earnings of poverty, to satiate the cravings of avarice, and add to the abundance of the opulent. Every man who purchases protected woollens or cotton manufactures, to the amount of ten dollars, pays three dollars and seventy-five cents to the manufacturer, concealed and disguised in the price of the article. Every man who purchases protected iron, or the manufactures. of iron, to the amount of ten dollars, pays, in like manner, from three to four dollars, to the iron masters and manufacturers. Every man who purchases protected salt to the amount of ten dollars, pays five dollars to the salt manufacturers. Every man who purchases protected sugar to the amount of ten dollars, pays three dollars thirty-seven and a half cents to the sugarplanter. We might extend the enumeration to almost every article of human consumption, to be found on the list of imports. Wherever we go, and whatever we do, we are in contact with the emblems of oppression. When we lie down at night, we are covered with them. When we get up in the morning, we are clothed with them. When we sit down to our frugal repast, we swallow them in our food. When we go into the fields to perform the daily labours of husbandry, we see and handle them in every implement we use. The very light of heaven comes to us in our dwellings, heavily charged with tributary taxation. In a word, it may be said, almost without a figure, that "from the crown of our heads to the sole of our feet," we are, already, even in the infancy of our government, "covered all over" with taxation, and unjust, if not unconstitutional impositions.

Before we conclude this first branch of our inquiry, which has been exclusively directed to the ascertainment of the actual extent of the tribute exacted from the people by the tariff system, we ask the attention of our readers to another view of the subject, calculated, we think, to give strong confirmation to what we have heretofore advanced. The most that has ever been pretended by the candid advocates of the manufacturing interest, is, that the manufacturers can furnish the domestic article as cheap as we can import the foreign article, under a revenue system of impost duties. If we concede that they can do even this much, we evidently make a liberal and gratuitous concession, for the sake of argument. For we have seen the cotton manufacturers, while enjoying under the tariff of 1816, not only the incidental protection of a revenue system, but the protection of impost duties, that ranged from twenty-five to one hundred per cent. alleging their inability to withstand foreign competition, and receiving an additional protection of from five to fifteen per cent. in 1824, and a still further addition of from five to fifteen per cent. more in 1828. We have also heard the

woollen manufacturers, while enjoying a protection of twentyeight per cent. under the tariff of 1816, make the very welkin ring with their clamour for additional protection, and after having the duties upon woollens raised to thirty-eight per cent. in 1824, still continuing their clamour until they have finally obtained, by the law of 1828, a tariff of duties, ranging from fifty to two hundred per cent.; and this their advocates in Congress, declare to be insufficient. Granting, then, in the face of all these proofs to the contrary, that the domestic manufacturers can supply their articles as cheap as they can be imported under a revenue system of imposts, what, we ask, would be the effect of substituting the domestic for the foreign manufacture? The result would most obviously be, the total loss of the revenue derived from the excluded articles. Suppose, for example, that foreign commerce were entirely destroyed, and that all the articles we now import, should be supplied by the home producer, at the same price we now give for them? Would not the nation sustain a clear and uncompensated loss precisely equal to the whole amount of impost duties? And would there not be created an immediate necessity for resorting to internal taxation, to the extent of twenty millions of dollars, to supply the deficiency in the national revenue? These questions admit of but one answer. They point to inferences that cannot be resisted. The fact that a revenue system of impost duties is a sufficient protection to domestic manufactures, is perfectly conclusive against their claim to further encouragement-because it furnishes positive demonstration, that their establishment, by means of further protection, will involve a national loss at least equal to the amount of the revenue derived from the foreign and rival manufactures. It is here worthy of remark, that this is the only nation in the world, in which the entire revenue system of the government, is a system of protection. In Great Britain, notwithstanding all that we have heard of the high protecting duties she has imposed on foreign merchandize, the manufacturers of the great staples of her commerce, never have received so high a protection as we have given to our manufacturers. Though her impost duties are high, her excise duties are still higher. What seems to be given with one hand, is taken away by the other. It is perfectly clear, that an impost duty of thirty per cent. on the foreign manufacture, and an excise duty of forty per cent. on almost every thing the home manufacturer consumes, is very little better than no protection at all. Yet this is the boasted system of British protection. On the contrary, we have no excise duties at all; and the domestic VOL. II. NO. 4.

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manufacturer comes into competition with the foreigner, with all the advantage of a clear bounty, equal to the impost duty upon the rival manufacture.

It was in reference to this view of the subject that the lamented Mr. Lowndes-who never hazarded a random assertionstated in Congress, previously to the tariff of 1824, that there was not a nation, in the world, so heavily taxed for the support of domestic manufactures, as the United States.

Having shewn that the tariff system is really an unjust and oppressive scheme of taxation upon the many, we propose now to submit a few reflections with the view of shewing to what extent, and with what probable consequences it operates for the exclusive benefit of the few. There is not, perhaps, a single feature in the whole system, more distinctly marked, than its aristocratic tendency. If a profound and sagacious enemy to the republican form of government, were to tax his invention to devise the most effective scheme for sapping its foundation, he could not possibly improve upon this plan of building up a venal aristocracy entirely dependent upon government bounties for wealth and consequence. In looking over the provisions of the several tariff laws, one cannot but be struck with the fact, that every one of them, while it imposes a tax upon the great body of the people, provides a bounty for a very small number only, and these the very wealthiest men in the country. The owners of the cotton and woollen manufactories are notoriously the largest capitalists in the Northern and Middle States. The iron masters and owners of salt works, are almost without exception, men of great wealth, and have very generally accumulated their fortunes in the very business, which the laborious industry of the country is taxed most heavily to sustain in its extravagant profits. The sugar planters are proverbially, and almost exclusively proprietors of very large estates, realizing unprecedented profits, and even the wool-growers, who are, perhaps, the largest in number and smallest in fortune, of all the beneficiaries of this eleemosynary system, are decidedly the wealthiest of the class of farmers. We speak on the authority of a farmer of the middle States, when we say, that the small farmers do not pretend to engage in the business of growing wool for market. On the contrary, they are generally under the necessity of purchasing from the large farmers, wool for home consumption, and consequently of paying tribute, not only to the manufacturers of woollens, but to the growers of wool.

Such, then, are the men, to sustain whose overgrown fortunes, the middle classes and the poor, in every part of the Union, are compelled to make up the enormous contribution of thirty mil

lions of dollars! We venture the assertion, that there is not in the world an aristocratic body, sustained at so great an expense to the community, or a system of vassalage more oppressive, and ultimately more degrading to the people.

The inquiry naturally arises here, how it happens that the great body of the people in the Northern and Middle States give their support to this system, if it be really so oppressive? We will endeavour to give a brief solution of the seeming difficulty here presented. And, in the first place, it is to be remarked, that the experience of all nations proves, conclusively, that wherever the government assumes and exercises the power of controlling and regulating the distribution of private property by a system of bounties and prohibitions, its movements are invariably controlled by combinations of capitalists. The poor and the many are forever sacrificed to the few and the wealthy. If this proposition were even more inexplicable than it is, it would not be the less true on that account. The apothegm that 'wealth is power,' is true in a much more extensive sense than we are in the habit of imagining. We should not hesitate to say, that in a state of society where there is a large accumulation of capital, a combination of all the capitalists in the steady and persevering pursuit of a common object, though they should not constitute one hundredth part of the community, would control the movements of the whole society, even in questions depending upon the general suffrage of the people. To be more specific, we believe that three large capitalists, each having a manufactory, with a hundred persons attached to it, possessing the right of suffrage, would have an irresistible ascendency in the elections of a county containing one thousand voters. Every person acquainted with popular elections can appreciate the power and efficacy of concentrated force; particularly when it is a disposable force. Three men, united by a common cause, and acting under the steady and never-ceasing motive of selfinterest, having the disposal of three hundred votes, would almost as a matter of course, be courted by every candidate for public favour. The same illustration which we applied to the influence of political clubs, is equally applicable here. These manufacturers would have something like the power of three skilful officers at the head of three hundred regulars, in a contest with seven hundred untrained militiamen.

There is another cause, not quite so obvious, to which the extraordinary influence of large manufacturing capitalists may be partly ascribed. Public sympathy is much more attracted to the fortunes of individuals, than to the fate of multitudes. The fall of a general will excite universal commisseration, while the

slaughter of his army will produce, comparatively, a feeble impression. Hence, when the manufacturers tell the exaggerated story of their distresses, and call upon the country to give them succour, there is a strong predisposition to countenance the call. And when a law is proposed giving an indirect bounty, there is so much uncertainty as to where the burden will fall, and each individual imagines he will bear so small a proportion of it, that there is scarcely any feeling to countervail the movements of public sympathy. When to this we add a feeling of mistaken patriotism, which regards the domestic manufacturer as waging a sort of national warfare against his foreign rivals, we shall have a pretty full view of the causes which operate to render the great body of the people, in the tariff States, subservient to the views of the manufacturers.

But there remains to be stated another cause, growing out of geographical interests and geographical prejudices, which commands our gravest consideration. It unfortunately happens in the deliberations of a common council, representing confederated States, that there will happen to be real discrepancies of interest between the different geographical subdivisions of the confederacy. When the collisions, to which these give rise, become habitual and long continued, a fixed feeling of alienation, not to say hostility, grows out of them. When one of the conflicting parties happens to be distinguished by any national peculiarity or institution, that can be made the subject of reproach by the other, designing men will not be wanting to seize upon the prejudices connected with such peculiarity or institution, and fan the flame of national animosity, to answer some end of selfish and sinister ambition. And such, we lament to say, has been precisely our own experience. It is a fatal delusion, too long and fondly cherished, that all parts of the Union have the same interest. The differences resulting from the laws of nature and the dispensations of Providence, are not to be obliterated by vain human theories. After the fatal experience the Southern States have had on this subject, we cannot, we are not permitted to believe, that all parts of the Union have the same interest, in any other sense than that in which it may be said that all the nations of the earth have the same interest.

In the discussion of the tariff question, the conflicting interests of the Southern and the tariff States, have been habitually arrayed against each other. The advocates of the tariff interest in the Northern, Middle and Western States, knowing that the States in which that interest exists, constitute a majority, have laboured with too much success to make it a geographical, or to use a phrase better understood, a sectional controversy. In