acter, but still less in degree than in the case of the clear definitions of 1818. The grant of 1818 existed in a previous treaty-that of 1845 was embodied in two treaties then on record, and neither set aside. The right to fish in the Bay of Fundy, notwithstanding it was never improved or insisted upon, was as clearly given in the treaty of 1818, as in that of 1783. The palpable meaning of the clause giving up, as to other places than those named, all right before claimed or enjoyed, "to take or cure fish on or w hin three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors" of the British possessions, is, that the Americans shall not fish within three miles of any shore in these parts; the words bay, creek, or harbor, being substituted for the inland shores of the same, which are not confounded with the word coasts, meaning the shore of the sea. In a bay of over six miles in width the Americans had still as much right to fish, as in any other part of the sea; and if, by a monstrously perverted understanding of the word "bay," the Americans were to be excluded from coming within three miles of the mouth or outlet of any arm of the sea, then they could be excluded from any body of water, however large, lying partially within the embrace of the land. If the Americans could rightfully be excluded, under the treaty of 1818, from the Bay of Fundy, they could with the same justice and propriety be driven from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the grant of a few coasts, bays, creeks, &c., on one or two of its sides, giving them no permission to range the whole of that land-begirted sea. In accepting the bounty of 1845 as a real transfer of privilege, we acknowledged as valid a perverted construction of the clear definitions of 1818, and gave up our just right in whatever other bays or harbors this perverted construction may have been applied to.

Certainly our diplomatic efforts connected with the Fisheries, since the war of 1812, have been singularly unfortunate. Had our commercial interest, generally, been no better taken care of, it would have illy withstood the competition of the powerful rival interests of Britain and France. Every attempt to better our privileges has resulted in a sacrifice of a part of them. Once we have lost a moiety as the price of a clear definition, and again we have lost another part in a supposed enlargement of them. A few more conventions, protocols, and concessions like those of 1818 and 1845, will effectually adjust all points of difference, by leaving us nothing needing protection, or requiring description.

Art. II.-PROTECTION VS. FREE-TRADE.

THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN THE RELATIONS OF CAPITAL AND LABOR.

FREEMAN HUNT, Esq., Conductor of the Merchants' Magazine, etc.

The papers on both sides, in the discussion between R. S. and myself have been printed under the running title "PROTECTION VS. FREE TRADE." Such is not, however, the issue that has been made on my part. I undertook, indeed, to show that, for the solution of this question, it was indispensable to ascertain whether Carey, or Malthus and Ricardo are correct in their opposing views, as to the course of cultivation of the earth; and to determine whether it be true that population increases, or tends to increase, faster than the means of subsistence, as Malthus believes, or whether increasing density of population brings with it facilities for obtaining food, or increasing in a more rapid ratio than the consumers, according to Carey. For the purpose of proving this I was obliged to sketch the opposing theories upon which the school of protection-which follows Adam Smith in regarding domestic commerce as the primary interest of a nation-and the Manchester school-which, following the modern English economists, is mainly solicitous to encourage foreign trade-respectively base themselves. I am quite aware that I did not, as I could not do this without exposing my own opinions. But all this is merely introductory to a discussion of the protective policy, which I have, it is true, signified a readiness to enter upon, if invited, but have not commenced. This much it seems proper to premise lest your readers should infer that I conceive myself to be doing what I have not as yet undertaken.

Several of the principles which I stated are so repugnant to the notions of R. S. that he could hardly treat them as entitled to a decent show of consideration. I attempted therefore, to produce evidence in support of them, not in "statistics for very short periods," but in statistics for the respectable periods of fifty, and a hundred and fifty years, derived from the most eminent free-trade authorities of Great Britain and France. When I dealt with statistics for the short period of ten years, it was because they were selected and quoted by R. S. himself. These I think show that with increasing capital production is so much cheapened in its labor cost, that while wages and profits both rise commodities fall in their money price.

In respect to manufactured fabrics, the Lowell statistics to which we were referred by R. S., furnished the means of experiencing how it comes that a piece of cotton cloth can be sold for a less sum of money than ten years before, yet that less money pays higher cash wages to labor, and higher profits to capital. Prof. Gordon, of the University of Glasgow, says, in the Art Journal, for October, "An experienced operative of the manufacturing districts working the modern looms, produces 26 pieces of printing cloth, 25 inches wide, 29 yards long and 11 picks per inch in a week of sixty hours. The cost of weaving each piece is 51d.-less than 6d. If the same cloth were woven on the old loom, one operative would produce only four pieces, and at a cost of 2s. 9d. each; or the weaver's wages in 1800 were as much as the entire value of the cloth in the Manchester market at present."

According to this statement the entire cost of the wages paid in 1800 has disappeared from the cloth described, in 1850. But wages have not been reduced to nothing. On the contrary, they are higher, estimated in money and by the hour, and still higher estimated in cotton cloth. Mr. Porter, in his Pro

gress of the Nation, states that, "the number of yards of cotton cloth exported in 1834 were greater by 125 per cent than in 1820, while the increa se in the declared value is no more than 7 per cent. The average price per yard, which in 1820 was 123d., had fallen in 1834 to 6 d. The quantity of twist exported increased in the same period in the proportion of 10 to 3, while the increase in its declared value was only in the proportion of 13 to 7. The average price of twist in 1820 was 2s. 54d. per pound; in 1834 it was 1s. 43d. The diminution of value in the twist appears to amount to 453 per cent, and in cloth to 51 per cent." Progress of the Nation, vol. 1, page 209. The money price of labor remaining the same, its command over cotton cloth, or wages estimated in cotton, had more than doubled. If we compare the official and declared valued of all the British and Irish products and manufactures exported from Great Britain in the years instanced by Mr. Porter, and the proportion per cent that the declared or real value bore to the official values, we shall be able to see in what degree the effectiveness of labor had increased in the production of all those commodities which Great Britain exports.

This exhibits an average reduction in cost upon all the articles of export of forty per cent. We extend the comparison to the present period, taking the average of the last five years for the purpose of excluding temporary variations in the market, as follows:

The rates at which all articles of export and import are officially valued, having been fixed long before the earliest period in the above tables, and remaining unchanged, the first column is only valuable as a means of determining the quantity of the exports. The proportions between quantity and cost, as the latter is shown by the declared value, at different periods, of course exhibit the relative efficiency of labor acting in combination with the capital employed by it in the work of production. Whatever may be the respective share of labor and capital in the progress they achieve, it is plain that the reduction in the cost of commodities is equivalent to an advance in the rate of wages. If, as shown by the above tables, $41 63 would purchase during the last five years as much of all the articles for the supply of human wants and comforts, which make up the multiform exportation of Great Britain, as $94 would have done thirty years ago, it is evidence the real wages, that is, the amount of supplies at the command of the laborer, have more than doubled, provided wages estimated in money have not receded. It shows also that wages absorb more than twice as large a proportion of the product resulting from the joint action of labor and capital as before, and that consequently the proportion going to profits has diminished. But the captialist takes his diminished proportion from an increased total production. To the owner of a mill it is a matter of indifference whether he receives in return for the use of his buildings, machinery, &c., sixty-six per cent

:

of one million yards of cloth, or thirty-three per cent of two millions. R. S., and those who think with him, will not admit the supposition that the total product is not increased by at least a sufficient per centage to pay the increased proportion going to labor without impairing the remainder belonging to profits. To establish this would be to prove that in the progress of society labor is devouring capital. They maintain the reverse. According to their theory capital is more and more obtaining the mastery, and labor becoming more and more its slave. Their system is one of antagonism and discord. They have failed to see that the interests of the laborer, the capitalist, and the consumer, who pays both by the purchase of their products, are in perfect harmony; and such is the teaching of their great master. "With a permanently high price of corn," says Mr. Ricardo, and McCulloch quotes the passage to assent and approve," caused by increased labor on the land, wages would be high, and as commodities would not rise on account of the rise of wages, profits would necessarily fall. If goods worth £1,000 require at one time labor which cost £800, and at another time the price of the same quantity of labor is raised to £900, profits will fall from £200 to £100. Profits would not fall in one trade only, but in all. High wages equally affect the profits of the farmer, the manufacturer and the merchant. There is no other way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down." (On Protection to Agriculture, page 43.)

If the theory of R. S. is correct-if capital has been gaining power at the expense of labor, and that in virtue of a permanent law which must continue to operate in the future as in the past, then it is clear that a duplication of real wages must have been and must ever be accompanied by more than a duplication of profits. If it were not, profits would recede relatively to wages, and our case would be made out. If it were, then the increase of wages, and the still greater increase of profits, must be attended by a diminution of the share of the products going to rent, which is equally fatal to the Malthusian hypothesis. The conclusion is to be avoided only by supposing the increase of production sufficiently large to cover a duplication and more than a duplication of rent, after satisfying the double demand of labor, and the more than double demand of capital. All this, too, be it remembered, with a reduction in the cost of commodities to the consumer of more than fifty per cent.

I have referred to rent only, because I am not aware what are the views entertained by R. S. in reference to its entering into the price of commodities. I quoted in a previous article, two passages from the same work of Malthus, for the purpose of showing his admissions that the wages of labor must increase in proportion to rent, and that rent has in fact in England diminished in the proportion which it bears to the whole value of the produce, at the same time that, "though the landlord has a less share of the produce, yet this less share, from the very great increase of the produce, yields a larger quantity." We shall have occasion to use this statement, which Mr. Malthus made upon the authority of the returns collected by the Board of Agriculture, for another purpose; at present it is cited only as evidence that in his belief wages must obtain an increasing and not a diminishing pro portion of the products of the soil.

It may be worth while here to cite a passage in which McCulloch gives the theory of his school in relation to the effect of rent and wages, in determining price.

"It is utterly impossible to go on increasing the price of that raw produce,

which forms the principal part of the subsistence of the laborer, by taking inferior soils into cultivation without also increasing his wages. A rise in wages is seldom or never exactly coincident with a rise in the price of necessaries, but they can never be very far separated. The price of the necessaries of life is in fact the cost of producing labor. The laborer cannot work if he is not supplied with the means of subsistence. And although a period of varying extent, according to the circumstances of the country at the time, must always elapse, when necessaries are rising in price before wages can be proportionably augmented, there can be no question but that in the end such an augmentation will be brought about. Now as rent is nothing but the excess, or the value of the excess, of the produce obtained from the best above that obtained from the very worst soils in cultivation, it is plain it does not enter into the cost of production, and can have no influence whatever on prices. Still better to elucidate this fundamental principle, let us suppose that an individual has two loaves on his table; one raised on very fertile land, the other on the very worst land in cultivation: in the latter there will be no rent, and it will be wholly divided between wages and profits. We have already shown that it is the cost of producing this loaf which will regulate the price of all other loaves; and although it will be true that the rent which the loaf raised on the best land will afford, will be equal to all the difference between the expense of growing the corn of which it is made, and the corn raised on the worst land of which the standard loaf is made, yet it is only in consequence of this difference that any rent whatever is paid. Twenty different loaves, all selling for the same price may yield different portions of rent; but it is one only, that which yields no rent, which regulates the value of the rent, and which is to be considered as the standard. It is demonstrable, therefore, that rent does not enter into pricewages and profits make up the whole value of every commodity. And, therefore, when wages rise profits must fall; and when wages fall profits must rise. But we have shown that there is never any falling off, but a constant increase in the productiveness of the labor employed in manufacturing and preparing raw produce. And such being the case, it is demonstrably certain that the subsistence of the laborer could never be increased in price, and consequently that no additions could ever be made to his necessary wages, were it not for the diminished power of agricultural labor, originating in the inevitable necessity under which we are placed of resorting to poorer soils to obtain raw produce as society advances. The continually decreasing fertility of the soil is, therefore, at bottom the great and permanent cause of a fall of profits. Profits would never fall if wages were not increased; and, supposing taxation to continue invariable, wages would never be increased were it not for the decreasing fertility of the soil, and the consequent increase of the labor necessary to obtain corn and other raw products."

It would be very difficult to find a passage which more thoroughly exposes the difference between the British system of political economy and the American, than the preceding. It teaches that wages rise because labor becomes more inefficient-that more is given because less is received-that capital pays a larger dividend to labor because the fund from which it has to pay it is diminished. Our system, on the contrary, teaches that labor is more highly paid, both as to proportion and as to absolute amount, when it contributes, and where it contributes, and because it contributes, most to swell the gross quantity of the products out of which, or from the value of which, wages must be derived-when and where, and because it is most