because the absurdity would have been too glaring, of appearing to protect those articles which we were actually exporting to almost all quarters of the globe. That the manufacturers understood fully the operations of their own act, no one will doubt, neither will any one suppose that they intended to suffer it to continue unchanged. No men understand better than themselves the principles of free trade, and the benefit of being able to purchase all their materials at the lowest possible prices. They already begin to discover their feelings and views on this subject. In Niles' Register, of the 20th June, a letter from "one of the most respectable and worthy gentlemen of New-England" is prefaced on the part of the editor, by declaring that the attempt to encourage the growth of wool was a political machine that has answered its purpose, and is now laughed at. From the letter itself we will quote a few sentences to show how strongly they support the opinions we have here advanced.

"The manufacturer has been wronged, cheated, ruined.-The only true friends of the manufacturer are those who now seek to repeal the ridiculous tariff of 1828.-Put a duty for revenue alone on cloths, and remove the duty on wool-this process will invite the regular importer back to his old employment, and finish the vain expedient, already too long adhered to, of growing wool in this country.-The duties on dye stuffs, oil, soap and wool, taken in connexion with the derangement of trade, by making the manufacturer an exporter, amounts to a much higher protection to the foreigner than all the tariff affords to us.-The system which alone can sustain him (the manufacturer, is one founded on the principle of monopoly."

The whole letter coming from the quarter it does, merits attention. We know not how the wool-growers in the north and west will consider it, but to us it appears a clear and accurate exemplification of the natural and necessary tendency of the whole system. Labour, when employed in one way only, is considered as American industry, and all other occupations are to be sacrificed, as far as may be necessary, to this one paramount pursuit. Great Britain, from whom the friends of the Tariff delight so much to draw their examples, and derive their facts, affords us, on this point, a striking illustration. The landholders in that country, in order to equalize in some measure the restrictive system, have obtained on their part, as protection for their corn, not only a high duty on importation, but an absolute prohibition until the price of grain became so high in England, as to manifest a scarcity almost amounting to famine. As in order to protect manufactures, they paid a higher price for many articles which could have been imported advantageously from abroad, it seemed but reasonable that they should sell at higher prices their own productions. This protection, as in other cases, led to an increased employment of capital in this pursuit. Poor lands which, without such aid, could not have been brought into cultivation, have been improved at a heavy expense. The proprietors, or those who have made investments in these inferior soils, consider themselves as having a strong claim on the government under whose encouragement these investments were made for continued protection. Thus it is, that in this system every step seems to plunge you more inextricably in a labyrinth from which there is no easy escape. For while the farmers of Great Britain demand the continuance of those laws under which they have adventured so much money, very different views of the subject are taken by other parties. The kingdom is now in a state of great excitement on account of the corn laws-great efforts are making to repeal them, expressly on account of the manufacturers.

This interest is found alike clamorous, whether the government is disposed to take off duties on articles they produce, or impose them on articles which they consume. They understand perfectly, and maintain strenuously, the doctrines of free trade, as far as their own interests are exclusively concerned. They know the advantages of buying at low, and selling at high prices: but it is themselves only who are to enjoy this privilege. As with us this labour alone is considered as national, (American we would call it) no other as contributing to national independence. Capital and industry in every other occupation is apparently to be disregarded, and as far as they interfere with this great interest to be trampled under foot. To manufactures we have no hostility-we rejoice to see them springing up wherever they can arise with native strength and inherent vigour. They possess naturally great advantages in our country, from local circumstances, from the cheapness of provisions, the almost unparalleled command of water power, the abundance of wood and coal, and the distance at which we are placed from foreign competitors. With the duties which,

even on account of revenue, we are obliged to impose, these advantages in the home market are quite sufficient to raise up and protect all the articles of general use, unless the labour of the country can be much more profitably employed in other pursuits, and if it can, what prudence, what wisdom, what patriotism is there in diverting by force and hot-bed culture, this labour from its natural and more profitable channel. Manufac turers constitute certainly a great interest in any nation, but it is only one out of many; it is not even the most important, and there is no reason either in policy or justice, why it should be built up at the expense of others, to be elevated as of exclusive excellence, to bear a name above all other names, to become the test of patriotism, the watchword of a party, the shrine at which men must worship and sacrifice judginent and inclination, if they wish to obtain honour and power.

It is not easy to estimate the difference which a few years have made on this subject in the United States. Manufactures were then increasing, slowly perhaps but prosperously, in many parts of our country, new workshops were appearing with every change of season, new and permanent fabrics were every year added to our former productions. Improvements in this department kept pace with improvements in all others, not running ahead, but bearing a close relation to the general and gradual increase of wealth throughout the country. They prospered, and all men rejoiced in their prosperity. But in an evil hour, the capitalists not satisfied with the domestic market which was

so fairly opened to them, required a monopoly at home, making all other interests tributary to their idle and mercenary speculations, as a means of enabling them to contend with other nations in foreign markets. Politicians seized upon this excited spirit as a means to promote their personal views. The peace of the country has been shaken. It is now no longer a question of Political Economy, but a contest of higher principles; and hostility and sectional feelings have been created, that may act injuriously not only on this interest, but on the Union itself, for a longer period than the superficial will readily imagine.

Until within a short period, the great kingdoms of Europe were composed of provinces who had distinct laws, privileges and customs. These provinces viewed each other with distrust and jealousy, surrounded themselves with guards and customhouses, prohibited the free ingress of commodities, even from the neighbouring districts of the same nation, lest it might interfere with their own industry, and others might grow rich at their expense. Every fetter of the restrictive system was brightened and burnished, and kept in active employment. Yet strange to tell, they did not get rich under this system, for as all acted on the same principle, there was no means by which each could exchange its superfluous productions; they did not get independent, for each was frequently in want of the most common necessaries of life, and had no wealth with which they could purchase. All were poor and ignorant alike, and filled with those prejudices and foolish opinions that belong to ignorance and poverty, clinging with the most obstinate prepossession to the very source and cause of all their privations. When by accident, for war has sometimes broken these chains, or by the progress of liberal opinions, they have been disenthralled from these shackles, they have found, to their utter astonishment, that the improvement of one district did not necessarily produce the ruin of another, that where all were left to the operation of a free and unrestricted competition, all could find some employment and share in the general prosperity.* By the early application

* It is very amusing, and might be instructive to read the lamentations of some of the purest Scotch patriots in 1706, over the evils which the union with England was to inflict on that country-her wealth was to be drained away—her industry destroyed-she was not only to be fleeced, but flayed alive. The error with all of this class of politicians, springs from a supposition that there is but a certain amount of wealth or labour in the world, and that whenever any country acquires a new or an unusual quantity, it must be gained by winning the portion of some less fortunate land. They appear not to know, or not to remember, that by the stimulus of free competition, industry can be excited to redoubled exertions-that by improvements in the arts, the results of labour can be prodigiously multiplied-and that by the unrestrained power of exchange, all the productions of industry acquire value, and become real and substantial wealth.

of these enlightened principles to national as well as to parochial or provincial intercourse, the United States have afforded an example of extended and rapid prosperity, unparalleled by any other nation. This was the real "American System," not begged or borrowed from the superannuated governments of the old world, to which our country ought to have adhered; it should have been our pride and our boast, and would have secured to us an exceedingly great reward.

over.

We can only touch occasionally on the questions discussed in these volumes-many that are important we are obliged to pass On one which has divided the great political economists of the present day-Say, Ricardo, Malthus, Sismondi-we shall offer a few observations. The two former of these writers assert that a nation never can produce too much, because production creates demand; the last two deny this, and assert that demand should precede and determine production, that when this is not the case, new production is rather the cause of ruin than of wealth. On this point, however, M. Sismondi shall speak for himself:—

"Economists are at present divided on a fundamental question, on the decision of which depends in some measure, the first principles of their science. All that we can flatter ourselves to perform, is to show the importance of the question, and to exhort those who, perhaps, have too lightly formed their opinions, to meditate anew on this subject.

"This is the question-Mr. Ricardo in England, M. Say on the Continent, maintain that it is sufficient for the economist to occupy himself with the production of riches; for the prosperity of nations depends on a constantly increasing production. They say that production, in creating the means of exchange, creates consumption; that no one need ever fear that riches (productions of value) will encumber the market, whatever may be the quantity that human industry may produce, because the wants and desires of men will be always ready to convert this wealth to use.

"On the other hand, Mr. Malthus in England, has maintained, as I have endeavoured to do on the Continent, that consumption is not the necessary consequence of production; that the wants and the desires of men are, it is true, without limits, but that these wants and these desires can only be satisfied and occasion consumption so far as they are united to the means of exchange. We have affirmed, that when these means of exchange were created, it did not necessarily follow that they would pass into the hands of those who felt these desires and wants, that it even happened frequently that the means of exchange increased in society, whilst the demand and the wages of labour diminished; that then the desires and wants of a portion of the population could not be satisfied, and consumption must necessarily diminish. In short, we pretend that the unequivocal sign of the prosperity of society is not the increasing production of wealth, but the increasing demand for labour, or the increase of wages which rewards it.