she had long endeavored to monopolize. The arts of Great Britain are the tower of her strength-her great national bulwark. To be undersold and superseded in them, is to be undermined.

In order to ascertain the influences which affect the prices of protected articles in the United States, and how they act, it is necessary to consider the relative position of this country to Europe and other foreign parts, producers of the same things, on the subjects embraced in the question. It has already been shown, that Europe occupies a strong vantage ground, by having been first in the field of the arts, so as to have made superior attainments; and more especially by having availed herself of the abject condition in which she has ever held labor, so that it does not cost her, on an average, more than one third of its cost in the United States. All that she gains by this usurpation-and the power is immense -is appropriated chiefly to that artificial aggrandizement, and to those prodigal expenditures, which, for the maintenance of her power and pride, characterize the nations of Europe. Europe has never yet found it necessary to use any considerable fraction of this power in a commercial rivalship with free states, inasmuch as such states have never risen up in any formidable shape, except in the case of the United States; and here our foreign commercial policy has generally been so lax and so fluctuating, as to give the states of Europe very little concern. They have still been able to go on, and appropriate the power they derive from the oppression of labor, as they have done from time immemorial. The arts of Europe have made the world tributary, including the United States; and the taxes which we, as well as other parties, have been accustomed to pay—and to pay without dreaming of the fact that it was a tax to support the power and superiority of European nations, thus acquired, will astonish those who have never considered the subject, and which we shall endeavor, in the proper place, to lay open to view.

But the point to which we desire, in this place, to direct attention, is the fact, that, on account of the position of Europe, in relation to the United States, and of the latter in relation to the former, politically and commercially, and on account of the large margin British house of commons, it appears, that Prussia consumes annually of British manufactures to the amount of 7 cents for each individual of her population; Russia to the amount of 16 cents for each individual; Norway, 17 cents; France, 20 cents; and the United States to the amount of 402 cents for each individual of our population; and yet there is scarcely one of these articles which we could not produce, and generally at a lower price.

of profit which is derived from the cheapness of European labor, Europe can not only afford to abate in the prices of the products of her arts, in case of necessity, in the starting up of new rivals, but that she actually does so when she is forced to encounter the rivalship of American arts and labor enjoying protection under the government of the United States; and that the entire scale of prices, in regard to all the articles comprehended in such protection, whether the duties are prohibitory or not, is materially reduced in consequence of the adoption of the system. There may be, and doubtless are, some trifling and transient exceptions to this rule; but none, as will yet be seen, which ever were, are, or can be, a burden or tax to any party or person in the United States, when all the benefits of the system to every party or person are considered.

It has already been seen, that the theory of Free Trade, which avers, that prices are enhanced by the measure of the duties, fails even in its application to unprotected articles, where it might naturally, and at first sight, be expected, that it would hold good. But even there practice subverts and demolishes the theory. How much more when it comes to encounter the stupendous influences which are brought into action by a collision of European arts and labor with American arts and labor? This strife is the shock of empires, literally, without a figure; and the theory of Free Trade, so far as its doctrine of prices and taxation is concerned, has no more chance to establish a footing in this warfare, than the poor traveller in the Alps, who finds himself swept into the deep abyss below, and buried for ever, by an avalanche that comes thundering from on high. Prices are of little account to the nations of Europe, especially to Great Britain, in this struggle, so long as the sacrifices are merely negative-so long as money is not lost-and even that may be endured for a season. It is a strife for relative ascendency, advantage, power, in which such sacrifices are made by them, in hope of victory. Ever since the American fathers, while under the crown, began to supply their own wants, down to this time, and so far as the people have succeeded, with or without protection, the prices of the articles they have produced, have been cheapened; never more than under a protective system; never so much, or so fast. The competition is a vast and comprehensive system of commercial rivalship, in which nations, the greatest and most powerful, are engaged, by their systems of commercial policy; in which they have long been engaged, and were never so active and jealous as

at this moment.

The consequence is, that the prices of articles comprehended in these schemes, have been reduced, generally and particularly, to a degree which could never have been experienced without this competition.

There is not only a large margin in Europe to reduce prices, by the wrong that is done to labor there-though no more of it will be used than what is absolutely necessary-but there is an immense, an inexhaustible power in the United States to do the same thing, under an adequate system of protection, much of which has already been employed to that end. The power here consists chiefly in the cheapness of our government, the freedom of our institutions, the enterprise of the people, the increase of population, increasing wants, and the vast physical capabilities of the country. Two things only render a protective system necessary to us: Our inferiority in the arts, and the higher price of labor. The first may, perhaps, cease to exist, in progress of time; but the second can not cease to make the same demand for protection, as it now does, so long as our social organization and that of other foreign parts remain the same. American labor must be sustained, which can only be effected by a system of Protection, against cheap foreign labor. But after securing to labor a proper reward, under an adequate system of Protection, the remaining power of sustaining a commercial competition with Europe and other parts, so as to reduce the prices of protected articles lower than European producers under their system of taxation can afford, will be ample, and must necessarily be so employed by the force of competition, so long as competition can be sustained; and when that ceases from abroad, it will only be because American power has won the day in the market of the world, when it will still go on reducing prices of the same articles at home, by domestic competition, as is acknowledged by M. Say, in the following words: "A government can not, by prohibition, elevate a product above the natural rate of price; for, in that case, the home producers would betake themselves, in greater numbers, to its production, and by competition, reduce the profits upon it to the general level." Ricardo also confesses the same.

We have said, in substance, that American power-ability we mean, all things considered—under a properly-adjusted system, is amply sufficient to reduce, and to go on reducing, the prices of protected articles, till there shall be no foreign competition, in the existing state of the world, adequate to withstand or check it.

One fraction of the power, not inconsiderable, which abides with the American people, under proper protection, to oppose that power which European states have usurped from labor, will be absorbed at home in the proper compensation of American labor. This is the first and grand object, and is indispensable to the perpetuity of our social organization. But beyond and behind that, are vast and inexhaustible faculties, which may be appropriated to the same great end, to wit, to fortify American labor in its rights, and to go on cheapening the products of art and manufacture, as would fle is naturally and necessarily be the result of domestic competition, and of the wide market of the world which would open before clearly such a system and such enterprise. mad.

When once the arts shall have attained to a measure of improvement in the United States, equal to that of Europe, and labor at the same time being adequately protected, the power of the country will be vastly superior to that of Europe, or of any other parts, to cheapen protected articles. An established and reliable system of protection, recognised as the permanent policy of the government, not again to be disturbed or impaired, would invoke and draw abundant capital into every branch of manufacture, call into existence new arts, put all the energies of the people into active exertion, extend competition in every enterprise, till every city and village would be filled with artists and mechanics, and the whole country crowded with workshops and manufactories, to pour plenty into the lap of industry, and to give profitable employment to every laborer. The farmer would feed the mechanic, the planter supply raw materials for the manufacturer, and every occupation of life would open a market for other occupations. All the products of art would grow cheaper and cheaper by competition, and still each of those pursuits would be a good business, by increased demand at home and abroad, till every nation on earth would be rivalled in the market of the world, in every product of the manufactures and the arts, simply because no other nation has so much inherent power to cheapen such products as the United States. The nations of Europe can not give back to labor what they have robbed it of, or use all this power in commercial competition, and maintain their existence. They may use a part of it successfully against the United States, so long as we are not adequately protected; but after that, all their efforts and sacrifices will be in vain till they abandon their system of usurping the rights of labor, which would of course be their destruction, as to the existing forms of society.

The cheapness of the American government, and the economy of its institutions, as contrasted with the prodigal expenditures of European governments and society, exhibit one vast item of the power of which we are now speaking; and it is shown in another place, that the very revenues of the American government, raised by a properly-adjusted system of protection, not being taxes, may be made one of the most effective means of national wealth, of which it is possible to conceive. Such is the position of this country, such her power, such her capabilities, moral and physica!, and such her social organization as intended and accomplished, if not perverted, if faithfully carried out, and if sustained in her career to the consummation of her possible destiny, that all the expenses of government, and all war-debts not swelling beyond any probable amount now in prospect, may be defrayed, and a sound credit maintained, without taxing the people a penny; that is, by a system of protection, the avails of which shall be equal to all these purposes, at the same time that it promotes and secures the interests of all and of each, without being a burden or tax to any; at the same time that national wealth shall go on augmenting, without interruption, without measure, and without end.

The influences of an American protective system all tend to the reduction of the prices of protected articles, and not, as Free Trade asserts, to their augmentation. This appears, first, from the fact that an earnest show of establishing and maintaining a protective policy in the United States, produces instantaneous alarm in Europe, on account of the importance of our commercial position, and impairs their power to maintain the prices of their products in our market; secondly, because it is manifest from the reason of the case, that such a collision of great commercial interests, in the way of competition, by extending the scale and multiplying the competitors, must necessarily reduce prices; thirdly, because the collision is actually a shock of two vast commercial spheres, coming athwart each other in hostile encounter, in which a nice adjustment of small things is not to be thought of; and fourthly, because the actual and uniform operation of protection in the United States, is to reduce the prices of protected articles, as shown farther on in this chapter. No man has ever yet been able to point to a single article, the price of which has been permanently raised by a protective system; whereas the proofs on the other side are overwhelming. No reasonable mind can resist them. It is true, indeed, that we have the utterances of Free-Trade theorists,