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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

gate of three thousand millions. But every man who knows anything about labor, knows that such a supposition is utterly absurd. If we suppose each laborer to produce two hundred and fifty dollars a year, it will be a liberal allowance. This would give an annual product of twelve hundred millions. In the division of this product between labor and capital, we should probably be required to give to labor two-thirds, equal to eight hundred millions, and to capital one-third, equal to four hundred milllons. As women and children engage in some labor, it may be thought that our estimate of the number of laborers is too small; but there are those who consider the number of voters in a State where suffrage is universal, a fair measure of the number of productive laborers. If so, then our estimate is too large. But if we have under-estimated the number of productive laborers, we have also over-estimated the product of each laborer, as every man knows who has been either in the habit of laboring himself or employing others to labor for him.

dred millions are exchanged annually among the States, equal to twenty-three dollars and eighty-one cents per head of our whole population, and this, we are told, is in consequence of free trade among the States! "If our foreign commerce were increased to ninety cents per head for the whole world, (estimating the population of the world at a thousand millions,) it would give us an annual revenue of at least ninety millions of dollars." Surely, Mr. Secretary, were the sky to fall we should catch larks. "An addition of thirty cents for each individual to the consumption of our products exchanged from State to State, by our own people, would furnish an increased market of the value of only six and threetenths millions of dollars, 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 three hundred millions of dollars per annum of our exports." Very true, Mr. Secretary; but should we have the three hundred millions to exchange? The proper way to cook your hare, we are told, is first to catch him. But the Secretary tells us, that, "by receiving foreign products at low duties, in exchange for our products, such an augmentation might take place!" Very like a whale! The only obstacles, says the Secretary, are the duties and the freights. We opine, on the contrary, that our laborers would find other obstacles to an increased production of three hundred million dollars worth of products. "The Canadas and adjacent provinces upon our borders, with a population of near two millions, exchange imports and exports with us, less in amount than the State of Connecticut, with a population of three hundred thousand, showing that if these provinces were united with us by free trade, our annual exchanges with them would rise to forty millions of dollars." Surely, Mr. Secretary, you don't say this in sober earnestness! The Secretary winds

But extravagant and absurd as the Secretary's facts are, his reasoning upon those facts is, if possible, still more extravagant and absurd. Our population, he tells us, doubles every twenty-three years, and our products quadruple in the same time. And by what process of reasoning, gentle reader, do you suppose he arrives at such a sage conclusion? Why, forsooth, the Secretary says, that " any sum compounding itself quarter yearly at six per cent. interest, will be quadrupled in that time." Now if there be the slightest connection between his premise and his conclusion, we are not able to perceive it. Can it be possible that the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States believes that our productions were four times as great in 1847 as they were in 1824, and that they will be four times as great in 1870 as they were in 1847? It is to be feared that the statistics of the learned Secretary have addled his brain, and confounded his pow-up his fanfaronade with the following

ers of ratiocination.

flourish: "If England and America were Of this three thousand millions of pro- united by an absolute free trade, the recipducts, only one hundred and fifty millions rocal exchanges between them would soon are exchanged with foreign nations, equal far exceed the whole foreign commerce of to only fifteen cents a head on the whole both; and with reciprocal free trade with all population of the world. The balance is nations, our own country, with its pre-emused at home. Of this balance five hun-inent advantages, would measure its annual

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 duction 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."

pro

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 duBut 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 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 poor children, 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.

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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

door, instead of leaving them to seek a market across the Atlantic; for the purpose of enabling them to make their exchanges in Cincinnati instead of Liverpool. Protecting duties may or may not augment the revenue. If they afford complete protection, by excluding the foreign article altogether, they will not augment the revenue, because they will not increase the average of duty on the whole importation; but if the duty is raised, but not so high as to exclude the foreign article, the revenue will be replenished. It does not, however, follow, as the Secretary seems to suppose, that the general revenue will be increased by an increased revenue on a particular article. Protecting duties, therefore, may greatly increase and secure a market for our own products, without either increasing or diminishing the general revenue. The home market, notwithstanding all Mr. Secretary Walker may say to the contrary, is of three times the value to us, that the foreign is or even will

be.

Two things are essential to commerce: goods for sale, and a market where they can be sold; in other words, sellers and buyers. If there be no goods for sale, there can be no market, and if there are no buyers there will be no goods for sale. But Mr. Secretary Walker seems to think that if we have plenty of buyers, no matter about the goods, they will come of themselves when wanted. Hence our exports are to equal thousands of millions as soon as free trade shall give us all the world for customers!

The new tariff," says Mr. Secretary Walker, "is no longer an experiment; the problem is solved, and experience proves that the new system yields more revenue, enhances wages, and advances more rapidly the public prosperity," than the old system, we suppose, though the Secretary does not say so. The experience of a year of famine in Europe, with the most bountiful harvest ever known in this country, has, in the opinion of the Secretary, solved the problem. The experience of a single extraordinary year has overthrown the experience of a hundred preceding ordinary years! And although the revenue

from a hundred and fifty millions of exports under the tariff of 1846, was less than the revenue from one hundred and two millions under the tariff of 1842, yet the problem is solved, that the new system produces more revenue than the old! We have no patience to reason longer with so absurd a man, and therefore dismiss him.

We cannot, however, take our leave of the President, without expressing our regret that he should have attempted to disguise the truth in his late Message to Congress. His high station ought to have placed him above all subterfuge or trickery for the purpose of sustaining a favorite theory. This dirty work should have been left to the understrappers of his party in Congress and out of it. When he gave forth the responses of the Treasury department, he should have given them forth fairly, and not have made one-sided statements. Why did he not confine himself to the fiscal year ending the 30th of June last? Why lug in five months of the following year? But if he thought proper to give the amount of revenue under the tariff of 1846, why did he not also give the imports and exports of that year? Was he afraid that the people would see that the revenue under the tariff of 1846 was some ten or twelve millions of dollars less than it would have been under the tariff of 1842? It almost surpasses belief, that a man of common sense could be sincere in the opinion, that a reduction of the duties would increase the revenue; yet it cannot be doubted, that President Polk and his party leaders were sincere in that opinion, or they never would have passed an act which would greatly reduce the revenue, at the same time that they entered upon an expensive war, which would, at least, double the expenses of the Government.

Had they doubled the duties instead of halving them, they would have acted much more like sensible men and practical statesmen. The people will find out by and by, that empirics and demagogues make expensive rulers. They will find it the cheapest course in the end to place capable men at the head of their Government.

Cincinnati, Ohio.

D. R.

JASMIN, THE BARBER POET.*

larger than nature; so when we look back into the past, things become magnified, and we involuntarily exaggerate their di

The

LAS PAPILLOTAS! Such is the title of the two volumes of poetry we have before us-a title which would be singular indeed, if it were not accounted for by the pro-mensions. It is thus in the present case; fession of the author. Jasmin is, indeed, but yet we think it may be said, that a coiffeur, and performs the menial offices among the ancients, as well as during the of his profession with all the accuracy of middle ages, poetry was more widely a Figaro; but when his work is done, he diffused, and had a more direct and does not, like so many of the brotherhood, powerful influence on the destinies of spend his time in laying in a stock of mankind, than it has in modern times. scandal and gossip, which he may retail The distance which separated the poet the next morning, when standing behind from those who listened to his verses, was the chair of some fair lady, whose chief then less great. Between them there delight it often is, to listen to such stories. seemed to be established an electric chain. No! Jasmin, when he has laid aside his He often borrowed from the people razors and his curling-tongs, devotes to images, which he returned, after having the Muses his hours of leisure. This con- given to them a new lustre, a new brilltrast between the vulgar occupation of iancy, as the glass refracts the rays of the poet of Agen, and the truly beauti- the sun with increased intensity. ful poetry we find in his works, is par- earlier Greek bards went from place to ticularly striking, in an age when poetry place reciting their verses, until they beseems to have sought a refuge in the came indelibly engraved in the hearts of higher classes of society, and to have their hearers. In the middle ages, the become rather the passelems of the man minstrel, or the troubadour, was the favorof fortune than the conscientious expres- ite of all classes. In the castle of the sion of a popular feeling. The class of feudal baron, he would arouse the ardent poets to which Jasmin belongs is, at pres- and chivalrous spirit of the guests assement, very limited. He is essentially a bled around the festive board, by the recital popular poet. Sprung from the lower of the noble exploits of Arthur and his orders of society, an artisan himself, he barons, or the valor of those devoted has, in all his poetic effusions, addressed Christians, who crossed the seas to rescue himself to the multitude, not to the select the sepulchre of their Saviour from an infew. In former times it was not uncom- fidel foe; or else he would bewail, in strains mon to find a poet thus devoted to the so pathetic, the untimely fate of some fair entertainment and to the instruction of the maiden, that every eye would be moistencrowd. Judging of past ages, by means ed with tears of pity and compassion. But of that knowledge of general facts which it was not alone in the mansions of the history affords for history deigns not to great, that the voice of the poet was heard. descend into the details of every private The peasant, too, would lend an ear to life-we almost fancy that there was a his songs, and himself repeat them, to time when poetry circulated in the world, beguile the weary hours of labor; and, as freely as the air we breathe,-when alas! how weary must those hours have every man was a poet, if not to create, at been, when he knew that it was not he least to understand and to feel. When who was to enjoy the fruits of this labor, the atmosphere is full of mists and va- but his tyrannical master. How different is pors, objects seen at a distance appear the occupation of the poet in our own times!

Las Papillotas de JASMIN COIFFEUR, Membre de la Societat de Sciencos et Arts d'Agen. Agen: 1835, 1842. 2 vols. 8vo.

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