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and as specimens of manufactures it attempts to force, for which the country is not ripe, we mention silks, worsted stuff goods, merino shawls, &c.

We fully concur with the President in the opinion, that "the best as well as the fairest mode of determining whether, from any just considerations, a particular interest ought to receive protection, would be to submit the question singly for deliberation." We have not so little confidence in the people or their representatives as to believe that an appeal to local or individual interests is necessary to induce them to do what the general interest requires. If a single interest were presented, they would weigh the benefits and injuries which its protection might produce to the general interests of the country, and decide without the bias of local or selfish considerations. If, in their opinion, the general good required its protection, they would grant it. If, on the contrary, the injury would counterbalance the benefits, they would refuse it.

It is inconceivable to us, how it can be made a general benefit to protect a combination of interests, each of which, taken separately, it would be injurious to protect. If it be injurious to protect each singly, the mass of injury is increased more rapidly than the benefits by their combination.

Suppose that Massachusetts has an interest which she wishes protected, but, after due consideration, it is the opinion of Congress that it will produce twice the harm that it will good. It is evident that her wishes ought not to be gratified.

New York has an interest which she presents for protection; but it is decided that the general injury of such a measure will be three times as great as the general good. Of course she ought not to be gratified.

Virginia presents an interest for protection; but it is the opinion of Congress, that, in the general scale, such a measure will do five times as much harm as good. It is evident that the measure proposed by her ought not to be adopted.

Now can these three measures become useful and proper by combining them together? Will not that of Massachusetts still be twice as injurious as it is beneficial; that of New York three times, and that of Virginia five times? Will not the injury of the combination be to the benefits as ten to three? Extend the same principle to ten States-twenty States--all the States. It is impossible that the combination of twenty-four bad measures can produce a good measure. As soon should we look to the concentration of all the vices to make a good man.

We, therefore, concede the justice of the rule laid down by the President. It is worthy of the mind whence it comes-a mind which marches straight to its object, and seeks by no subterfuge to deceive the people, or evade responsibility. Its observance would promote purity of motive and justice of action in all our legislative acts.

What

We concur with the President in the opinion that the chief object of impost duties is revenue, and that their adjustment so as to protect manufactures is an incidental or secondary power. To lay duties for the sole purpose of protecting domestic industry, would be an anomaly in government. would be done with the money collected? If our national debt were paid, and we had no use for money in the concerns of government, there would now be an accumulation in the treasury to the amount of twenty-four millions annually. If the sole object of the duty be to protect domestic industry, that object is accomplished when the money is paid into the treasury. Shall it be hid in the earth, sunk in the ocean, given to Government favorites, or distributed among the manufacturers?

We do not believe the people of the United States will consent to pay twenty-four millions, nor ten millions, nor five millions, for the sole purpose of protecting manufactures. If they perceive that the money raised by protecting duties is not devoted to useful and honest purposes, they will demand their reduction or repeal.

We, therefore, concur with the President in the opinion that the duties on articles constituting a portion of the necessaries and comforts of life should be reduced or entirely repealed. A more certain means of preserving the protecting duties could not be recommended. What interest has any portion of our manufacturers or agriculturists in preserving the duties on tea, coffee, cocoa, pepper, cinnamon, or any other foreign products or manufactures which do not come into competition with the fruits of their own labor? The duties on those articles yield no protection, but they produce a considerable amount of revenue. They will continue to do so after the national debt shall be extinguished. Is it not better for the labor of the country that the amount of these duties should be levied upon other articles, that come into competition with domestic products? If they continue to be levied upon these articles, they will diminish, as they do now, the amount collected from articles the manufacture or growth of which in our own country needs the encouragement of a protecting tariff.

To us nothing is plainer than that it is the interest of the true friends of a protecting tariff to repeal every duty which has no protective effect. The whole revenue of the country would then be adjusted upon imports, with a view to the protection of domestic industry. With a reduced revenue, the protection will then be more efficient than it is now; and there will be no danger of a ruinous reaction after the payment of the national debt.

The admonitions of the President are the voice of wisdom. Take off the duties on the necessaries and comforts of life, and correct the abuses of the tariff. Adjust the whole revenues of the country on such imported manufactures and produce as compete with our own domestic labor: then will protection be confined to its legitimate objects, the system of protecting duties will be identified with the revenue system of the country, and cannot be shaken.

Most sincerely do we accord with the President in the sentiment, "that our deliberations on this interesting subject should be uninfluenced by those partisan conflicts that are incident to free institutions." "To make this great question, which unhappily so much divides and excites the public mind, subservient to the short sighted views of faction, must destroy all hope of settling it satisfactorily to the great body of the people, and for the general interest. I cannot, therefore," says he, "on taking leave of the subject, too earnestly for my own feelings or the common good, warn you against the blighting influence of such a course."

It is not too much to say that from faction has the tariff derived most of its bad features; and it is faction only which endangers its good. Its provisions have been arranged too little with a regard to equality, justice, and the public good, and too much with reference to effect on political elections; satisfactory to nobody, injurious to many, and to some, as they allege, fatal. Members of Congress, fearing they should not be able to obtain a tariff at that time, did not think proper to vote against it, lest such an act might have a sinister influence on the election to the presidency of a political favorite. Some, too, voted for it, believing that, in a season of more trahquillity, its errors would be corrected, and its defects supplied. Now, men dare not

attempt to correct, or even acknowledge, imperfections and errors which they once condemned, lest they should impair its force as a political weapon. Is this a safe basis on which to rest an essential branch of our domestic policy, involving one or two hundred millions of dollars, and the regular pursuits of many thousands of our citizens? Are these immense interests to be cast upon the waves of party strife, and rise and sink with the success or defeat of a particular candidate for the presidency? Those who have an agency in producing a result so disastrous will have much to answer for to an injured people. They attempt to put to hazard the whole protecting system upon the doubtful result of an election. They destroy all certainty in this branch of our domestic policy, and fill those who have property embarked in manufactures with anxiety and alarm. Worse than the most desperate gamblers, they put to stake, not their own money, but the property, the pursuits, the means of subsistence, of tens of thousands of their fellowcitizens. They force men engaged in quiet occupations to embark in contests of party strife, as a means of promoting their private interests. They encourage, by theory and practice, a spirit of gaming in all the affairs of society, which will exhibit ite deleterious effects, not on the broad theatre of the nation alone, but in States, towns, and corporations-hazarding public and private interests in struggles to gratify personal ambition. They destroy the efficiency of the tariff as a means of retaliating the selfish poliey of foreign nations. Perceiving that our Government is actuated by no settled policy, and that its measures are adopted and rescinded with the alternate success of contending parties, instead of being brought to concession by the effect of our counteracting legislation upon their essential interests, they will await, and, perhaps, promote, a change of party, as a certain means of obtaining a change of policy. Our country will thus become powerless in its means of retaliation, if not the sceue of foreign intrigue and corruption. Finally, they destroy the respect of the people for the tariff, and lead them to consider it, not as a permanent and essential interest of the country, but merely as a weapon of party warfare, to be shivered and struck from the hand of a political opponent, or consigned to the fate which awaits its advocates in defeat.

It has too often been the fate of good measures, in a republic, to be seized on by aspiring demagogues as a means of accomplishing their selfish purposes. Caring nothing for the public interests, and regarding only their self aggrandisement, by professions of extraordinary zeal, they have been enabled to assume the station of leaders. To maintain that position, and attain the prize of their ambition, they outstrip all the honest and prudent advocates of true policy, and push every popular measure to excess. Borne on the tide of public feeling, before their hypocrisy is discovered, they have sometimes been able to force themselves into the citadel of power. The successful examples of unprincipled ambition in other ages and countries may in our own inspire a hope of success by the use of the same means, in men of like habits and fortune.

Nothing can be so fatal to the true and lasting interests of manufactures, or any other essential interest of our country, as the intemperate and hypocritical support of such men: and yet, in the progress of our history, these great interests may justly dread their fatal friendships. Without indulging in any invidious anticipations, we may expect that, as in other countries, so in this, from among such men a leader may appear; with eloquent harangues and artful appeals he may scatter delusions and lead reason captive; he may induce them to think that a high tariff on articles which we cannot,

as well as those which we can produce, and an unrelenting persecution of all who oppose it, constitute the true policy of the republic; and that he alone, placed at the head of the government, can give it practical effect. In his grasp after power, he may seize upon every measure that appeals to the personal interests and sectional feelings of men, and rally around him a party pledged to sustain in its then condition the tariff or any other measure, though deemed oppressive by many, and imperfect by all. He may denounce prudence and moderation in its support as hostility to the system, and stigmatise as traitors those whom he and his partisans may have studiously excited to violent opposition. He may denounce as hostility to the tariff all opposition to himself, and endeavor to force the community to consider the fate of the protecting policy as identified with his own. When such a leader and such a party shall appear, it will be the duty of wisdom and patriotism, and the interests of all honest men, to resist their machina

tions.

Do not all manufacturers see what, in such a case, would be the probable result of identifying themselves and their great interests with the ever varying fortunes of party, the intemperate zeal of faction, and the madness of ambition? Do they not see that they must lose the confidence and support of many honest citizens? In such an alliance, must not their interests fall with the faction to whose merciless care they shall have confided them? and will they place their establishments, their interests, their all, in the hands of political gamblers as a stake?

The history of the past, indeed, assures us that the demagogue will never be without his instruments. These, too, for the benefit of their patron, and hope of future favor at his hands, are ready to convert the dearest interests of their country into footballs of party contention, and hazard the property and pursuits of their fellow-citizens in struggles for power. But it is sincerely hoped they may never find their way into Congress. Here let us hope that all men will bring and retain an honest and a fearless heart to serve the public, and never so far forego their duty as to become the instruments of unchastened ambition-to rally at his watchword, set at nought the reasonable complaints of any portion of our fellow-citizens, refuse to amend defective laws, cast the essential interests of their country on the waves of party, and sneer at the counsels of age, the admonitions of experience, and the expostulations of patriotism.

But, if, unfortunately for the interests of the republic, and for none more so than the interests of home industry, such a leader as we have alluded to, should, by the aid of such partisans in Congress, be placed in the Presidential chair, what may the country expect? It may expect every corruption to be nourished, and every abuse to be cherished. It may expect a defective tariff to be made worse. Pledged, as he may be, to maintain it as it is, the country may expect protection to be refused to any interest to which our growth and improvement may require it should be extended. Instead of protection, it may expect taxation. It may expect its exactions to be increased by countless millions, and the moneys to be expended in rewarding followers, purchasing friends, pensioning dependents, and in efforts to buy over States and neighborhoods, by special favors, to the support of his re-election, or the election of a designated successor. It may expect, in the end, that here, as in other countries where ambition rules, taxation will be made to reach every article of food and clothing, lands, houses, fuel, hearth, the light of heaven itself.

In return for these miseries, it may expect splendid projects and magnificent structures, honored and adorned by the gilded equipages of the rich; with the State Governments annihilated, property concentrated in the hands of a few, and the great mass of the people oppressed, poor, starving, desperate, and rebellious.

These mischiefs may be attempted, but we fear no such disastrous results. To save the tariff from all risks is our earnest desire. This, we are convinced, can only be done by rescuing it from the custody of demagogues and partisans, correcting its errors, amending its imperfections, and appealing to the good sense and justice of the community to give it a generous support. But if the prudent counsels of the chief who has saved his country in war, and is honestly seeking to promote her interests and preserve her institutions in peace, are to be unheeded or derided, and if there are men who are determined not to correct any of the admitted errors of the tariff, to tax unnecessarily high the necessaries and comforts of life, and make it a party question, with them rests the responsibility, and on their heads be the consequences. With our venerable President, we will struggle to maintain all that is valuable in the present tariff of protection, and extend its berefits. But should the manufacturers and working men find themselves overwhelmed and ruined by a reaction of public opinion, which shall sweep away as well all that is good as all that is bad in the protecting system, they will inquire who it was that, by pertinaciously adhering to acknowledged error, defending admitted imperfections, insisting on unnecessary exactions, and hazarding all in a struggle for power, brought upon them irretrievable ruin. The counsels of age and experience will then be received with other feelings than derision; and the nostrums of quack politicians, too prejudiced to listen to truth, or too factious to regard it, will be remembered only with abhorrence.

We cannot better conclude than by repeating the warnings of the Chief Magistrate.

"That our deliberations on this interesting subject should be uninfluenced by those partisan conflicts that are incident to free institutions, is the fervent wish of my heart. To make this great question, which unhappily so much divides and excites the public mind, subservient to the short-sighted views of faction, must destroy all hope of settling it satisfactorily to the great body of the people, and for the general interest. I cannot, therefore, on taking leave of the subject, too earnestly for my own feelings or the common good, warn you against the blighting consequences of such a course."

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