have been granted to pioneer settlers. Under this system the choicest lands are culled out and settled, and the population swarms westward, spreading over the surface of the ground, and turning the best lots into gardens vast tracts of land become encircled and erected into states; the best lands purchased by the hardy immigrants from Europe and the older states, are prompt ly brought into cultivation. There remain great quantities of land which are not worth $1 25 per acre-that is, they will not bring that price as long as better land can be obtained for the same money farther on. This land, therefore, remains unproductive in the possession of the federal government, within the limits of a state the settled portions of which only are taxed for its support.The graduation bill which has passed the House, and which will be found at the close of this number, provides that those lands shall be graduated in prices to a level proportioned to their value, in order that all the lands in all the states may become available and taxable for state purposes. Clayism pursued a counter-policy. It contended for the sale of the lands in large quantities to speculators, regardless of the preemption-rights of actual settlers; that large tracts of land might accumulate in a few hands, retarding the growth of new states, or entailing upon them a dependent tenantry, with its incalculable evils. The vast tracts that passed into the hands of land-companies a few years since in exchange for bankcredits, and which are yet unsettled, are instances. The graduation of the price of the lands was opposed, because it was alleged it would draw off the population of the older states, and diminish the revenue; or, in other words, because it would aid the poor laborer of the Atlantic cities, dependent upon corporate-factories, in becoming a free landholder, independent on his own piece of land. It would diminish the number of factory-slaves, and, as a consequence, the profits of the owners. Next in importance to the great measure of extending the jurisdiction of the Union, and providing for the occupation and settlement of the land by the people, is the modification of the customs'-taxes upon the goods consumed by those people; the removal of those baneful restrictions which destroy their markets, paralyze their industry, and retard the growth of the country. The avowed object of the protectionists is to "build up a home-market," which, if the phrase has any meaning, is to prevent the citizen from becoming the free occupant of his own soil; to degrade him from the rank of a landed-proprietor, in the independent exercise of his own rights, and chain him to the steam-engine and the loom ; to labor on at the bidding of an overseer for the weekly pittance doled out by lordly proprietors, who put up or put down the price they pay, according to the state of the labor-market, as the usurer regulates the rate of interest, by the condition of the money-market. They would have the American citizen, instead of being the employer of factories and the patron of their goods, the slave of their bidding and a mendicant on their favors. They would bind him hand and foot, drag him into their shops, and rifle him at their pleasure, in exchange for such wares as they may choose to force upon him. This system was long practised by the oligarchy of England, until the progress of public opinion enabled the Premier to destroy it for ever. Sir Robert Peel, after achieving that great work, the repeal of the corn-laws, retired from office, June 30, closing a brilliant speech with the following beautiful peroration: "I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist, who, from less honorable motives, maintains protection for his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good-will in those places which are the abodes of men whose lot it is to labor, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow-a name remembered with expressions of good-will, when they shall recreate their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice." A similar triumph has now been effected here. The laborious cultivators of the soil have the road to market opened before them; the manufactures of the world spread out at their command, that in making their purchases they may avail themselves of the skill of all nations, the advantages of all climates and national resources, including the habits of different people. The purchases they make with the proceeds of their toil, will be the better enjoyed, when they are "no longer leavened by a sense of injustice." This object will be effected by the tariff-bill, which will be found at the close of this number. It abandons the principle of protection, and levies ad valorem duties only, by which means the consumer will have the benefit of those alterations in foreign cost, that arise, from time to time, from various causes. The law, at the same time, guards strictly and effectively against fraudulent under-valuations, by which the federal revenues might be injured. This clause was stricken out in the Senate, on motion of Mr. Webster, when the bill passed, 28 to 27. The vote on the bill in the House, in favor, 113 democrats, 1 whig; opposed, 18 democrats, 77 whigs while it indicates the policy of the two great parties, also evinces the alarming extent to which the direct pecuniary interest of sections influences votes in the national councils. We not only find local interests sending a delegate to Congress to obtain special privileges, but we find delegates salaried and paid by a class of persons to obtain benefits at the expense of the national industry; and we find those efforts of frantic manufacturers and their unscrupulous agents, sufficient to endanger the ultimate passage of the bill in the Senate. If they could not defeat the will of the people, they strove to gain time. A delay of six months in abolishing the present monopoly, is a gain of hundreds of thousands of dollars to individual firms, and to obtain which, a lavish expenditure by the whole can well be afforded. This is a most dangerous feature of the times. With the success of those agents, the means of extending that legislative dependence on private wealth would necessarily increase; and each year that the system was prolonged, the power of the monopolists would strengthen. De Tocqueville has well said, in his chapter on the engendering of aristocracy, by manufacturers, that, "I am of opinion, upon the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fix. ed in this direction; for if ever permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrate into the world, it may be predicted that this is the channel by which they will enter." Intimately connected with this neces It sity of selling surplus productions, and bringing back the proceeds into the country for the use of the owners, through the instrumentality of commerce, is the warehousing bill, by which, while the government is secure in obtaining the full amount of revenues from the goods imported, every obstacle is sought to be removed from the way of trade. By granting every facility for the composition of cargoes destined to all parts of the world, domestic produce and goods are introduced into new markets, new demands for them created, and the sales consequently extended. In commerce it is practically true, notwithstanding all the absurdities of protectionists, that each country of the world can furnish some one article to better advantage than all others, as, for instance, Brazil, coffee; China, tea; United States, cotton or tobacco; France, wine; England, iron, etc., etc. It also happens to be true that it is very seldom the case that an entire cargo of one article is shipped to one port, because a whole cargo of one article arriving at a port of minor magnitude is too much to dispose of at once. produces a glut, and the sales are at a loss. If the cargo is made up of a variety of articles, each of which is suited to the market, and the quantity of neither is too large, the whole will sell to advantage. To make up such a cargo it is obvious at once that each article must be obtained to the best advantage; that is, the peculiar product of each country must be obtained by the vessel at a price as near the first cost as possible. The vessel, belong to what nation she may, that can obtain the greatest number of articles necessary to an assorted cargo, on the best terms, commands the trade to the exclusion of all the others. The eminently practical merchants of London early saw the importance of this, and the desideratum was, by some means to collect at one point the goods of all nations at low rates. The warehousing system fulfilled that object. Under its operation the merchantmen of England coming from all quarters of the known world, deposited their diversified freights in the London Docks, free of taxation. A London merchant, in fitting out his ship, finds almost at his door the most ample assortment of all descriptions of goods. He enjoys every possible facility for making up a most desirable cargo for any point of the world, and, as a necessary consequence, there is no port in the world where British manufactures cannot be favorably introduced at better prices than the goods of other nations; because the favorable terms on which his whole cargo is made up, allows him to pay more for British goods to complete the assortment. A New-York merchant in making up an assortment for perhaps a South American market, has no advantage. He finds in the public stores no general goods, except such as have paid exorbitant cash duties. If he finds a few entitled to debenture they are not in packages or lots that will suit, or if he finds such, they have been charged with interest on the cash duties paid, and must pay 24 per cent. out of the drawback, and all American goods are sustained at a level above those of other nations by an absurd tariff. He cannot therefore compete with the Englishman in the bulk of the cargo, and United States domestic goods and produce will not pay to be sent alone. The trade therefore passes entirely into the hands of Englishmen. In illustration of this, we may quote from official sources the results of the United States trade with the nations of the American continent. Thus, in 1834 the United States exported to the southern nations a value of $6,078.032 of foreign goods. In 1845 this amount had diminished to $1,677,984. Of United States produce the export in 1834 was to the same quarters $5,063,037, and in 1845, $5,873,941. The aggregate decline of the whole trade was near three millions of dollars. When we consider that the United States are the only commercial nation on these continents, and that all these American nations have, in the 11 years elapsed since 1834, greatly advanced in prosperity, we become struck with the utter loss of our position as the leading nation on this continent. In order to show how completely England has profited by our criminal anti-commercial policy, we may state that the value of plain and dyed cottons exported from the United States to the above mentioned countries in 1834. was $1,406,899, and in 1845 it was $970,267 only. In the same time the consumption of cotton goods by those countries has wonderfully increased, and Great Britain has had the business. In 1834 she sent to those countries 127,285,018 yards of cotton cloths, and in 1845, 164,376,714 yards; an increase of 37,000,000 yards, or 30 per cent., in the same time that the United States exports thither declined 30 per cent., notwithstanding that it is alleged by manufacturers that they can undersell England with their goods in India. This indicates the manner in which our trade perishes through the insane policy of crushing commerce, for fear the import of goods will interfere with private monopolies. The great measures embodying the principles contended for by the people at the last general election have passed the popular branch of the Legislature, and have, with a few individual exceptions, received the support of the democratic party in the Senate. The scenes at Washington are, however, of a most demoralizing and sickening nature. The location of the seat of government at a distance from great cities, lest the action of Congress might be overawed by force, was possibly a wise measure; but the experience of the present session shows that a desperate and unscrupulous monied faction may, through the action of the machinery they so well know how to put in motion, produce the strangest results on the final action of the Senate. Of those members of the latter body who are less senators of the United States than manufacturing delegates; less statesmen than factory operatives; less Americans than bondsmen; nothing is to be expected but the most reckless disregard of the popular sentiment and rights of the people, as well as the interests of the country, and the cause of human liberty. The progress of liberal principles throughout the world is steady and irresistible, and they will prevail; to doubt it is treason to the spirit of our institutions. The tenacity with which the privileged classes cling to their monopolies, will only arouse a more radical resistance on the part of the people. The severe struggle that the monopolists sustained for the preservation of their privileges, and the danger which the final success of the tariff bill encounters, afford the most serious lessons to the people, and call loudly for untiring vigilance in preventing classes from gathering too much strength through the aid of partial laws. In conclusion, we have to congratulate our readers on the modification of that monstrous tariff, which was the sole remaining monument of the defeat of 1840. AN ESSAY ON THE GROUND AND REASON OF PUNISHMENT.* THE authors of this joint production have acquired no little reputation, by writings which display a richness of words and images, rather than of solid and substantial thought. In the work now before us, they have discussed a subject which demands the nicest discrimination and the most profound analysis. If we may judge from this specimen, we may safely predict, that neither law, nor theology, nor philosophy, is the province in which they are destined to shine. They are evidently better writers than thinkers; and if they would preserve the laurels they have won, it would be well for them, perhaps, not to venture too far into the deep things of philosophy. We say this from no unfriendly feeling to the cause they have undertaken to advocate; for we are believers in both the right and the duty of society to inflict capital punishment in cases of murder. But we most strenuously object to the tone and spirit in which they have advocated this cause, as well as to some of the grounds on which they have placed it; we feel that they have, in some respects, rendered an essential dis-service to the cause they have so zealously espoused. The subject of penal jurisprudence, in all its branches, is so intimately interwoven with the great moral interests of society, that it is well worthy of the most profound attention of the statesman and philosopher. But of all the questions it presents for our consideration, that of capital punishment is by far the most important. This is a question, then, which demands the most searching analysis of principles, the most cautious and unwearied circumspection, that nothing may be overlooked and nothing misapplied; in short, it demands the most reverential consideration, the entire devotion of all our powers. It is to be approached in no light or frivolous mood, in no angry or denunciatory spirit. It should be treated in a spirit of the utmost calmness and moderation. Most deeply do we regret the aspect which the whole controversy, in relation to capital punishment, has been made to assume. Harsh epithets, and dark insinuations, by which motives have been impugned and characters called in question, are the weapons which have been too freely used. The advocates, on the one side, have spoken, and declaimed and denounced, as if they felt themselves specially called to plead the cause of divine mercy against a barbarous and bloody generation; while those on the other, have assumed the threatening port and mien of prosecuting attorneys of divine vengeance. In the latter class, and high in the class, we must place our authors. The tone and spirit of their book is decidedly bad. It is unworthy of the subject and of the men. Indeed, the book which shall take up this great theme, and discuss it as it deserves to be discussed, is yet to be written. We shall not stop here, however, to justify this judgment of the work of our authors; its justice will sufficiently appear as we proceed with the argument. In the prosecution of this argument, we do not intend to notice the various points they have raised; on the contrary, we shall confine our attention, exclusively, to one great radical error into which they have fallen, or rather into which they have violently rushed, and which they have most intemperately defended." The error to which we allude is this: That human government should punish" a man simply because he deserves to be punished."-p. 183. The idea that human justice is retributive, everywhere pervades the Essay of Dr. Lewis, as well as the more elaborate Defence of Dr. Cheever. Now, this is the position which we deny; and we AN ESSAY ON THE GROUND AND REASON OF PUNISHMENT; WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE PENALTY OF DEATH. By Taylor Lewis, Esq. And A DEFENCE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT By Rev. George Cheever, D. D. With an Appendix, containing a Review of Burleigh on the Death Penalty. New-York; Wiley & Putnam, 161 Broadway. pp. 365. 1846.] 66 An Essay on the Ground and Reason of Punishment. intend to show, that in human laws Before we proceed to examine his ar- 91 law to prevent crime and to protect so- We shall now proceed to examine |