our dealings with so sharp a customer. Like Autolycus, John is always crying, 'Come buy, come buy!" and like Autolycus, he is sure to pick your pocket. He has the multiplication table at his fingers' ends, while "free trade" is ever on the edge of his tongue.-95 to 178 per cent. forsooth! No, brother, that will not do. Did you never hear of a fallacy lurking under figures of arithmetic as well as under figures of rhetoric! Did it never enter your noddle that American glass will serve two purposes to your one? It keeps the cold out of the house and keeps the money in, which yours can never do, because we must send the money out to pay for it. As to the 150 per cent. on calicoes, you may score down as many figures as you please, but we are old enough to remember seeing British calicoes sold among us at 62 cents a yard, before the protective system had an existence, which would be high in the market now at a shilling. That is a fixed fact, which cannot be got over. "Human experience, which is the only test of truth," says Dr. Johnson, "is perpetually contradicting theory." But let us hear John Bull again he will condole in some measure," like his friend Nick Bottom :

"So long as the American farmer chooses to feed himself and his cattle on taxed salt; to work his land with taxed iron; to dress his wife and daughters in taxed calicoes-not to preserve the national honor, to plant the rapacious eagle on the towers of Cortez, or to humble the obstinate Britishers,' but simply that the world may admire the factory girls of Lowell, and that a few Yankee speculators may get rich in the towns of New Englandso long these statesmen may enjoy a poorly acquired popularity; but the dispelling of that delusion will place them at the feet of their enemies, unless they extricate themselves from the false position which they now occupy."

Now, if the American farmer chooses to feed himself and his cattle, and dress himself and his family, according to his own notions of thrift and economy, as he certainly does, why need John Bull go into fits about it? But he is a compassionate soul, and has pangs of grief to see his neighbors pay too much for their calico. If John had no calico of his own to sell, we might possibly lend an ear to his neighborly advice in this matter; but

as the case stands, it is quite natural that such advice should be looked on with distrust. His theories of free trade are very fine things on paper, but the perverse obstinacy of real events is such as to render them utterly worthless. Facts, naked facts, are the things we want throw theories to the dogs. What stuff is this about taxed iron and calico? There ought to be no such thing as iron or calico in the United States, if the English theories of free trade have a particle of truth in them. The protective system should have raised the price of these articles above the reach of any farmer in the Union: nobody would have manufactured them, for nobody would have been rich enough to buy them : where there is no demand there will be no supply. Now what has been the fact? We had no protective system, and we paid England enormously high prices for iron and calico. We adopted a protective system, and now we have iron and calico of our own dog-cheap! Is there a farmer in the country who wishes to go back to the days of untaxed iron and calico? Alas for John Bull's theory of free trade!

And here we are compelled to ask a question :-Does the writer in the Edinburgh really believe that all these horrors of taxed iron and calico and steam revenuecutters are patiently endured by the people of the United States, merely that the world may admire the factory girls of Lowell? Does he in good sooth persuade himself that the merchants of New York, the sugar-planters of Louisiana, and the farmers of Ohio, sit down calmly under grinding taxation, in their strong desire to enrich only a few Yankee speculators in the towns of New England? Does he, we ask, seriously believe this? We should like to put him to his corporal oath upon it. If he does believe so, we would give a trifle to see the face and eyes of a man capable of such asinine credulity! By what sort of hocus-pocus does he suppose the American people-a people whose wits in money matters, according to the universal belief in England, are as sharp as a two-edged sword-by what sort of hocus-pocus does he believe these people to have become in an instant so enamored of the Lowell factory girls as to suffer taxation and tariffs, and steam revenuecutters into the bargain, for the mere

pleasure of knowing that the aforesaid factory girls enjoyed the world's admiration? By what charm, what conjurations, and what mighty magic-for such proceedings they are charged withal-have these half a dozen Yankee speculators in Boston so wormed themselves into the affections of the universal Yankee nation, that everybody else is willing to remain poor that this favorite half dozen may become rich? Yet such presumed facts are taken for granted as the basis of an argument in a grave treatise on political economy in the Edinburgh Review! But see what ineffable nonsense this writer can put forth while laboring under such a hallucination:

let us

"The six States of New England, containing one-eighth of the population of the whole republic, produce two-thirds of its cotton factories, three-fifths of its woollens, nearly half its

leather, and other articles in almost the same proportion. The single State of Massachusetts owns one-sixth of the manufacturing capital of the nation. As far, therefore, as protection can confer benefit on the producer of the monopolized articles, they, and they alone, have reaped it. The remaining eighteen millions of the proudest and most irritable nation upon earth-men to whom a dollar paid by way of salary to a priest, or civil list to a king, appears an oppression to be resisted to the last drop of blood-are content to disburse for the benefit of their Yankee brethren a tribute which, in all probability, would defray the civil expenditure of half a dozen small European monarchies. Nay, they have pressed and compelled the modest and reluctant Yankees to accept it.*** The burthen has been usually borne by the tributary States with that stolid patience, or rather that exulting and applauding self-denial, with which large bodies of mankind are in the habit of offering up their contributions to the cunning few!"

We suppose it would be difficult to crowd into an equally narrow space a greater number of absurdities; but what better could be expected of a man who writes about a people whom he believes to be compounded of contradictions the most impossible in nature ?--irritable and patient, haughty and servile, shrewd and stolid, "no ass so meek, no ass so obstinate?" What says he, forsooth? Massachusetts, having most of the manufacturing capital, is, therefore, almost the only State that reaps any benefit from the protective system! Why, he might as well say, that

the rock on which the Eddystone lighthouse is built is the only spot that reaps any benefit from that lighthouse. Does this writer suppose, that because the springs of the Nile are in Abyssinia, the land of Egypt can get no water from it? Has he never heard of railroads, canals, and ships of mighty burthen, that unite Lowell with Baltimore, and Charleston, and New Orleans, and Cincinnati ? Have we to tell him of the hundreds of thousands of barrels of flour that trundle upon cars from Lake Erie, or the hundreds of thousands of bales of cotton that float in ships from the "tributary States" of the South to that of Massachusetts? Have we to tell this profound political economist of the interchange of millions of dollars' worth of valuable products annually between the "tributaries" of the Mississippi valley and the "tributaries" of New England; and that this interchange, reaching every spot and connecting every spot in the Union, is fed and quickened at every moment of its ebb and flow by the manufacturing capital of the country? Massachusetts the only State that feels the benefit of her manufactures! Why, there is not a plantation on the Mississippi, nor a trading house in the remotest corner of the great lakes, that does not feel it. With this writer's representation before him, a reader would imagine that the Old Bay State was something like the happy valley of Rasselas, or Jericho besieged, that "none went out and none came in ;" that she kept all her cash and all her calico to herself. Does he really suppose that the States of the American Union are separated by Alps and Pyrenees, and Chinese walls? and that the terrible squadron of steam revenuecutters, which his alarmed imagination has conjured up, have hermetically sealed the ports of the "free Atlantic ?"

To relieve him from the astounding puzzle into which he has been thrown by the spectacle of eighteen millions of the proudest and most irritable of all flesh starving themselves, with their wives and little ones, just for the pleasure of admiring factory girls and rich Bostonians, we will drop a word in his ear:-Good Sir, they do no such thing, the eighteen million irritables that you wot of. They neither starve themselves, nor do they worship Lowell operatives or live Yankees in any

superabundant sort, to their own undoing. The organ of veneration is not so strongly developed under the skull of any citizen of any tributary State; and if perchance some men have exhibited "stolid patience," we will say this for them, it has been nothing like the stolid patience with which John Bull's colonists in Portugal have borne the Methuen treaty. We are of opinion that English political economists will understand this, and why Brother Jonathan will be careful not to buy too many of John Bull's manufactures as long as he can perceive the difference

""Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low!"

In what manner do these eighteen million irritables" disburse" the "tribute," to pamper the Boston magnificoes, and tickle the vanity of the Lowell girls? Some of us would like to know. One thing we do know, namely, that, " tributaries" or not, the eighteen millions under the protective system now get substantial Yankee "long cloths" to wear, instead of the flimsy cotton trash which John Bull's free trade used to bring us from England and British India; and if the Edinburgh writer wishes to know the difference, let him ask any good housewife in the United States. What would this philosophical economist have us do, in the warmth of his heart, and the tenderness of his yearnings for our temporal welfare? Cast off the protective policy," quoth he; "buy British cottons because they are cheaper; pay British laborers because they work cheaper." But we happen to know that they are not cheaper; we feel the fact on the very backs of us, that in proportion as we have employed our own labor, and protected our own industry, we have got better shirts for less money. "But you ought not," replies the philosophical Englishman with his free trade hypothesis, "for such a result contradicts all theory." To this we think it a sufficient reply to say, we cannot help it. His theory required that calico should have been growing dearer and dearer for twenty years past; yet, in perverse contradiction to this, it has been growing cheaper and cheaper. His theory should have ruined all trade among us by high prices, many years ago; but in strongheaded obstinacy against British theories, our trade has gone on increasing in the most unprecedented manner. But see

what it is to have a theory, and to believe in it through thick and thin! "Ruin seize thee, ruthless tariff!" cries the free trade theorist. The Ohio farmer must be in a starving condition, because the cotton mills are chiefly in Massachusetts, and theory says that Ohio pigs can never grow fat where 95 per cent. is paid on window glass. Let him ask the pig that sees the wind of protection, before he lays down such logic before our faces again. But the courageous and persevering political economist, having once taken his stand upon a theory, is not to be driven from it by a few awkward facts. "Whether the yellow fever is in the town or not," said the minister, "it is in my sermon." So the speculating champion of free trade exclaims, "Whether the ruin is in the American trade or not, it is in my theory."

John Bull can very easily sit at his own fire-side and persuade himself that all men are fools who will not buy his brass thimbles. He may call this "stolid patience," and disbursing tribute, and the like; he may affect to laugh at our pedlering attempt to "humble the obstinate Britishers;" but he may rest assured that Brother Jonathan is not to be wheedled by theories. One home thrust of a bayonet, as Corporal Trim says, is worth them all. The American laborer knows, by actual trial, that he gets more work, better pay and cheaper clothes to wear under the protective system, than he ever got without it, and he knows that these benefits have grown out of the system. What are paper theories in the face of these facts? The "tributary" farmer of the great West will not leave off chopping down the trees, because the metaphysics of an Edinburgh philosopher have theoretically struck the axe out of his hands. No he wants blankets, and shoes, and hats; he knows that the artisans of the manufacturing States can furnish him with these necessaries, and can take his corn for the pay, and he knows that this interchange can be effected in half the time it would cost him to carry on the same traffic across the Atlantic for the benefit of British theorists. The whole matter is as plain as a pikestaff to his comprehension, and until you can argue him out of his eye-teeth, he will believe in protection.

But the "dispelling of this delusion," the English writer assures us, will be an

awful day for somebody! It may be worth while to inquire what the delusion is, how it is likely to be dispelled, and who are to suffer by the catastrophe. The delusion, to copy the words of the reviewer, is that "the American farmer chooses to feed himself and his cattle on taxed salt, to work his land with taxed iron, &c. Now we submit that government can hardly be carried on in any country without some taxation, and if the reviewer waits till this delusion is dispelled, we are of opinion that the awful day which is to overwhelm certain American statesmen, will not happen in this generation at least. How we are to get at the knowledge that we are deluded, must be a puzzle even to the sharp wits of this writer. According to his account, we are the proudest and most irritable nation upon earth; the demand of a dollar for tribute or salary would cause a hundred thousand swords to leap from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened us with taxation; yet all this while we eat taxed salt, plough with taxed iron, and wear taxed calicoes! Would not this writer do well just to drop the dark lantern of his theory" for a moment, and look at the matter with the plain eyes of common sense? He would then see, not an invincible armada of "steam revenue-cutters," but the steam of the factory, and the steam of the steamboat, and the steam of the ploughed field, combined in one harmonious system of mutual aid, sustenance and activity. He would understand why the Ohio farmer, by wearing Yankee shoes, makes a Yankee market for his produce. He would understand the hypothetical case, that if John Bull should send a squadron of his philanthropical, theorizing political economists, with gun cotton and congreve rockets to burn Boston, and Lowell, and Springfield, and Manchester, and Newburyport, that the immediate consequence of such a humane experiment would be the non-consumption of certain "taxed” Yankee notions in Ohio, and the consequent non-exportation of their value in Ohio produce. Let us pull down our factories, therefore, and the West will eat her own corn!

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But the reviewer, to do him justice, appears to have had misgivings as to whether he was, after all, quite right in

condemning the protective system on the score of its partial and monopolizing character. Having set out with the assumption that Massachusetts is the only State, or almost the only one, that has reaped the benefits of this system, and that all the rest have pinched themselves to make her rich and populous, he subsequently, in his eagerness to pick flaws in the system, discovers that it has been of no use even to Massachusetts herself.

"Protection has not girt the New England States with Mr. Wakefield's belt of iron; it has ward movement and dispersion of the populanot checked in the slightest degree the westtion; it is, in short, as politically worthless as it is economically false."

So protection is not so bad after all, even in the estimation of a champion of free trade: it does not monopolize population, nor industry, nor property; it has not checked in the slightest degree the westward movement of these elements of national prosperity and power. But it is, therefore, politically worthless and economically false. Astonishing! worthless and false, because it is not partial and monopolizing ?-worthless and false, because it not only pays for labor at home but sends laborers abroad?-worthless and false, because it has not built a "wall of brass" round New England to keep her in unsocial and miserly seclusion? Truly the man must have more brass of his own than we should be proud of, who should go into one of the "tributary States" and attempt to recommend himself as a philanthropist, by talking in this fashion. To a person of plain common sense, not schooled in the economies of Edinburgh, it would occur that the system might be pronounced worthless and false, which did work all these evils. Could the reviewer have uttered a higher commendation of the protective policy than is contained in his negative specification of its qualities? It was his object to show that the system was narrow, partial, monopolizing; shut up within itself, and shutting up everything around it. Instead of this, he finds it large and liberal, without walls of brass or checks upon movement and dispersion.

Now, then, what sort of a case does this writer make out? We are under a delusion, quoth he, and the dispelling of that