ing industry in which the resources of Belgium mainly consist. From the supply of 16 millions of people, including Holland and her India possessions, East and West, she found her consumers reduced to four millions. The free trade between her and Holland, which operated to mutual advantage under the union, was supposed to be injurious as soon as the governments became separated, and protective tariffs were mutually interposed to preserve home-industry from the supposed destructive effects of that competition which previously had benefited it. In 1833 the government of Belgium projected a uniform and comprehensive system of rail-ways, to the construction of which the surface of Belgium is, from its geographical position, adapted in a most extraordinary degree. The plan finally executed was that of taking one point in the centre of the kingdom, and constructing lines radiating from that centre to every side of the kingdom. The average cost of these roads is $42,000 per mile. The principal lines of these roads were opened in 1835, since when the business of Belgium has improved as follows:

Railroad receipts.... Tons carried...

1835.

1845.

41,000.. 702,000

f2,500,000....12,500,000 Passengers carried......... 1,275,000.... 3,456,000

These figures show a most extraordinary increase in the trade of these roads, which were the chief agent in developing that extension of commerce which the official returns of the kingdom present. In 1831, when the separation took place, the general imports and exports of the kingdom amounted to 202,592,865 francs. In 1835, when the principal lines of roads were opened, it reached 359,675,121 francs; and in 1845 it reached 676 millions of francs, or $126,000,000, being 60 per cent. of the external commerce of the United States. The most interesting feature of this vast increase is that of the transit trade, or the passage of goods across Belgium from the sea to the interior countries of Europe in its vicinity, and vice versa. This trade, previously to the construction of rail-roads, amounted to but 14 millions francs. In 1845 it reached 125 millions francs, being 900

per cent. in a few years; and having doubled in the last two years, when modified regulations and improvements upon the roads have facilitated the transportation of that trade which the improved condition of the German states, under internal free trade, has created. The external commerce of France has increased from 1,595 millions francs in 1835 to 2,496 millions francs in 1846, being near 75 per cent. in five years. As the French figures are official, or prices fixed by law to value the products, they represent quantities in a comparison, and therefore indicate the real progress of trade in a given number of years. The manufacturing and trading interests of the north and west of Europe may, as a whole, be put down as having increased 60 per cent. in the last ten years, and must consequently have produced the same effect upon the consumption of food as has the progress of the same interests in Great Britain. Manufactures and trade present attractions in their elasticity and profits which agriculture in Europe nowhere holds out. This truth is peculiarly evident in the fact, that after a quarter of a century of profound peace, steady corn-law protection in all the countries of Europe, and large annual purchases of their surplus by England for nine consecutive years, Europe, as a whole, has failed in the last year to produce more than enough to feed her own people. In the United States the reverse has been the case. The population increases in the ratio of 100 per cent. every 20 years, and 80 per cent. of that population are active, enterprising, and skilful agriculturists, possessed of all the improvements of the age adapted to the most prolific soil ever occupied by man, and intersected by works that make the cost of time and money in the transportation of produce comparatively of but little moment. Railroads and canals, aided by steam, have brought the great valley of the Mississippi as near to London as a few years since was that of the Tweed. Many of the same men who formerly produced food in the north of England are now applying the same labor, with much greater success, to the same object in western America. The labor that served in England to raise 18 bushels average,

now suffices for the production of 30 bushels of wheat. The constant improvements in the means of transportation, and the competition of rival lines, are continually diminishing the cost of transportation, and the Imperial Parliament has now removed an hitherto almost insurmountable artificial barrier to the admission of grain into England. From London as a centre, the cost of transportation will now form the only difference between the wheat of Western America and of the North of England. As an off-set to the advantage of proximity, the former yields nearly double the quantity for the same amount of labor, and its produce are untaxed, either for rent, Church, or materially for county poor. In England the taxes for the two last items have been estimated at 15s. sterling per acre, or 18 cts. per bushel of wheat, and this alone is equal to the cost of producing wheat in the Western country. When the settler occupies the prairie, he encounters, the first year, the expense of fencing and breaking up the soil, in addition to the expense of seed-sowing, cutting and harvesting. The average expense of all these items for the first year is less than $8, and the product for the first year averages 20 bushels of sound wheat, which therefore costs 40 cents per bushel. After the first year, the expense of fencing and "breaking up" is not incurred, and the remaining expense will average $4 50 per acre, and the yield 30 bushels, or 15 cts. per bushel, or 5s. 6d. sterling per quarter. This wheat is the producer's own property. Whatever it brings in money is his own. It is not the property of a lordly owner, who must keep up his state and retinue out of the proceeds. It is the result of the industry of him who conquered the soil and drew forth its riches by his own exertions. Whatever profit the grain yields him is the reward of that industry.

It has been alleged that grain is produced at small cost in the serf districts of Europe, because labor is cheap. Thus, it has been alleged that under free trade in corn, the capital of England will be transferred to Europe, where labor can be had at 6d. per day, and that capital employing the unskilful and unwilling labor of serfs

on the worn-out lands bordering the Baltic, and which yield 6 bushels for two sown, will successfully compete with the active and intelligent industry of an American farmer on his ground. which yields 30 bushels of better wheat. Although the peasants of the North of Europe are no longer called slaves, they are so in fact, much in the same manner that slavery exists in Mexico. The peasants of Poland hold a number of acres, usually 35 to 50, from their lord, for which they are bound to work on his land two days in the week with oxen; if he requires them two days more he pays 6 cts. per day, if the remaining two days of the week, he pays such a sum as they can agree upon. As he requires their labor usually when their own land most wants their services, it is any thing but willingly performed. He is bound to furnish them with oxen in case one dies, and also their ploughs and implements, such as they are. The peasants, since their personal liberty was promulgated in 1791, may leave the estate, but they must first discharge their debts to its lord. This is the same tenure of liberty as in Mexico, and the result is usually the same, viz. that they are always in debt, and are always hopelessly working on at the bidding of another. When the freedom of these peasants was first decreed, they were greatly alarmed, because it was viewed only in the light of relieving their lords from the duty of protecting them in old age and sickness. These people live in thatched wooden huts, in the single room of which the cattle and inhabitants crowd together. Their food is mostly cabbage, potatoes, black bread, &c. "Whenever the peasant," says Mr. Jacob, "has a small quantity of produce to dispose of in the market town, a portion of the money is first used to purchase salt, the remainder is commonly expended in intoxication." This is the country, these the people, and such their habits, from whom the American farmer is to apprehend successful competition in a steady English market for wheat. The mere suppo

sition is a libel on the country.

There can be no trade, either internal or external in any country, which is not based on an interchange of the produce of industry. In the North of Europe,

where the people are not sufficiently refined to use wheat as an article of food, their wants in all respects are circumscribed, and they do not require, in exchange for the wheat they raise exclusively as an article of export, those articles of British manufacture which constitute the means of England to pay for food, and which are of first necessity to the well-being of the American agriculturists, the refinements and attainments of whose families are superior to many of the rural lords in Europe. It is this community of interests between the Anglo-Saxons of England and those of the United States, that under a free system, will ensure to the latter the supply of all the grain of which England may be deficient, and the interchange of commodities reduces the cost of transportation. If a vessel leaves the port of New-York with grain, she charges 3d. sterling or 18 cts. per bushel freight, and she cannot carry less, because she is almost sure to come back empty, and that 18 cts. covers the expense of two passages. If she had a return cargo, the same profit would accrue from 9 cts. freight on a bushel of grain out, which item alone would reduce the cost of the wheat delivered in England 3s. 6d. per quarter. The want of this intercommunion is the great source of distress at this moment both in England and the states. The chief products of the former are manufactures, and of the latter, agricultural produce. In both countries there is an over-production of the staples of each, a glut of markets and a most unparallelled depression in prices; while in each country there is a great want of the surplus products of the other. Manufactured goods were never so abundant or so low as in England, and produce, particularly wheat and wheat flour, scarcely ever presented in any country such quantities for so little money, as is now the case in the United States.

The farmers of America cannot buy goods, either foreign or domestic, because they cannot dispose of their produce. The operatives of England cannot buy a sufficiency of that produce, because the glutted market for goods suspends their labors and wages at the same time. This unnatural separation of interests and mutual injury inflicted

upon each other, has been the result of government jealousies kept alive by parties who have sought special privileges to themselves, at the expense of the remaining portion of the people at home and abroad. It has been supposed that the welfare of the state required its "independence," as it has been called, of other countries for its supplies. Yet the nation that has a great deal to sell, is as much dependent upon the buyer as the latter is upon the producer. The transaction of sale and purchase is a mutual benefit. Special privileges have only served to make the government and certain classes rich and powerful at the expense of the mass of the people. England is an eminent example of the working of this theory. Her government and aristocracy combine power and wealth in an extraordinary degree, but the condition of her people is far from enviable. Her power itself is fast becoming nominal. In an actual war she would indeed inflict great and serious injuries upon her opponent; but her commercial interests, on which that power rests, makes the existence of the war impossible. The people of England have discovered that peace and commerce are the means of their welfare, and not taxes and glory. To extend commerce they have successfully demanded free trade in corn. The idea that to depend upon foreign nations for corn is injurious to the national welfare, has been pronounced by the popular leaders in Parliament, an absurdity, and the national voice has declared for entire freedom in the trade in that article. The United States are eminently fitted by resources habits, industry, and position, to supply the wants of England; and the people of this country have demanded abandonment of the obsolete notion of protective duties, which, in their operation, mean, practically, an embargo on sales of corn to England, by forbidding the entry of the returns in products of British industry. The state of Texas, in its independent condition, could not successfully carry on its government, and it asked to be annexed to the Union. It was so annexed, and prohibitive duties on both sides abolished, leaving absolute free trade between it and the other states; and this freedom of trade is the only manner in which

an

annexation brings itself home to the people in their individual transactions. They now derive their supplies from, and send their produce to, the United States, uncounted and untaxed, and they experience the benefit of it. England now virtually proposes the same annexation. By abolishing her corn laws, she asks to have her 18 millions of Anglo-Saxons numbered among the consumers of western bread-stuffs, and the conditions are, that the producers of those bread-stuffs shall take their pay in the products of British industry. This is objected to by the makers of similar goods here, on the plea that England can furnish them "too cheap;" that unless the monopoly prices that exist here can be sustained, the manufacture will be abandoned, and the Union become " dependent" upon England for goods. What then? If the vast capital, manufacturing skill, and resources of England, become annexed to the United States through the bond of mutual interest, and the people of this country enjoy a larger quantity of comforts and luxuries for the same labor that they now bestow, where will be the evil? If the great capitals of the Lancashire mill-owners come to compete with the corporate monopoly millowners here, for the supply of the great mass of the American people, there be fewer overgrown fortunes in the hands of the mill-owners, but there will be more comfort diffused through the land.

may

It is, however, not true that any diminution of manufactures will take place in consequence of European competition; on the contrary, the consumption of goods must be vastly increased, and, as a consequence, the quantity to be made must swell in an equal ratio. The free import of corn into England will ensure cheap bread in England, and every practical person is aware that in England cheap food is accompanied by a larger consumption of goods. The same cause will produce a steady market for produce, and enhance the means of the farmers to buy goods; while the low prices of those goods will ensure an extensive consumption. By a double process, therefore, the demand for manufactured goods must,

"We had experience of this in 1842. The cotton mills were at their last gasp; the warehouses full to bursting, and no sale. The terrified manufacturer neither dared work nor stop with these devouring machines of his; interest on the money he has borrowed does not stop. He kept his mills going half days, and heaped goods on goods. Prices fell; to no purpose.They went on falling, until cotton fell to # * * A miracle three-pence a yard. followed; that word three-pence operated into an 66 chasers of poor folks, who never bought, open sesame." Millions of purstarted up. It was then found how immense a consumer the people is when set agoing. The warehouses were emptied as if by magic. The machines went to work like furies. The chimneys vomited smoke. It was a revolution in France, scarcely noted, but still a great one; a revolution in the cleanliness and embellishment of the dwellings of the poor-bodylinen, bed-linen, table-linen, window-curtains-whole classes acquired these things that had never before known what they were since the beginning of the world."

#

This was the wonder-working magic of that cheapness of price which protectionists held up as a bug-bear to the people. This cheapness, by which goods are placed within the reach of all, is carefully guarded against by the protective policy. Grave statesmen and Christian philanthropists raise an outcry against the " pauper labor" of

Europe, which hackneyed phrase, if it means anything, means that the products of industry and frugality jeopardize the profits of indolent possessors of capital. It is not alone against the foreign artizan resident abroad that this cry is directed, but it is applied to the adopted citizen, who, seeking our shores that he may enjoy the whole fruits of his own industry, is assailed because his habits of rigid frugality and persevering industry are destructive of corporate privileges and paper money profits. In relation to English manufactures, the wages of operatives are higher than in the United States. The report of the Parliamentary factory commissioners state, that the average labor in England is 69 hours per week for 11s., or $2 64. In the United States, 78 hours for 10s., or $2 40. The average in Lowell is $1 50 per week, and $1 25 board, being $2 75, or 11s. 6d. per week. These figures show that England has no advantage over the United States in cheapness of labor. In the last two years a very great reduction has been made in the prices paid for weaving. The manner of it has been thus:-Prior to 1842 a girl tended two power looms, and she received 16 cents per piece for cotton cloth produced; these looms are driven by steam or water-power. In 1841-2, the speed at which these looms were propelled was reduced, and the girl required to tend three. The most healthy and active girls were selected, and the others discharged. As soon as habit enabled her to tend the three looms with comparative facility, the speed was increased, and still further exertion on her part became necessary. This process continued until the old speed was restored, and an active strong girl became

taxed to the utmost of her physical powers, to tend three where before two was considered a great task. These three looms then would produce three pieces in the same time that two were formerly produced. The price allowed the girl was reduced from 16 cents to 11 cents per piece; she therefore received 33 cents for the same length of time employed as when she received 32 cents for producing two pieces. Her extra exertion in producing the third piece is the increased profit of the millowner, who memorialises Congress for protection against British "pauper labor," because he has increased the wages of his own operatives; that is, he pays her 33 cents where he paid 32 cents before! This increased production does not lower the price here, because, as soon as the United States' markets are overloaded, the goods are exported to China and India, where they undersell the English goods at a discrimination of 10 per cent. duty in favor of the latter. This system is secure in the hands of monopolists as long as the large capital of England is debarred from competing with the corporate capital here. It is impossible for individuals here to compete with vested capitals of a million dollars and upwards each, and the protection of the people against this oppression is to be found only in the aid of the large capital of Lancashire, whose people are now asking our farmers to sell them their surplus flour for their goods. The practical annexation of the manufacturing interests of England to the agricultural interests of the United States through free trade, again unites the Anglo-Saxon race in an indissoluble bond, and gives a new impulse to the prosperity of this glorious Union.