are greater than his receipts. The Free-Trade doctrine is, that the spendthrift is growing rich.

But it is no matter to navigation, as a distinct interest, what work it is engaged in, so it has work; or what it carries, if it has enough to carry. It might also be said, with a qualification, that it is no matter to importing merchants, for the time being, how much more they bring into the country than is carried out, of other commodities than money, if they, personally, have time to wind up, and get out of harm's way, before the country, as a whole, is compelled to settle the balances against it in cash. They may even get rich, and retire on princely fortunes, if they retire soon enough, while the country is plunged into general bankruptcy, and the masses of present policy! This is our notion of Free Trade! Surely, surely, Mr. President, this enlightened system can not fail to attract the admiration of the world!

"Now, sir, one can not say to what extent this change of system may affect the navization of the country, but its tendency is, unquestionably, to cripple and cramp the navigating interest. Its tendency is to diminish the demand for tonnage, for navigation, for the carrying trade. And I think I might on this occasion, without impropriety, call the attention of the senator from Maine, farthest from me [Mr. Fairfield], a gentleman who here represents a state, if not first, at least among the very first, in regard to the amount of its navigation. The ships of Maine are found in every quarter. They are round the capes, and in the north sea. They bring home these raw materials; and everything that diminishes the consumption of these raw materials in our own country, diminishes the chances of employment to every ship-owner in the state of Maine. I will read an extract or two, from a letter which I have received on this subject:

BALTIMORE, 20th July, 1846.

SIR: I notice that the new tariff bill has, in its schedule, silk, mahogany, hides, brazette wood, logwood, fustic, Rio Hache wood, Lima wood, Sandal wood, red cedar, pig copper, nitrate of soda, or the sal soda of Peru, saltpetre, block, and all sorts of crude woods, and many drugs of bulk, all more or less dutiable, and tea and coffee left free.

"This is curious Free Trade.

"These are the articles that give our vessels homeward freights, and being chiefly gross articles of great bulk, they appeal most strongly to be placed in the free list. You know very well that our outward-bound vessels to the English islands can get no sort of return cargo unless they go to Cuba or Porto Rico for sugar or molasses, or else to some salt port, or bring home some sort of wood or hides from St. Thomas, or the Main. I speak of small vessels that trade to the West Indies and the Spanish Main.

"Gross, crude articles, of this sort, aid shipping interests, and assist making up cargoes to Europe of various such articles if free, such as logwood particularly, and Brazilletto and Rio Hache wood in colton-ships even for dunnage.

"I call Free Trade the policy that lets crude articles in free as in "old times." “As far as I can judge, and being myself engaged in shipping interests, I think this bill very unfriendly to such interests; and as to being a Free-Trade bill, it is anything else, as I understand Free-Trade, as to the articles named.

"I am, dear sir, your friend and fellow-citizen, WILLIAM MILES." Comment on such facts and such an argument is entirely superfluous.

the community are involved in the deepest commercial distress induced by them. Hence importing merchants are generally in favor of Free Trade, with a few honorable exceptions. They care nothing about the country, if they can only gain a position that shall fortify them against the common calamities which they themselves, by their cupidity, have brought upon the masses of the people, and which the people must bear.

But it need not be said that a public policy, regulating foreign commerce, well devised and properly adjusted, is not designed to give a few importing merchants—more than half of them foreign factors, who pay no taxes, and carry away the money of the country -a control over the fortunes of millions of the American people, and to enrich such cormorants, while it impoverishes the nation. Mr. Clay said well and truly, as long ago as 1810, in his first speech in the senate of the United States on the protective policy, "Dame Commerce," meaning, doubtless, these importing merchants, "is a flirting, flippant, noisy jade, like the wife who wished her husband to supply his table from the cook over the way, rather than have the cooking done at home in the kitchen." did not like the trouble, nor the clatter, nor the smell. It was for her benefit, and not for that of the family, that she argued. So with importing merchants. They want Free Trade to enrich themselves, though it makes the nation poor.*

There is no doubt that Free Trade, or an approximation to it, between the United States and foreign parts, by an abandonment of the protective policy on our part, will, for a short season, increase the gross amount of imports and exports, or enlarge the gross

Apart from return cargoes, in a regular exchange of commodities, our importing business is chiefly done by foreigners. They send their agents here, who, by their intimate relations and a secret understanding at home, are able to supplant American merchants, to defraud our revenue by false invoices, and thus to crush those very American interests which were designed to be protected by the laws they violate. See Senate Doc., No. 83, 2d session, 27th Congress, for proof of fraud in the agents of one English house, to the amount of some hundreds of thousands of dollars. Also a voluntary fine of eighty-six thousand dollars, paid by seven agents of British houses, to Mr. Hoyt, collector of New York, to compromise, and purchase exemption from the course of justice-and a variety of other evidence of the same kind-a mere index to the vast frauds that have been practised upon upon us with impunity. In 1842, and before the tariff of that year went into effect, 74 per cent. of the imports into the city of New York, and 19 per cent. of those into Boston, were on foreign account; and foreigners, of course, had all the profits; whereas, in 1845, it appears that by the operation of the tariff of 1842, the importing business in New York, on foreign account, had been reduced to 44 per cent. of the whole, and in Boston to 9 per cent. It is now again, under the tariff of 1846, rapidly reverting to foreigners.

amount of commerce, when reckoned in dollars and cents, though not in the employment of a greater amount of shipping. The great demand for shipping in the winter of 1846-'47, was owing entirely to the extraordinary scarcity of food in Europe, and can not safely be set down as a permanent rule. It would have been the same under any tariff, and under any policy, as a providential and unusual effect. The ordinary effect of the abatement or abandonment of the protective policy, as proved in the tables and other facts exhibited in our citations from Mr. Webster, is to diminish the demand and use for shipping, and to lay it up; while the continuance of that policy increases both. Such has always been the case in our commercial history. In farther confirmation of the above alternative, take the following additional facts: Under the tariff of 1842, American boot and shoe makers were protected, giving rise to large importations of hides-a heavy article-which, in 1845, amounted to near four millions of dollars, giving employment to American shipping, as well as to American boot and shoe makers. This one fact will illustrate scores of other like cases, which operated in the same way under the tariff of 1842, giving, at the same time, employment to American shipping, and to American labor. It is the raw material that makes freight. Manufactured goods make little. It may be well to remark, however, in this place, that our exports of boots and shoes, under the tariff of 1842, had risen, in 1845, to the amount of $330,000, and the exports of articles of American manufactures, of the same year, to about $12,000,000, being more than one tenth of all our exports, also augmenting foreign trade in the best way possible, by substituting exports of our own products for imports of foreign and for re-exportations of foreign.

But it is alleged that the protective policy diminishes foreign commerce. Though there may have been, for a time, larger importations in periods of low duties, or no duties in this country, there was not really more foreign trade, nor in fact so much, by a great deal, as during the periods of protective duties, take those periods, respectively, through and through. Like the well-to-do farmer, who begins to buy more than he sells, and soon gets out of money and out of credit-who does indeed for a little while trade largely, to his own ruin-so has it always been with this country in times of Free Trade. The moment duties were relaxed, importations increased, and there seemed to be a more active foreign trade. Really, however, there was no more request for navi

gating craft-nor so much-inasmuch as the additional importations were costly manufactured goods, of little weight. As soon as the country got in debt, lost credit, and was forced to buy less, the navigating craft had less employment, and was much of it hauled off, and laid up. The foreign commerce of the country was injured and diminished. Whereas, under the protective system, in all cases, foreign commerce has been more uniform and uniformly increasing; shipping has had better and more employment, and navigation has rejoiced in its business and profitsnever more than for a few years after the tariff of 1824; and never more than under the tariff of 1842. All the boasted increase of foreign trade, under low duties and no duties, has been the ruinous increase of a spendthrift, that brings debt, loss of credit, poverty, want, distress, in its train-beginning with flushed hope, and ending in disappointment.

The most important view of foreign commerce, under the two systems, respectively, of low anti-protective and protective duties, may be stated thus: that the former system leads directly and uniformly to excessive importations, or excessive buying, leaving a balance against the country, to be settled by drawing away its money, and leaving the people without a currency; and in this way embarrassing and diminishing commerce. It was so under the colonial system; the money all went to England. It was so under the confederation; the money all went abroad, chiefly to England, to settle balances, because we bought more than we sold. The states, severally, then, possessed the only power to establish a protective policy, each for itself; and being unable to do it, without collision of interests, it resulted in a system of perfect Free Trade, and of complete commercial ruin. It appears by Mr. Secretary Woodbury's annual report to Congress, of 1840, that the imports into the country, for the first two years after the peace of 1814, exceeded the exports by $126,466,059. How could the country pay such a balance, already deeply in debt as it was, when, in its best estate, there was not half so much money in the country? The tariff of 1816, in its most important protective provisions, defective at best, and of a brief term, did but little toward the settlement of the immense balance that had previously accumulated against the country; and by the failure of the tariff bill of 1820, the country was doomed to run on again, under a system of low anti-protective duties, till the tariff of 1824 arrested it. According to Mr. Secretary Woodbury's report to Congress, in 1840, the

balance of foreign trade against the country for 1815, was sixty-one millions of dollars; in 1816, it was sixty-five millions; in 1817, twelve millions; in 1818, more than twenty-eight millions; in 1819, seventeen millions; in 1820, about five millions; in 1821, two millions in our favor; in 1822, eleven millions against us; in 1823, about three millions against us; and in 1824, nearly five millions.

What country could stand up against such odds? And all this in uninterrupted succession, without any chance to pay. The nation writhed and groaned under it. Its money gone abroad to pay debts; banks suspended; the circulating medium become scarce, nobody knowing what it was worth, for it was irredeemable; business of all kinds in trouble; property of every description depreciated; and labor unemployed and starving. Who that is old enough to remember those years, will not certify to Mr. Clay's picture of them, in his answer to General Hayne, in 1832, as “exhibiting a scene of the most widespread dismay and devastation"?

But, from the date of the tariff of 1824, when the protective policy was for the first time, in the history of the country, well established-and from which time it continued till the duties went down again under the Compromise act of 1833-the prosperity of the country was restored; labor found employment and reward; private and public wealth increased; the entire national debt of one hundred and sixty millions of dollars, left at the end of the war of 1812, was at last paid off in 1836, and thirty-seven millions of surplus funds in the national treasury were distributed among the states. In those years commerce spread its wings over all seas, was widely extended, greatly enlarged, and prosperous.

But, behold the contrast, as the duties under the Compromise act descended below the protective standard, and approximated toward a system of Free Trade, till finally they came down to a maximum of 20 per cent. The excessive importations commenced as soon as President Jackson began to show his hostility to the protective policy, and continued down through the administration of Mr. Van Buren, who "followed in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor." The balance accumulated against the country in its foreign trade, in nine successive years under General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren-including three of the latter's administrationaccording to the records of the treasury department, was more than two hundred and fifty millions of dollars. The largest balance was in 1836, being sixty-one millions. The next largest was fifty