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AMERICAN WHIG REVIEWS

No. XXXVII.

FOR JANUARY, 1851.

THE SESSION AND THE WHIG PARTY.

A POLITICAL party is in difficult circumstances when it finds itself compelled to assume the responsibilities of office without acquiring, at the same time, that without which no office can be bearable to an individual, or efficiently held for the country, the power of executing in government the principles to which it pledged itself in opposition. Were the objects of political organization merely the garbling of the public taxes, such a position might fairly be considered a lucky hit; but as in this Republic, parties in office must gauge their conduct so that it will bear hostile scrutiny, and deserve national approval, or be content to lose within a very limited time even the taxes, such a position is one neither to be envied, nor if held, one which can result in anything but political ruin to the holders, unless their acts be dictated by the maturest wisdom, and executed with the boldest statesmanship. Strength is too often taken as the test of capacity, and it is after all the chief inducement for the admiration of mankind. The popular mind is prone to believe that in political tactics it is better to belong to a party of one, if he be a free combatant in opposition, than to belong to a party, no matter how old or numerous, which is burthened with office, and not with power. Such to a certain extent is the position of the

VOL. VII. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

present administration; an unfortunate one at best, but one, too, which affords a great opportunity of exhibiting the superiority of genius over numerical force, and in which a statesman with the capacity of Montesquieu, and the energy of Napoleon would revel. We believe such an opportunity has not heretofore occurred in our Congressional annals, and is impossible under any form of government but our own. We may refer to the times when Richelieu held France in hand, even against insurgent nobles and a turbulent people; or to the later period when the younger Pitt roused all Europe against the modern Charlemagne, even when he was unable to command a small minority in his own Parliament; but neither illustration can give us even a faint conception of the singular anomaly which has eventuated through the simple action of the federal pact. Turning our eyes to Washington, wo behold the Presidential chair filled by a man who was not elected to that position by the people, and yet did not acquire it by his own act, but who, by a decision of the merciless Atropos, was compelled to assume the office he holds, or abandon that to which he was elected; we behold an administration seated in the mansions of power, against whom are in constant array the twin majorities of the Legislature ·

1

behold a party in office, which, during a long | cannot make a man whose knowledge of opposition, had matured a system of prin- arithmetic extends probably so far as "the ciples, and yet which is incapable by its Rule of Three," deduce principles of politiown strength of establishing even one. To cal philosophy from elaborated figures. The such an administration, and such a party, Whig party, if it teach the truth, must rely but two cquises of action are permitted on the newspaper editor, the book publisher, either to avow that their hands are tied, the writer, and the schoolmaster, and not on and evade everything but silence and rest; cargoes of humanity. Popular discussion alone or, by bold moves, to start their principles can therefore preserve it in power. To this end by one upon the tribunitial battle- no opportunity should be lost; least of all ground, throw upon their opponents the re- that opportunity which now presents itself sponsibility of defeating them, and prove to of urging in Senate and House of Reprethe world at all events the sincerity of sentatives day after day, and hour after their professions, and that nothing but the hour, its cardinal principles, and so driving force of antagonistic majorities compelled their debate through every newspaper, magathem to exist in office without converting zine, printing office, porter-house, or family the occupation thereof to the national good. circle in the Union. It is intensely stupid By the former plan, the present opportunity for any party in a Republic, which is a Rewill be most legitimately lost, and the Whig public, to rely on the de facto educated party will have the advantage of retiring" classes;" such "classes" must be abolished, from office in 1853, without the faintest if by nothing else, then by time. They are prospect of having such honors thrust upon wearing away hour after hour, and the them again, and with the imputation of having succeeded, during a short four years, in effacing from the public memory every principle it had made its own during the campaigns of a lengthened opposition. By the latter, present difficulties will be used as means of recruiting larger power and future success; and even should defeat on defeat meet us at every step, the principles of the war will lie on the ground it occupied, and be indestructible mementoes of consistent policy and strenuous endeavor.

True as these facts are with reference to all parties, they are peculiarly applicable, at the present time, to that American party which-by some such untoward mistake as that which befell Mr. Shandy, in the baptizing of Tristram, his son-had the misfortune to be ushered into the world burdened with the name of "Whig." The principles of the party so-called can only acquire strength by discussion and education; it is the only one of all our parties which must rely on the educated force of the people, and not upon sectional differences, or class interests. Discussion of its principles can, therefore, alone increase its numerical power; for while the so-called "Democratic party " receives in every emigrant ship a cargo of recruits, who, pledged to the name, will gulp down any bolus lapped therein, and smack their lips over it in admiration, the Whig party must attain its recruits by slow endeavor and assiduou teaching. You cannot reform a fool-

young life of the country is daily issuing forth, self-willed, intellectual, capable of argument, and inclined to hold sternly to its opinions, but with these opinions gathered from humanitarian publications of the trashy kind, from excerpts of Adam Smith, and clippings of Stuart Mill, and the defunct Ricardo. No matter what exigencies may arise, no matter how transparent may be the ill effects of the commercial and other systems enacted against this country by "Democratic" gentlemen of the Anglified genus, Walker; the Whig party can never hope to establish a single one of its principles, until they are thoroughly popularized.

It seems almost trite at the present day to urge truths so plain. But however plain they may be, if we examine the history of our time we will find that they are neither very much recognized nor very carefully acted on. If there be any principle more than all others identified as Whig, if there be any undeniably true, it is the principle which asserts that American industry should be supported by Americans in preference to any other. Yet within a fortnight we have seen a society established in New-York for the protection of British manufactures in this country, the leaders of which are "Democratic," and who will lead and are leading the very artisans whose interests they have hortored to a foreigner. We have seen for

among the federal statutes, laws

1 valorem taxes on actual Ame

rican industry, because it is American, and raised from American soil, to devastate laws awarding an ad valorem premium to Hungary, or defeat the schemes of the GerBritish and Russian industry, because it is man people; and we have permitted the enBritish or Russian. These laws too were actors of the laws under which wrongs so foul enacted by men professing "free trade;" and universal were transacted, to represent and were enacted against the very artisans themselves to the "adopted citizens" and who are their most faithful followers. We emigrant population, as the "Friends of have seen, too, laws by the action of which Hungary," the "Friends of Ireland," the British speculators have been enabled to Friends of Universal Freedom, and so forth. stay the mill-wheels of our factories, and Nay, we have conversed in work-shops with extinguish the furnaces of our smelting- artisans, and out of doors even with idle Amehouses; we have seen writ after writ of rican artisans, who have propounded to us as ejectment issued by British hands against true and good, the stereotyped defence of the New-England factory-girls and Pennsylvania very falsehood by which their right hands workmen; we have seen them driven from were rendered unproductive of life. Such their shops and work-rooms by the hand of things could not be, were any means taken to Britain, as nakedly displayed as it is on the inform these men of the true nature of the banks of the Ganges or the San Juan; and delusions practised on them, and of the true the laws under the protection of which these and necessary effects of those theories to schemes were effected, were enacted and are which, through a virtuous love of democracy, defended by that party which declaims they have blindly pinned their faith. In the about non-interference, and professes eternal artisan population of America, largely Amedevotion to the "adopted citizens" and rican, largely too of foreign birth, and from Bunkum. We have seen markets of profit- the essentials of their craft possessing acuter able export destroyed,* and markets of minds, larger comprehension and a superior ruinous import forced into existence by the knowledge to any other class of workmen, same professors of "enlightened commerce," the party which identifies itself with the and of the philosophic principle of "every support of native industry has resources of man for himself." We have seen, by the same infinite power. It was the policy of the hands, the entire American nation, with its earlier period of the Democratic party to variable climate, its many climates, requiring abuse and despise them as a mob, and of for every degree of latitude a different de- the later and present periods to hoodwink gree of thickness of cloth, reduced to a state them with Jesuitic phrases and plausible of complete dependence on British looms generalities taken from the English economic for even a shirt or a coat. We have seen vernacular, and so use them. The natural the wages of the American artisan reduced instinct of a German or Irish artisan coming or stopped; we have seen him compelled to to these shores, is hostility to all schemes submit to the plunder of slop-employers on for the protection of British manufactures, the London system, or revolt; we have seen whether conceived in London or propounded him driven to beggary or prison; and yet we by an "Union Safety Committee" in Newhave permitted the artisans so foully plun- York. And all that is required to fasten dered to believe that they who plundered firmly this allegiance to American industry, them were 66 Americans" and "Democratic." is to display fully to them that the party We have seen these highly American and called here "Democratic" is precisely the thoroughly Democratic statesmen drive the same party which, by plundering their native produce of America into the hands of British countries, has driven both to these shores. aristocrats, sending to their shop American Yet we do not know of a single book pubagriculturists with food, American cotton-lished in these United States, calculated to growers with cotton, American gold-diggers inform an artisan of his real necessities and with gold, to get them clothes, barring up those of the country of his adoption. The our own shop doors the while, and thus af-" free-traders," relying on blind faith alone, fording to the mainstay of European tyranny the power of loaning million after million,

* Vide Report of Secretary of Treasury.

lead by blind faith-the supporters of Ame-
rican industry relying on the educational
developments of the people, use no means
whatever to create these education
opments. On the contrary, t

rostrum in the land, the possession of which question falsely called of "free trade," but has been for two years in the hands of the really that of protecting by federal authority "anti-free-traders," has been permitted by the trade of one interest or section in another, them to remain totally disused, while they and to the injury of the whole. Were the could have made it every day of the past Federal Constitution to be again formed, it and present session an engine of discussion, would probably be the wisest and soundest forcing their theories and facts through Democratic course, to leave every State of every publication in the country, to the de- the Union free to establish its own customfeat of their adversaries, and the great dis- houses and pay for them, to enact its own comfiture of agitators and disunionists of tariff laws, and take the consequences, reevery grade and color. For two years, we quiring the Federal Government to depend say, the Whig party has been in possession for its resources solely on direct taxation. of office-and though since its infancy it But under our present system, the good of has been pledged to the support of native the whole can only be obtained by comproindustry in all its branches against all odds, mise, by kindly exposition, and by enacting though it has staked its existence on the those laws only which are good for the practical success of its theories, and the sin- whole, and not for an interest. Did the incerity of its professions, yet in that time (if juries, even under the present system, which we except the Secretary of the Treasury's result from the wholesale exportation of raw Report) not a single effort has been made produce, result only to the States which exin either House for the support of Ameri-port the raw produce, other States would can labor, unless indeed the reading of the have no right to interfere. Were Carolina ridiculously impertinent letter of Sir Henry alone injured by the export of raw cotton, Lytton Bulwer against it. or Ohio alone injured by the export of raw food, the people of New-York, Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts, would have no right to prevent the exporting States from political suicide. But the fact is, that since the Declaration of Independence the interests of the manufacturing States have been made subservient to those of the exporting States, so that, under the action of federal authority, the amount of raw exports have been in an inverse ratio to the prosperity of native manufactures-or, in other words, the nominal wealth of the Carolinas has been increasing with the absolute poverty of New-England. That this result must follow from our present system the student of sound economy, or even he who will open his eyes to facts, will at once see. We have ourselves

Let us hope that for a little, at all events, the slavery agitation is at an end. Two years of the Whig term of office have been already wasted in considering "the condition of the planter-down-South question." Let some of the remaining moiety of the official term of the present administration be disposed of in considering the more important question of the condition of the white republicans of the North and West, whose slaves are their two hands only, and whose property is being daily and hourly spirited away by the machinations of " Denocratic statesmen," and the Syren wiles of the arch goddess of abolition of every trade but her own-England. The principle of State-rights against Federal usurpation, or more properly the principle of co-equal in-endeavored to simplify these truths in papers dependence in each of all the States, against intended for the more general reader; and any attempt made by one to use the federal if anything were needed to substantiate authority for its gain and the injury of its them, we have but to turn to the Report of sisters, is one which, in our political exigen- the Secretary of the Treasury. The policy cies, must for ever recur; and it is not im- which the British Government has always I robable that the slavery question, in all its practised, and to which it is as steadily ataspects, may finally assume the character of tached at this day as it was a hundred years a question connected not with negroism, but ago, is that of breaking down the manufacwith white freedom. The State of Vermont turing energies of every country with which has already, by a declaratory act with refer- it has come into connection, and reducing it ence to the constitutional right of habeas to the position of a mere grower of raw corpus against the recent act of Congress, produce. Had the present tariff been enplaced one phase of it upon that issue. acted by British hands it could hardly be And to a similar issue may be reduced the bett d to that end. A premium is

So of iron and other manufactures-we are deliberately sacrificing our own population to maintain that of England. And not only that, but we are daily running in debt to England to a vast amount-giving her our railroads for iron rails, and our banks, canals and public works for loans of her capital to carry out this stupendous waste. Every interest in the country, save only the raw-export interest, is perishing; debts are daily contracting, and the means to meet them daily decreasing, so that it requires no foresight to prophesy a financial crisis of no ordinary character, whenever our European creditors, by war or other causes, may be compelled to call upon us for the payment of our bonds.

given by ad valorem duties to the importer | native manufacture, we find them locked up of British goods to undervalue the amount and idle, and their artisans crowding in idlein value imported; and even taxes are laid ness the purlieus of our great cities. upon the application of American industry to certain articles needed in American manufacture. Were these "free trade" men pardonably consistent, one might be excused for credulously believing them; but with the declared intentions of England on one hand, and the figures of the Secretary of the Treasury on the other, one cannot doubt but that this country is by the unseen agency of economic laws firmly under the control of England. One hundred and fifty years ago (A. D. 1719) the British House of Commons formally declared "that the erecting of manufactories in the colonies (i. e. of North America, now the United States) tends to lessen their dependence on Great Britain." And lest it should be supposed that the spirit and policy which dictated such a declaration was at all changed in our day, this present year, Anno Domini 1850, was not three days old, ere Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, by direction of his Government, addressed a letter to Mr. Clayton, in which he declared, with reference to "the erecting of iron manufactories" in Pennsylvania, that higher duties in America (on iron manufactured in Great Britain) would produce a very disagreeable effect upon public opinion in England." And that "public opinion in England" has been very agreeably affected for some time at the total decline of not only our iron but our cotton and other manufaetures, we have but to turn to the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury recently presented to Congress. There, among many other examples, we find these figures, showing the vast increase in raw cotton exported to Great Britain, and decrease in cotton manufactures exported to the same :—

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The friends of native industry in Congress should therefore lose no time in pressing these manifold questions upon the attention and discussion of the country. Their energies should be directed not so much to the enactment of a protective as a preventive tariff. Productive tariffs are unjust in principle and unsound in theory. They involve a denial to the poor of luxuries, and the protection of the appetites of the rich to the injury of the whole. Such duties, therefore, as may be altered, should not be altered for the purpose of producing more revenue, but of preventing the admission of the article taxed. Our whole commercial and monetary systems should be thoroughly examined, and brought before the people, that thus, though defeated up to 1853, the supporters of native industry may have thereafter some chance of success.

One subject in particular we recommend to anti-free-traders in Congress to begin with; the subject of international copyright. The principles upon which are grounded the right of American literary men to protection against the wholesale importation of the British manufactured article, are precisely those upon which are founded the rights of all other American industry to similar protection. And as far as their interests go, literary men, almost without an exception, have accepted and will sustain these princi ples. They are, besides, the intellectual rulers of the people, and their services are requisite to the creation of any popular impressions. It would be a wise policy to

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