are the principal subjects of duties, and these are usually prized in proportion to their cost. The stronger an article smells of money, the more distinction its use will confer, and the more it will be coveted by those who have the means of paying for it. There is therefore no danger that high duties will ever prevent the importation of foreign products, to the full amount of our exports. The history of English commerce furnishes abundant proof of this fact. A duty of four or five hundred per centum does not prevent the consumption of tobacco in England, from which the government derives an enormous revenue. The greater portion of this revenue, it is true, is paid by the consumers, but up to some thirty or forty per cent. the producer would pay a part. So a duty by our government, of two or three hundred per cent. on wine and silks, would not prevent them from being imported and consumed in large quantities. Who ever heard of an article of luxury being so dear, that nobody would buy it? High duties are as much and even more complained of by producers, than by consumers; but if the duties are included in the price the consumer pays for the goods, the producer would have no cause to complain of the duty. If a duty of a dollar a barrel on flour raised the price of flour a dollar a barrel in the English market, what cause would the American producer have to complain of the duty? Every nation strives, by treaty or otherwise, to have its products subjected to as low a duty as possible by foreign governments; but if the consumer pays the duty, they need give themselves no trouble on that subject. If, then, England collects a revenue of over a hundred millions of dollars on her commerce, how easily could the United States collect half that sum on their commerce. But Mr. Secretary Walker will find that this cannot be done by reducing the duties on imports.

For what purpose the following fanfaronade was put into the Secretary's Report we are at a loss to conceive. Perhaps he thought he could darken counsel by a cloud of statistics and big figures, and thus conceal his blunders from the public eye; but if this was his object, he will find himself mistaken. His facts in the following quotation are all false, and his conclu

sions absurd, as we shall proceed to show. We owe an apology to our readers, for so long a quotation of such stuff, but we could not well abridge or divide it without marring its beauty. The Secretary says:

ex

"In my report of July 22, 1846, it was shown that the annual value of our products exceeds three thousand millions of dollars. Our population doubles once in every twenty-three years, and our products quadruple in the same period -that being the time within which a sum compounding itself quarter yearly at six per cent. interest will be quadrupled-as is sustained here by the actual results. Of this $3,000,000,000, only about $150,000,000 was ported abroad, leaving $2,850,000,000, used at home, of which at least $500,000,000 is annually interchanged between the several States of the Union. Under this system, the larger the area, and the greater the variety of climate, soil, and products, the more extensive is the commerce which must exist between the States, and the greater the value of the Union. We see then here, under the system of free trade among the States of the Union, an interchange of products of the annual value of at least $500,000,000 among our twenty-one millions of people; whilst our total exchanges, including imports and exports, with all the world besides, containing a popu lation of a thousand millions, was last year $305,194,260, being an increase since the new tariff over the preceding year of $70,014,647. Yet the exchanges between our States, consisting of a population of twenty-one millions, being of the yearly value of $500,000,000 exchanged, make such exchange in our own country equal to $23 81 per individual annually of our own products, and reduces the exchange of our own and foreign products, (our imports and exports,) considered as $300,000,000 with all the rest of the world, to the annual value of thirty cents to each individual. That is, one person of the Union receives and exchanges annually of our own products as much as seventy-nine persons of other countries. Were this exchange with foreign countries extended to ninety cents each, it would bring our imports and exports up to $900,000,000 per annum, and our annual revenue from duties to a sum exceeding $90,000,000. An addition of thirty cents each to the consumption of our products exchanged from State to State by our own people, would furnish an increased market of the value only of $6,300.000; whereas an increase of thirty cents each, by a system of liberal exchanges with the people of all the world, would give us a market for an additional value of $300,000,000 per annum of our exports. Such an addition cannot occur by refusing to receive in exchange the products of other nations, and demanding the $300,000,000 per annum in specie, which could never

be supplied. But, by receiving foreign products at low duties in exchange for our exports, such an augmentation might take place. The only obstacle to such exchanges are the duties and the freights. But the freight from New Orleans to Boston differs but little from

that between Liverpool and Boston; and the freight from many points in the interior is greater than from England to the United States. Thus the average freight from the Ohio river to Baltimore is greater than from the latter place to Liverpool; yet the annual exchanges of products between the Ohio and Baltimore exceed by many millions that between Baltimore and Liverpool. The Canadas and adjacent provinces upon our borders, with a population less than two millions, exchange imports and exports with us less in amouut than the State of Connecticut, with a population of 300,000; showing that, if these provinces were united with us by free trade, our annual exchanges with them would rise to $40,000,000. It is not the freight, then, that creates the chief obstacle to interchanges of products between ourselves and foreign countries, but the duties. When we reflect, also, that exchange of products depends chiefly upon diversity-which is greater between our own country and the rest of the world, than between the different States of the Union-under a system of reciprocal free trade with all the world, the augmentation arising from greater diversity of products would equal the diminution caused by freight. Thus, the Southern States exchange no cotton with each other, nor the Western States flour, nor the manufacturing States like fabrics. Diversity of products is essential to exchanges; and if England and America were united by absolute free trade, the reciprocal exchanges between them would soon far exceed the whole foreign commerce of both; and with reciprocal free trade with all nations, our own country, with its pre-eminent advantages, would measure its annual trade in imports and exports by thousands of millions of dollars."

This learned Report, in which the Secretary says he has shown that the annual amount of our products exceeds three thousand millions of dollars, we have never seen, and we are therefore unacquainted with the process of reasoning by which he thinks he has shown that magnificent fact. We suppose, however, that he has made use of the statistical tables made out under the direction and superintendence of the Commissioner of Patents. But we care not for his statistics or his estimates. We know, and every man of common sense who will reflect a moment upon the subject, may know, that they are false to an enormous extent. The pro

ducts of last year, the largest ever made in the United States, did not exceed, and probably fell short of fifteen hundred millions of dollars in value.

It is a well established principle of political economy, that the consumption of a nation must, and always will, about equal its production. If then three thousand millions were produced in a year, three thousand millions must, in some form or other, be consumed in a year, or it would not answer the purpose for which it was produced. Now does any man in his senses believe, that this nation ever consumed, in one year, products of the value of three thousand millions of dollars? Suppose the people of the United States to be twenty millions, and the average consumption of products per capita would be one hundred and fifty dollars in value. Now can any man who has any knowledge of the daily fare of the great mass of our population, believe, that men, women, children and slaves consume upon an average products of the value of one hundred and fifty dollars per annum? The thing is wholly incredible. One hundred and fifty dollars would enable each individual to pay two dollars a week for his board, and have fifty dollars a year wherewith to clothe himself. The people of the United States would be much indebted to Mr. Secretary Walker, if he would make good his assertion with regard to their wealth. The great mass of our population do not consume food of the value of thirty dollars a head per year, and although a great many (yet a small number in comparison to the whole) consume ten times that amount, yet if we set down sixty dollars a head as the amount consumed by each individual, it will probably be a liberal allowance, which would make the annual consumption twelve hundred millions for twenty millions of people; and this is probably the full amount of our annual production."

There is another process of reasoning which will conduct us to about the same conclusion. Exclude women and children, and those classes who do not labor, and it will leave about one-fourth of the population for productive laborers. In a population then of twenty millions there will be five millions of productive laborers. Now these laborers must average six hundred dollars each in order to make an aggre

trade in imports and exports by thousands of millions." We have no recollection of ever having read a puff of a quack medicine equal to this.

Some of the Secretary's figures are so strange, that we cannot make head or tail of them, and presume them to be misprints. Take for example the following:

"By table BB, it appears that the augmentation of our domestic exports, exclusive of specie, last year, compared with the preceding year, was $48,856,802, or upwards of 48 per cent., and, at the same rate per ceut. per annum of augmentation, would amount in 1849, per table CC, to $329,959,993, or much greater than the domestic export from State to State. (See tables from 7 to 12, inclusive.) The future per centage of increase may not be so great; but our capacity for such increased production is proved to exist, and that we could furnish these exports far above the domestic demand, if they could be exchanged free of duty in the ports of all nations."

The following paragraph looks very much as though the Secretary either had become or was about to become a Fourierite:

:

"When all our capitalists (as some already have) shall surely find it to be their true interest, in addition to the wages paid to the American workman, to allow him voluntarily, because it augments the profits of capital, a fair interest in these profits, and elevate him to the rank of a partner in the concern, we may then defy all competition."

But whatever may be the meaning of this, we are inclined to believe that the Secretary's term of office is too short to enable him to convert the whole United States into phalanxes, groups and series.

On this wise do the President and Secretary argue in favor of the tariff of 1846; but the merits of that act are not confined to the reduction of duties. "It is not only the reduced duties, that have produced these happy results, (says the Secretary,) but the mode of reduction, the substitution of the ad valorem for unequal and oppressive minimums and specific duties." But without quoting farther, it may be stated generally, that both the President and Secretary assume the fact, as the basis of their arguments, that a specific duty upon an article which excludes it from our market, is a tax upon the consumer of the do

mestic article to the full amount of the duty. Thus, a duty of ten cents a yard on cotton goods, which sell in our market for eight cents a yard, is nevertheless a tax on the poor consumer of the domestic article of ten cents a yard; and a duty of a dollar a pair on brogan shoes, would be a tax of a dollar a pair on a pair on American brogans, although they could be bought in any quantity for seventy-five cents a pair; and so a duty of one dollar a bushel on wheat, would be a tax on the poor American laborer of one dollar a bushel on all the wheat with which he feeds his chil

poor

dren, although fifty cents should be the highest price he ever paid for a bushel of wheat. Now this is all ad captandum vulgus, and the President and Secretary both know it, and although it might be tolerated on the stump, yet when gravely put forth from the high places they occupy, it is a disgrace to the Republic.

The Secretary also says, "The great argument for protection (by which he means high duties) is, that by diminishing imports the balance of trade is turned in our favor, bringing specie into the country." If the Secretary does not know this to be an untruth, he is even a greater blockhead than we had supposed him to be. We have heard no such argument, by any intelligent advocate of either high duties or a protective tariff, in the last twenty-five years. That some very absurd arguments have been urged, both in and out of Congress, in favor of protecting duties, is very true, but Mr. Secretary Walker must not assume that he refutes the policy of a protecting tariff, by refuting some of the arguments of its advocates. It is true, that the old school political economists advocated high duties, for the purpose of increasing the imports of specie, but Mr. Hume and Adam Smith showed the fallacy of that idea before our revolution, and the doctrine has never prevailed in this country among intelligent political economists. High duties are advocated by those who understand the subject, for the purpose of replenishing the treasury. Protecting duties are advocated for the purpose of increasing and extending the market for our products; for the purpose of securing to the farmers of Ohio, for example, a steady and sure market for all the products of their farms at their own