tion, not made or grown here at all, or not produced in sufficient quantity to supply the demand, should be increased from 30 to 50 per cent. Brown sugar is raised from three to four cents per pound; other sugars 25 per cent. The impost on bohea tea and molasses is doubled, and on salt increased 25 per cent. Wine and spirits remain as before. These are the prominent features of the bill, which we have not room to set out in more detail..

Suppose now the object accomplished, which is designed by this system. Suppose the chrysalis state in which we should be passing from a people essentially commercial, to a people essentially manufacturing, were over, and all the evils of diminished supply, extravagant prices, and vexatious impositions, which attend a new state of affairs, were gone by, and the irritations which they caused forgotten. a time indeed that is not very suddenly to arrive, and a resting place not found in the early stages of the new turnpike road on which we are to travel. Yet what will be the effect on the community when matters are arranged as the advocates of this system propose? Tuis surely is the most advantageous period that can be taken for the friends of the measures, for it passes without notice over an interval, however short, of general discontent, when the benefits of ancient pursuits have ceased to operate, and those of the new system have scarcely began to be felt. In our view of such a period, we must separate what is merely patriotic from what is altogether pecuniary; and must not expect that to flatter our vanity is certainly to add to our wealth. It is one thing to be independent, and another to be affluent. If it be wise to adopt the policy of Lycurgus, let it so be understood, and we may prepare before hand to be proud, republican, and poor. We cannot engraft on it the opposite system of Pericles, and be at the same time refined, luxurious, and rich. The effect of this policy on the wealth of the nation is a subject of anxious consideration; its influence on character is a different and no less important inquiry. Let us attend a moment to each.

Labour is the great and only source of national wealth. That labour which is employed in drawing from the earth or the sea new articles of property, in refining or elaborating what is coarse into that which is fine, or in exchanging the products of one soil, or the fabrics of one set of artizans, for the products or fabrics of another, is in each case a different New Series, No. 5.

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If

mode respectively of increasing the wealth of a country. one man raise sheep that produce a quantity of wool, if another convert it into coarse cloth, if a third carry it to a distant country and exchange it for furs, and take the furs elsewhere, and barter them for the same quantity of fine cloth, it is easy to see that the labour of each has been usefully employ ed, and the national wealth increased by each of them. Nor is it of any consequence in which step of the proceeding the most value is added. The agriculturist in the supposed case has originated property, worth, for example, one hundred dollars; the manufacturer has doubled its value, the merchant has exchanged it for an article which on his return is worth but five dollars more. The result of their joint effort has been, that the country has $205 worth of property, to which each person concerned has in some degree contributed, and it is American labour, whether engaged at home or abroad, that has produced it.

Again, if the farmer raise two parcels of wool, which are worth $10 each, and deliver one to the manufacturer, who converts it into cloth that is worth $15, and the other to the merchant, who, by transporting it to a better market, exchanges it for an article worth $20, it is not easy to perceive why his la bour thus employed has not enriched the country to double the amount of the other, and why the increase of value is not as much native American labour, as that which is performed by the manufacturer at home. American industry and capital have been employed on a similar object by different means, and the result is apparent. While there are those two methods of procuring the same thing, a competition is excited, and the consumers, who are the true public, the great body, whose interest is the real interest of the nation, and which embraces all the other classes, will be served on the most favourable terms.

But it is discovered by the friends of the new system, that no competition can be sustained by the manufacturers within the United States, with regard to certain useful articles, against the manufacturers from abroad. In other words, that the same article can be obtained by the merchant and sold to the consumer, cheaper than it can be obtained and sold by the manufacturer in the country. That the present imposts, with which the article in the hand of the merchant is burthened, and from which the same article in the hand of the home

manufacturer is exempted, do not sufficiently embarrass the traffic to give the latter'a monopoly of the market; so that measures must be devised to support him.

Now it is very clear that all those classes of manufacturers who can sustain themselves by the present imposts, and who find their trade flourishing under present regulations, are not interested to effect a change; and it is exceedingly manifest that the public would derive no benefit by granting to them facilities, which would only enable them to increase their profit by raising their price. It is accordingly an error to use the terms of this controversy, with that generality in which they have but too often been applied. It is not to encourage manu. factures; but some kinds of manufactures. It is to give artificial aid to some branches at the expense of the rest; and in fact to protect the interests of cotton and woollen manufactures, at the cost not only of the agricultural and commercial classes of the community, but of all those who are engaged in other manufacturing concerns. Moreover, when this contemplated protection is obtained, one of two cases must occur. Either for eign importation of these articles will cease, or the goods will come so high charged that the American manufacturer will secure a preference in the market. In such event the capital and enterprise engaged in importation will be thrown out of employment, and the consumer be taxed for the encourage. ment of manufactures, in a sum equal to the whole amount of the difference of price caused by a free or a restricted trade; by which difference the manufacturer thrives.

But a partial market will not suit the friends of the system. We must command our consumption; that is, our whole consumption. Foreign goods must be excluded from the market, and the trade monopolized by the home manufacturer. Capital must be driven into a new channel, and the labour, which is open to our enterprising citizens, directed to different pursuits. But, when all this is accomplished, the revenue is curtailed and three millions are lost to the public chest. The same money will then buy no more cloth than it does now, because you have excluded what is cheap, that what is dear may find a sale. Hitherto, of every four dollars that the consumer paid for his cloth, one dollar went to the treasury. He now gets the article at a higher price, and yet the call of the government remains to be satisfied. Will those who cause the deficiency create the supply? No. The tax is on

consumption, and he who wears the cloth, not he who makes it, must pay the excise. Besides, the burthen is not exclusive, although the advantage is. It is laid on the consumption of other articles, which will still be imported. Sugar, salt, tea, and coffee, advance in price by the revenue provision of the bill, and the three millions, which are lost in a zeal to ripen by forced heat the yet green manufactures of the country, are to be replaced, by an increase of price on every article of consumption. You have consented to pay a new tax on whatever you wear; you are rewarded by an additional price on whatever you eat. You have commanded your consumption,' but it is the consumption of the purse. The tea, coffee, pepper, sugar, salt, spices, &c. before enumerated, are by an increased. impost, causing of course an increased price in the market, required to refund some part of the treasury loss; and this amount is an additional tax, because it is not relieved by a diminution on any other article. Nor is it the only, one which is brought on the consumer. He has to bear the increased price which is thereby artificially created, for so much of the same article as is made within the country, and pays two or three dollars for every one which the treasury receives. This is best proved by example.

Suppose a defect of three millions is to be supplied in part by an additional duty on pepper. The merchant pays it at the custom house and is refunded by the additional price of the article in the market. As we raise no pepper, the additional price is the additional tax; because all that is consumed has been subject to the duty. But suppose it is in part also to be supplied by additional duties on salt and brown sugar, of which articles we make large quantities, but not enough for consumption. The price of all salt and sugar is raised in the market, and if the consumption be supplied equally by the importer and the manufacturer, each is interested equally in the market price; the former however receives the additional price on the amount he sells, and pays it over to the government; the latter retains it for his own benefit. But the consumer, whether he purchases of the one or the other, pays the price to which the new impost has raised it. Thus to pro

vide one dollar for the treasury, two dollars are taken from: the people. And as is the proportion which the home manufacture bears to the quantity imported, will be the loss to the people on the amount paid to the treasury.

The projected measures were so contrived as, on the same importations as in 1818, to supply $5,800,000 of the amount which, by its prohibitory and protecting duties, the government would lose. But that was a year of extraordinary importation, much above the average of common years, and the imposts produced $22,000,000. There would not remain the common average of importations, because increase of price lessens consumption. But the greater the importation, the greater is the evil we are considering. The treasury is supplied by an exorbitant tax on the sorts of articles, which are both manufactured in the country and imported from abroad, and the consumers would pay ten millions, before the treasury would realize five. Thus one false step renders another unavoidable, alike in politics and morals.

-The hypothesis, that should the new tariff be established, the same amount of importation would continue as before, is wholly fallacious. As the price increases, purchasers diminish; and as purchasers diminish, importation grows less. The proportion of difference cannot be ascertained with certainty. But as a great portion of the inhabitants on the seaboard would be essentially injured in their ability to purchase, a more than usual diminution would be experienced. Already a great decrease in the quantity of imported goods is found to exist. The demand ceases as the ability to pay ceases; and when the importer ascertains that his goods will not sell, he has generally good sense enough to lessen his orders. There' is no need of interference on the part of government to regulate this. It will as assuredly regulate itself, as water will find its own level. The laws of nature are not more uniform and irresistible, than those which self-interest imposes upon commerce; and the knowledge which sharp-sighted calculations of profit or loss give to the importer is the best, and in fact the only security against an inadequate supply on the one hand, or an injurious redundancy on the other.

Already it is ascertained that the imposts, which were estimated for this year at 18,000,000, will be less than 15,000,000. What would they have been on the system of the proposed tariff? The deficiency could not have been less than six millions and probably eight millions of dollars. How is this to be raised? The advocates of the new system are not backward in declaring it. They admit the necessity of an excise, though they differ as to the manner, in which this great sum