ence to the best interests of the country at the present moment; and I trust we shall maintain it without wavering. The friends of the Administration are in a state of manifest distraction and division. One portion of them are looking to us to unite with them in preserving the peace of the country. Another portion of them are looking to us to aid them in accomplishing their cherished plans of public improvement. Let us be true to ourselves and to our principles, in both cases. Let us join hands with the South, in maintaining an honorable peace with foreign nations; and with the West, in carrying out these great measures of domestic policy. If the tariff, in the end, be overthrown; if the revenues of the country, under existing circumstances of public debt and public danger, be cut off; if the Labor of the country be deprived of its wages and its work; let an unmixed responsibility rest upon those, by whom a step so fatal shall have been taken.

THE WANTS OF THE GOVERNMENT

AND

THE WAGES OF LABOR.

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE STATE OF THE UNION, JUNE 25, 1846.

MR. CHAIRMAN,—

IF I had succeeded in getting the floor at an earlier hour yesterday, I should have been tempted to reply at some length to the honorable member from Louisiana, (Mr. Harmanson,) who addressed the committee in the course of the morning. I confess that I was a good deal astonished to hear so wholesale an attack upon the existing Tariff from that particular quarter. I had thought that if there were any product of our country which required and received the highest measure of protection, it was the staple product of the honorable member's own State. I had thought that if there were any port in the Union, which had profited more than another, of the vast internal trade which the existing Tariff has aided in building up, it was the port of his own proud metropolis.

But the honorable member founded his objections to the existing Tariff, very prudently, on certain alleged injurious influences in other parts of the country, and not on any which had come within the sphere of his own observation and experience. And one of the topics of his severest animadversion was the enormous dividends of the Eastern manufacturers.

Now, I will not weary the committee with details, which have often been recited, to prove that the average profits of the East

ern manufacturers have been as low as those of persons employed in any other line of business, and probably a good deal lower than those of the Louisiana sugar planter. But I do desire to present to those who are continually harping on this string,not excepting the Secretary of the Treasury, who has touched it somewhat rudely in his annual report, - a plain practical test of the truth and justice of this charge.

The manufacture of cotton is not, like the culture of cotton, necessarily a local business. There is excellent water-power, and an abundance of human labor, all over the country. Numerous cotton-mills have already been established in the Southern States. In Virginia, in North Carolina, in Georgia, the hum of the spindle is beginning to be a familiar sound. Even in South Carolina, I believe, it is not altogether unheard. My honorable friend from South Carolina, (Mr. Holmes,) smiles. Sir, I remember seeing in a newspaper, for which I was indebted to his own politeness, a call for a meeting, to be holden on the 17th of June, in one of the districts of South Carolina, last year, for the double purpose of celebrating the battle of Bunker Hill and taking measures for building a cotton-mill! The persons who called that meeting, it seems, understood the patriotism, as well as the policy, of establishing domestic manufactures. They had not forgotten the resolution which passed the British Parliament a few years before the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, "That the erection of manufactories in the colonies doth tend to diminish their dependence on the mother country." I heartily hope that this spirit will spread. I believe it is spreading, and that, half a century hence, our country will be as remarkable as a cotton-spinning country, as it is now as a cottongrowing country.

But what I wished particularly to say was this; that if it be not quite convenient, just yet, for our Southern friends to try the experiment of these enormous dividends on their own ground, they can easily have an opportunity elsewhere. The stocks of these New England factories, which are so much complained of for doing so good a business, can be had on the Boston Exchange every day in the week. They may be purchased, either at public auction or at private sale, by any one who

wishes to buy. And, what is more remarkable, Sir, not a few of them may be bought below par. I have here a price current of a few weeks ago, which gives the rates of the actual sales of the day, and from which it appears that almost any of these stocks may be had at a small advance, many of them at par, and not a few below it. Here they are: The Appleton mills, the Lawrence mills, the Thorndike mills, the Lowell mills; you may take shares to suit yourselves, and come in for scot and lot in all their exorbitant earnings.

Before you determine to do so, however, you will, perhaps, be disposed to propound to yourselves some such questions as these: - Can it be true, that stocks which can be purchased at such rates, can yield, uniformly and certainly, dividends so enormous? The Yankees are sharp enough, Heaven knows, at a bargain; would they be likely to sell, for a thousand dollars, that which would give them a regular and reliable interest on two or three thousand? Must it not be, on the other hand, that the great profits which are so much harped upon, are only the exceptions to the general rule; and that the average earnings are, after all, only a fair interest on the investment? And is there, too, any real monopoly about a business which any one can take a share in, who pleases? Can we, while it is in our power to build cotton-mills for ourselves, or to buy into those which are already established, complain of the system which protects them from a ruinous foreign competition, as so very grievous and grinding an oppression?

If the honorable member from Louisiana would ponder a little upon these interrogatories, I am sure he would be less violent in his denunciation of these enormous dividends.

But I have not come here, this morning, to reply to the honorable member from Louisiana, or any one else, but rather to say something on my own account. It is well understood that the bill under consideration was ordered to be reported to the House by a vote of five to four in the Committee of Ways and Means. As the majority of the Committee did not think fit to accompany the bill with any written explanations of the views with which it was prepared, it would, of course, have been inappropriate for the minority to make any report. But as one of that

minority, I desire to take this occasion to give my reasons for opposing the bill in committee, and for continuing that opposition in the House.

Undoubtedly, Mr. Chairman, the first great object of all our tariffs should be to provide revenue for the support of the government. There are no terms in which this principle can be asserted, too absolute and too unqualified to meet my ready and cordial assent. I agree to the proposition in the form in which it has been stated by the Secretary of the Treasury in his annual report," that no more money should be collected from duties on imports than is necessary for the wants of the government, economically administered." And I agree, also, to the converse of the proposition, as more emphatically pressed upon our consideration by the existing circumstances of the country,—that as much money as may be necessary for those wants ought, if possible, to be thus collected.

In a time of war, like the present, more especially, an ample revenue should be the primary aim and end of all our customhouse duties. To replenish the national treasury, to sustain the public credit, and to make seasonable and sufficient provision for meeting the manifold expenses which are incident to a state of war, is as essential to the vigorous and successful prosecution of that war, as the mustering of fleets and armies. And that Administration will have done but half its duty to the country, in the present condition of its foreign affairs, which, looking only to men and munitions, shall fail to advise,

"How War may, best upheld,

Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold,
In all her equipage."

I need not say, that I deeply deplore the occurrence of the war in which the country is involved, I have had neither part nor lot in the policy which has occasioned it, but have opposed that policy, from beginning to end, to the best of my ability. I voted for the bill recognizing the existence of the war, and authorizing the employment of men and money for its prosecution, with unfeigned reluctance and pain. The day can never be when I can vote, without reluctance and without pain, for any bill,