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 let us see what ineffable nonsense this writer can put forth while laboring under such a hallucination :

"The six States of New England, containing one-eighth of the population of the whole republic, produce two-thirds of its cotton fac⚫tories, 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 benefit from the protective syshe might as well say, that

reaps

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

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!

But the reviewer, to do him justice, appears to have had misgivings as to hether 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 not checked in the slightest degree the westward movement and dispersion of the population; 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

it a very clever thing to sneer at our bad English, and to insinuate that a people who spoke unauthorized vocables, must, of necessity, make bad laws. He forgot Whitechapel, and never dreamed of the barbarisms in speech that are sometimes found on the west side of Temple-bar. But let him talk of "Britishers" again!

If we mistake not, we have succeeded in showing that the plausible theories of the British economists have been contradicted by every part of our national history. "Free trade" is a phrase that has a fine sound; and as a great part of mankind are influenced by words rather than by facts or ideas, the doctrine has made converts of many persons solely by its name. This free trade we enjoyed while we were colonies of Great Britain, and when it was a crime to make a hat or a hob-nail in Massachusetts, and New York, and Virginia. Such free trade is enjoyed at the present day by the inhabitants of the British colonies of Canada and New Brunswick. Does any one wish to know whether of the two, the British or the American system, operates most for the benefit of the people, let him stand upon the boundary line and look to the right and the left; the contrast in favor of our own side, is the remark of every observer, British or AmeriLook then, we say, once more upon this picture, and upon this. If John Bull really thinks us so badly off, would not he do well for his beloved subjects to keep them on his own side of the line, where there will be no paying 95 per cent. on window glass, if they are so happy as to get any?

can.

The reviewer finds it in his theory that the system with which America is "burdened" would be "ruinous to countries of less energy and resources." Let it be remarked in the first place, that the resources of this country have for the most part grown up under the fostering care of this very system; that they have become developed and augmented and spread, not only over the New England States, but over the Middle States and the mighty West, just in proportion as this system has been applied. So much for the fact. Now let us see what plausibility this assumption of the reviewer (for argument it does not even pretend to be) carries on its own face. When we set out with the protective policy, we had

no resources beyond those accomplishments which are said to constitute the devil's beauty-youth and health; we had our own hands to labor with, and we had nothing more. If the protective system could have ruined any nation under the sun, it surely would have ruined us. So far from this, the reviewer confesses that we have thriven wonderfully under its influence, though he is at his wit's end to find some other cause for our prosperity, inasmuch as the American system ought not to have prospered, according to his theory. But like the sturdy old Calvinistic dame, he "won't give up total depravity." The notion that protection will cause ruin is stereotyped on his brain, and we are assured that the ruin is coming by and by. Doctor Johnson, who thought "taxation no tyranny," argued somewhat differently. We did not lay the burden on your back," said he, "when you were a calf, but we do i now because you have grown to be an ox." This was sensible enough in the abstract, on a question merely of the ability to bear burdens; but here is a reasoner who tells us that the calf has borne the burden, but the ox cannot !

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But away with this nonsense about burdens; it is a mere fallacy of speech. man is burdened by what oppresses him. and he is disburdened by what relieves him. Call your revenue arrangements by what name you will, they must be judged by these results, and by these alone. I the American protective system gives the American citizen better and cheaper goods a wider range of occupation, better paj for labor, a more extended, more active and more steady and certain market for his ia bor and his merchandise; if it augment national wealth and private wealth, mak the country independent and the individ ual independent, brings more abunda supplies of everything needful for life, every man's door, and gives him mo money to purchase those supplies; if protective system does this to a greater ex tent than any other system that has been tried, the man does but abuse is guage who calls this system a burden. T enemies of American industry on this side the Atlantic and on the other side, m ring the changes upon the words "tari

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burden" and "high duties," and dece by empty sounds those who can und