The action of their fable is, for the most part, very protracted,* and its incidents are brought out in detached portions of timeregular in their proper sequence indeed, but generally so slightly (if at all) connected, that all continuity is lost; and always so inartificially put together as to leave the in neither of them disciples of what Schlegel | low, Peele, Lodge, Nash, Lylie, &c., and rather undefinedly calls the Romantic School) compare them in this respect with the structhat Shakspeare possessed an art by which ture of Shakspeare's performances in a simihe "gave fashion" (i. e. form) to his "mat-lar class. ter;" that he was "made" (by study) as well as "born" (by nature) a poet; and that he invented the peculiar system (or code of laws) which guided his own practice, and which he "did first impart." These are important concessions, and should set us upon the inquiry into the particular laws of which this system consists. We have already as-tervals uncovered, either by the overlapping certained two steps in this inquiry: first, of parts, or the involution of circumstances. that he knew, and (in certain cases) prac- Their story runs right through from begintised the ancient code of unities; and, sec- ning to end, in a straight line; and their ondly, that in certain cases also he employed method may be compared to a substitute for their rigid discipline. "The Pontic Sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the Hellespont." On the other hand, whilst the time of many of Shakspeare's dramas, whether historical or factitious, covers periods of considerable extent; still the dramatic development of it is so foreshortened (to borrow a term from a sister art) by the involution of events, and the overlapping of the severed parts of one incident with the adjoining extremities of another intervening one, that the result is a reduction of the real time to an apparent time, not greatly nor essentially differing from the limitation of the legal unity, and the production of a continuity of action more in accordance with nature and reason than the arbitrary limit imposed upon the drama by the Greeks. The just inference is, that, with his unlimited power over his materials, his departures from the ancient system (and they constitute the most voluminous portion of his works) were the result of judgment and design; a judgment improved by experience, a design suggested by deeper and more natural principles of art. What this system was though first and last practised by himself alone-does not appear to us to be quite indiscoverable; but we must not suffer ourselves to be tempted, on this occasion, into a discussion of it, which would, perhaps, be premature, but which certainly would deserve more time and space than we can here afford it. Suffice it to observe that, as it was not the regular system of the Greek and Roman dramatists, neither did it resemble the irregular and unsystematic school of dramatic composition which was in possession of the stage when his star began to ascend "the highest heaven of invention." The difference will be palpable rigidly fixed at four-and-twenty years; that of to any one who, with a view to their struc- Lylie's " Endymion," at forty. All their historical ture, will examine the plays of Greene, Mar-plays run out their full time. *The action of Marlow's "Doctor Faustus" is WHIG PRINCIPLE AND ITS DEVELOPMENT. skilful in arousing the prejudices of an honest and confiding people; they can excite the farmer against the manufacturer, the workman against the employer; they can paint in alluring colors the desirableness and the weakness of a foreign territory which they wish to invade; they can shake the Union itself, by the exhibition of a Buffalo or a South Carolina platform; but they can never hide the fact that all these measures proceed, not from any one fixed principle, but from an utter want of it. "ABOVE all things," said the honest John- | equally barren and unsubstantial. They are son, "clear your mind from cant." We recommend this advice to the attention of the opposition party; for never has a body of sensible men been more miserably deceived than they, by the unceasing cant of their leaders. They have been led to believe and to call themselves "Democrats," while their policy has always been directly opposed to the true interests of the masses. They have been persuaded that low tariffs, war, Mexican invasions, the destruction of credit, and the neglect of internal improvements were to advance, in a remarkable degree, the prosperity of the nation. They have been hurried into dangerous action upon the subject of slavery, by the sectional cant of their Rhetts and Van Burens, their Rantouls and their Bentons. In all parts of the Union the great mass of the opposition have, in fact, been swayed by the personal feelings and prejudices of their leaders, and have been led to mistake cant for argument, and expedients for principles. But we are confident that the majority of the American people can no longer be deluded by unmeaning pretense. They have discovered already what are the real interests of the nation. They see that agriculture, manufactures, and trade, are the true sources of national progress, and that no policy which is hostile to these can be advantageous to themselves or to their country. We think we have observed already an inclination among the opposite party to revolt at the lengths to which their leaders are carrying them, and a wish to review more closely the great questions of policy which are now stirring the intellect of the nation. We shall endeavor in the following pages to consider certain first principles which lie at the base of just legislation, and which, if rightly attended to, will serve to clear even the feeblest mind of all tendency to cant. These principles are carefully avoided by our opponents. You will look in vain for any thing that even resembles a principle in the whole course of opposition legislation, and you will find opposition eloquence to be If there be any thing in the nature of a principle which governs the opposition in its impulsive and inconsistent movements, it must resemble the doctrine of Rousseau, that all men are happiest in a state of nature; and they must intend, by the destruction of national wealth and progress, to render their country the wilderness which the French philosopher so greatly admired. We should be glad to know if we are right in our conjectures. For we have sought in vain through the eloquence of Calhoun, Van Buren, or Benton, for any principle which could explain their conduct as members of their peculiar party. Their actions, measures, and inculcations have been as opposite as were their characters, and they have agreed but in the single point of having each aimed a fatal blow at some vital interest of their common country. The Whig party, on the other hand, has ever been guided by the principle of popular elevation. It seeks to create an equality of property, intelligence, and character among the people, not by destroying national progress, but by hastening and establishing it. This end it endeavors to accomplish by a series of measures which are adapted to the wants and peculiarities of the country, and which it has steadily advocated from the formation of the government and the days of Washington, who was the first Whig, and whose example and teachings have had a large influence upon the policy of his party. The elevation of the people, we repeat, is the growing principle of the Whigs; and we now propose to examine with what faithfulness they have developed this principle in their leading measures. But, although thus successful in individual States, the Whigs have never been able to enforce their policy by the aid of the general We should, perhaps, first remark that the government. Opposition outcry has effectWhig party claims neither to be the Con-ually stopped the good work there. Our servative nor the Progressive party, because it is founded upon a principle deeper than that of either conservatism or reform. It looks upon the cry of the Conservative or the Reformer as equally unmeaning, so far as it does not fall in with the real wants of the people. It adopts no new opinion, merely because it is new, nor an old one, because it is old. It has sometimes been Conservative, and sometimes the party of Reform; but it has never for a moment sacrificed its policy at the mere cry of Conservatism or Reform. Its measures have ever been steadily directed to the development of the principle upon which it is founded. great Western rivers are left unimproved, to the serious injury of the Western farmer; the harbors of the two oceans are neglected, and commerce greatly impeded; the great lakes are covered with wrecks that might have been avoided by a small expense for proper retreats from the autumnal storms; and thus are both agriculture and commerce greatly injured by a party which, under the name of Democracy, is directly hostile to the two main supports of the people. Next to the improvement of the natural resources of the country, the Whigs advocate protection for native industry as a powerful instrument for elevating the physical and moral condition of the masses. The necessity for this protection is apparent in the history of our manufactures. In the early existence of our country, we were content to depend upon foreign nations for almost all our manufactured articles, and the first impulse to home industry was given by the last war with England. The close of that war was followed by a vast importation, a sudden failure of native industry, and a period of general bankruptcy spreading over the whole country. A protective tariff was, in consequence, adopted to remedy these evils, and the home manufacturer has, since that period, felt to some extent the fostering The first of these measures which we shall consider, is the improvement of the natural resources of the country by the action of government. The Whig party has always advocated a River and Harbor Bill, besides originating nearly all the judicious internal improvements of the individual States. From the organization of the government, it has pursued this policy with unchanging prudence and zeal. It found the nation placed by Providence in a magnificent territory, penetrated by rivers, enclosing mighty lakes, bounded by a long line of sea-coast, and possessing a soil capable of sustaining an unlimited population. It saw that these gifts of nature of infinite value if properly used-care of government. would prove in a great degree useless, unless skilfully aided and developed. It saw that these vast rivers must be cleared and made navigable, that these broad lakes must be connected with the coasts by railroads and canals, that the mountain chains must be pierced and the harbors of the sea-coast be improved, before all the advantages which they offered could be felt by the whole people. It urged therefore, upon the general government, as well as upon each State, that it was their duty to aid nature in her evident purpose of nurturing a great nation. In each State where the Whig party has usually prevailed, this policy has been carried out; canals and railroads have multiplied; the means of internal communication have been proportioned to the wants of the community, and the wealth and prosperity of the State has rapidly advanced. VOL. IX. NO. II. NEW SERIES. But it should be remembered that the hostility of the opposition to protective measures has always been bitter and open. They have, from the first, declared themselves unwilling to lend any aid to the growth of this great national interest; and it is only the unceasing exertions of Whig statesmen that have given us any manufactures at all. The opposition notion, that manufactures will grow of their own accord, in the face of foreign competition, has been contradicted by all experience, since they have never been able by all their hostility to leave this interest unprotected, and since it has ever declined with the fall of the tariff. The doctrine of the opposition upon this subject is so peculiar, that we pause for a moment to notice it. They assert that all native industry which has been nurtured into existence by a protective tariff, is in fact 9 injurious to the progress of the nation. | ployed in the manufactories; to the towns They therefore urge that all protection and cities which have grown up under their should be withdrawn. They declare that manufactures should only arise in a country as they may chance to grow up spontaneously, and that the United States will not be fitted to sustain them until, by the increase of the population, labor shall be rendered as cheap here as in Europe. They recommend, therefore, that we abandon the idea of manufacturing for ourselves, devote our whole attention to agriculture, purchase our clothing and hardware abroad, and pay for them with the produce of our farms. This patriotic doctrine of the opposition is very naturally sustained by the free-traders of England, among whom its leading champion, Mr. Walker, has been lately received with proper consideration. Free-trade is certainly an admirable policy for England. England is incapable of providing food for her crowded population, but by her skill in manufacturing and the low rate of wages, she is enabled to undersell the world. Her interest, therefore, is to force her goods upon other nations, to the destruction of their home manufactures, while she hopes, by driving great masses of their population into agriculture, to obtain subsistence for her workmen at a rate so low as to enable them to live upon wages almost nominal. She would rejoice especially to produce this effect upon our own country, and to obtain an entire abandonment of the doctrine of protection by the government, since the growth of our population seems to assure her of an unbounded demand for her goods, could she destroy our native manufactures. Aided by the ready arguments of the foreign free-traders, the opposition have never ceased to denounce home industry and national protection. Had they the power, and did they dare to carry out their destructive policy, they would instantly withdraw all protective duties, and leave the American manufacturer at the mercy of his foreign competitor. This is the long-cherished purpose of that party, and one that, far from concealing, they make their open boast and pride. The Whigs have always looked upon the free-trade notions as dangerous and unprincipled. They see that much of the past advance of the country has been obtained by the protection of native industry. They point to the thousands who have been em influence; to the merchants who are sustained by the sale of domestic goods; the ships, railroads, and canals which they have brought into existence and freighted, and to the vast amount of produce for which the farmer has found a market in the manufacturing towns; and they ask if all these facts do not prove that protection has had a very great share in raising our country to its present wealth and power. This question the opposition has never seen fit to answer, because it has but one answer. We believe that protection, feeble as it has been hitherto, is one chief element in the progress of our country; that but for this, we should have remained but little better than a colony of England, and should have resembled Canada or Australia, in our complete dependence upon our oppressing parent. But for protection, we should have been a nation without self-reliance and without enterprise. Our canals and railroads would have been unbuilt, our cities of not half their present size, our agriculture by no means so flourishing as now. We believe this, because the influence of home industry is written upon the face of our country in letters of light. And we are certain that, but for opposition interference in this matter, we should have reached, under a higher and uniform tariff, a far greater and far better established state of prosperity than we have yet attained. The opposition have done incalculable injury to the past of our country by their unhappy course in this matter, and have deserved rather the name of a Destructive than a Democratic party. But, not content with the evil they have already occasioned, they are at this moment as eager as ever to seduce the people into listening to their destructive doctrines, and would have them overthrow altogether the small remains of protection which keep up a languid vigor in our manufacturing communities. These communities are the particular objects of hatred to our opponents. They make open war upon the manufacturing companies, the towns they have built, the laborers they employ, the farmers whose produce they consume, and all the interests and persons connected with them: a war which they prosecute as eagerly as would the most violent British free-trader, and which has the same object with both, the destruction of the American manufacturer. of the flourishing manufacturing towns or villages which have sprung up from Maine to Texas, and see what is hourly and daily doing for the farmer. In Massachusetts you will find that the whole prosperity of the State has been fostered into existence by this policy. You will find cities and villages rising almost instantaneously under the skill and enterprise of manufacturing com In order to discover the true effect of their policy upon the country, let us suppose that Birmingham had triumphed over Pittsburg, and the opposition over the administration. Let us imagine the present imperfect protection taken away, and observe the necessary result. We cannot mis-munities. You will see thousands of welltake this result, because it is already in part produced by the low rate of the existing tariff. Take iron as an example. Suppose all protection removed from manufactured iron, and where stands Pennsylvania? The first result is plain: American iron would be instantly undersold, and capital must be withdrawn or sunk in the furnaces. In six months, not a furnace would be left in operation in the State. informed, well-dressed, moral people, pursuing a regular course of prosperous industry, who, under the system of the freetrader, would have been wandering over the country, or crowding into the cities in search of precarious employment. These manufacturing communities consume at present about six hundred thousand bales of cotton, besides wool, leather, and various other materials. They require also large quantities of flour, beef, pork, and other provisions, all of which are the productions of the neighborhood, or are obtained from the Western States; and thus is it that every manufacturing town becomes a direct benefit to the farmer, by keeping up the price of his grain. But it is to the later consequences that we would direct attention. The closing of the furnaces must drive capital away from the iron-mines, and thus at the outset two interests are destroyed. The miner as well as the laborer at the furnace is deprived of his employment, and thousands of able- We ask the attention of the farmer to bodied men left helpless and without hope, this point, because it has always been a who are now sustained in this way, with part of the opposition policy to arouse the their wives and children, by the present jealousy of the agriculturist against the tariff. But the laborer who is out of em- manufacturer, and to sacrifice the feebler ployment ceases at once to become a pur-class to the larger and more influential. chaser of the corn or wheat of the farmer, But the farmer must soon become convinced and is perhaps driven himself to seek a sup- by the progress of events, that the manuport from agriculture. The effect of these facturer is his best friend. In England he circumstances upon the farmer must be may be undersold by the serf-labor of Russia equally unpropitious. He loses a purchaser or Poland, but in his own manufacturing and obtains a rival by the failure of the villages he is sure of a constant market, and furnace. The price of his crop is materially of a reasonable price. And this home marlowered, and his position depressed. He ket is one that, even under the present tariff, has less to spend upon his family, and they is constantly growing, but which, with proper must soon feel the consequences of the protection, would soon reach an change in the loss of educational advan- capable of consuming all the grain that we tages, and many of the usual comforts of could produce. A proper increase of prolife. We trust it will be remembered by tective duties would cause a rapid growth every farmer that protection to home in- of manufactures, not only in their old haunts dustry means especially the protection of upon the seaboard, but in all the interior his industry, and the insuring of a ready States. And this is just what the farmers of sale for his crops. the interior want. It is idle to tell the farmers of Indiana or Illinois that there is a market for their Indian corn or their wheat in Great Britain, while the distance and expense of transportation, even without serf-competition, shut them out from the hope of ever reaching the market. It is mockery to talk We would desire any farmer who has not yet adopted the Whig doctrine upon this subject, to observe the practical influence of even the present inefficient tariff, and notice how completely its results refute the theories of the free-traders. Enter one extent |