as in the case above supposed. That party will always beat, which can afford to sell cheapest, by reason of a less cost of the articles brought into market.

Thus, from the operation of an infallible commercial principle, which never varies in its results, and which can not lead to error, the producing powers of Europe, which cost ONE, must inevitably, on a platform of Free Trade, overwhelm the producing powers of the United States, which cost Two, and drive the latter from the market that is open to both on the same terms, except as the latter should consent to trade at ruinous prices. In either case it would be ruinous.

The importance of anticipating our opponents, whenever this point is presented, must be our apology for repeating here, as we not unfrequently have occasion to do, that we are aware this argument may be seized upon as an admission, that Free Trade would cheapen articles to consumers, and that Protection enhances prices. But we have shown elsewhere, as often remarked, that, while the above argument is sound and irrefragable, this conclusion does not follow; and that European and other foreign factors, once admitted to our market on the principles of Free Trade, always raise prices above what they are under a system of Protection, as soon as they get possession of the market by driving Americans out. While it is true, that without Protection, they are able to break Americans down, it is not true, that having broken them down, they will continue to sell cheaper; but they invariably demand and realize higher prices than those which prevail under a protective system; so that the evils of Free Trade to this country are threefold: First, by destroying a part of the business of the people and preventing its increase; next, by raising the prices of the articles, the domestic production of which has been suppressed or prevented; and thirdly, by banishing specie, to the amount paid for them, from the country, which would otherwise be retained as a part of our domestic wealth, to be used as "tools of trade" for the augmentation of wealth. This last evil may be greater or less. It may be sufficient to bankrupt the whole country, and has several times done so, as is shown elsewhere in this work.

We proceed to consider how the RULE of protection is to be ascertained, and on what principle it should be graduated. At first sight, it might perhaps seem that it should be graduated by the difference in the cost of money and of labor in the United States

and other parts, that is, one hundred per cent. or more. But when it is considered that the chief aim of European and other foreign governments, in robbing their laboring classes of an average of two thirds of the wages which they are justly entitled to receive, as a freedom value, is to appropriate it to their own use and benefit; or rather, that society in those quarters is constituted with the design of having this two thirds of the fair wages of labor absorbed by the government and higher classes; it will then be seen that the object of this deprivation of the rights of labor would be subverted, and that these unjust governments would gain no advantage to themselves, if they were to employ all this power, that is all the difference in the cost of money and labor between them and such a country as the United States, in the struggles of commercial competition. They can not afford it in their state of society. But having the power always in their hands, to use such a portion of this difference as may be necessary to bear most effectually on the weak and vulnerable points of free states, that is, such points as are not protected, and on those interests which are of most importance to themselves, they will of course select those points of attack on which to make, in the way of competition, such sacrifices as policy may dictate, and by which they can accomplish the most with a given amount of this species of negative expenditure, in the expectation of being indemnified by profits accruing from high prices, after competition may have been subdued for want of adequate protection in the country or countries with which they are carrying on this commercial warfare. They know too well how to economize such transient sacrifices, in order to attain their objects.

tance.

For example: It need not be said, that the manufacture of cotton in Great Britain, is to her a thing of vital and supreme imporBefore she had a rival in us, she taxed the raw material heavily. From 1809 to 1814, her duty on the imports of raw cotton was 25s. 6d. per cwt., or 5 cents a pound, almost equal to its present price. But from 1815 to 1819, after we began to manufacture cotton, down came the duty to 8s. 6d. per cwt., or nearly 2 cents a pound. At last it got down to of a penny; and in 1845 it was found necessary to remove it altogether. This was a sacrifice to her revenue; but it was necessary to retain her ascendency against the competition in the manufacture of this article in the United States and elsewhere. She let in raw cotton free in order to protect herself and her manufacturers-which has been mis

named Free Trade. In the same manner, all the abatements in her tariff of duties on imports, under the administration of Sir Robert Peel, as shown in note, pp. 111, 112, without a single exception, together with the abolition of the corn-laws, were made on the principle of protection, and for purposes of protection; and they are called Free Trade. It was to maintain her commercial position in relation to competitors in other countries, that she made these sacrifices of revenue-which, however, were very trivial, and were more than made up in the increase of revenue from duties on other articles. (See note above referred to.)

All other applications of this principle may easily be understood by the above illustrations, as these are directly in point. Those governments which oppress labor by depriving it of reward, and by merely granting it subsistence, do not expend all the power they acquire by this means in commercial competition with free states for the purpose of gaining the same advantage over labor in such foreign parts. A small fraction of this power skilfully applied, will answer all their purposes, as the examples above referred to, in the action of the British government, will show.

But it may be observed that the amount or measure of protection required in a state or nation that is acting on the defensive, in order to secure the rights of its laboring classes against such attacks, must exceed very much the amount or measure of sacrifice that is made by the assailing party, inasmuch as it may be presumed that the first sacrifices made by such a party, are but a small part of that which it can afford to make, and will make, since it has begun the contest, if necessary to success. In the United States, it is absolutely necessary that our public men, our statesmen, who legislate on these and other matters, should thoroughly understand this subject, and that they should be able to see, with unerring certainty, what measure of protection may be required for any particular article, and for all articles, against these attacks; and they ought to know-they will be liable to the greatest mistakes if they do not know-that the abolition of a duty in a foreign state may be as much a measure of protection as is the imposition of duties for that express object, as in the case of all the abatements and abolition of duties which have recently taken place in the tariff of Great Britain. The sacrifices made in such cases, are not positive, but negative, for a reversion of benefits. It is merely a transient reduction of the taxes on labor at home, for the sake of obtaining a stronger hold on labor abroad, in the expectation of

a return, not only of the principal, but of compound interest, or it may be interest equal to a geometrical ratio.

The ignorance of these facts and principles, which, for some twenty years past, with little interruption, has been demonstrated by those who have chiefly controlled the legislation of the United States on this point of public policy, is not more amazing than alarming. To call it ignorance, is most charitable. Otherwise, their influence and acts would be in the highest degree criminal. They evince that they have borrowed their theory of public economy from foreign parts and foreign schools; that they have received their lessons from the enemies of the country; and that they are utterly incapable of understanding the subject. This is not saying too much, for their reasonings and arguments prove it. Presidential messages, United States treasury reports, such as those of December, 1845, '6, and '7, and other public documents, have been constructed on these borrowed and fallacious arguments, and legislation, the most momentous and most unfortunate, has been made to conform to this false theory, so fatal to the interests of American labor and of the American people.

But there are domestic considerations in the United States which should enter into the graduation of the rule of protection, in addition to those arising out of the difference between the cost of money and labor in this country, and their cost in those countries with which we trade. A country where labor is free and independent, and realizes a fair compensation as a consequence of its independence, possesses inherent advantages over countries where labor is not free, other things being equal. Take for example the free and slave states of this Union. The great secret of the difference in prosperity in the free and slave states, consists more in the fact that labor is free in one and not in the other, than in any or all other causes; and the slave states would probably soon be driven to universal emancipation, from interest, but for the monopoly of southern staples, in the raising of which northern free labor can never come in competition. Men who are their own property, who work for themselves, and whose fortunes are of their own creation, with the existing chances before them of rising in the world, and becoming men of estate, of wealth, and of influence, are a very different sort of moral and physical machine, from men who know they are not their own, and who always feel that they are working for masters, and not for themselves. With the former, labor is a pleasure; with the latter, it is a task. The freeman

works for reward; the slave because he is driven to it; and the difference in the results, as to their commercial values, is as great as in their feelings and motives. There is very little difference in the position and character of the labor of European nations, as to its physical effectiveness resulting from moral incentives, and that of slave labor in the United States. Both are forced, and both are about equally well provided for, that is, furnished with a subsistence designed to keep them in the best working order.

All slave labor in the United States, which is not applied to the production of what are commonly called slave-grown staples, stands more in need of the protection of a national policy, so far as the interest of masters is concerned, than free labor, because slave labor is more costly than either its foreign or domestic competitor, when regarded in connexion with the comparative amount of its product. The foreign competitor, called free, has to raise itself till fit to work; gets only a bare subsistence while it can work; and when it can work no longer, it is cast off to perish; whereas, slave labor is always a cost: a cost in raising, a cost in sickness, a cost after it has done working; and its product, while working, is greatly less, because it wants the motive of working for itself. And it has already been proved by experience that slave labor is generally obliged to retire before American free labor, when both are engaged in producing the same things. If, therefore, American free labor requires protection against foreign pauper labor, much more does American slave labor require it, for the interest of its owners. The labor of the ox and that of a slave occupy the same position in public economy; but the latter is less able to stand against competition.

Adam Smith says: "The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any.""The planting of sugar and tobacco [that of cotton in America was not then known] can afford the expense of slave cultivation."— "The profits of a sugar plantation in any of our West India colomies, are generally much greater than any that is known in either Europe or America; and the profits of a tobacco plantation, though inferior to those of sugar, are superior to those of corn. Both can afford the expense of slave cultivation." This was written anterior to 1775. The cultivation of cotton in the United States was commenced in 1790, and has grown up to a stupendous interest for the profitable employment of slave labor, without any rivalship in free labor.