to pay, by direct taxation for the support of government. If more revenue was raised by the tariff than was necessary for the support of government, then of the excess he had a right to complain, and of no more. Now let us suppose that 20 per cent. would suffice for the support of government-but that thirty would be required to give sufficient protection to our manufacturers. In this case, Mr. McDuffie would be aggrieved ten per cent. unless he was otherwise benefitted to a greater amount. To determine this, I will endeavor to make out an account current. We will suppos Mr. McDuffie a planter raising 500 bales of 500 lb eachand working one hundred hands, and that in his family he consumes annually $3000 worth of foreign goods. By his view he pays an unjust tax of ten per cent. or $300 per annum. But by paying this tax, he keeps all our factories going, and keeps in employment at least two hundred thousand manufacturers, say one third of all who would otherwise be thrown out, and have to engage in agriculture. These 200,000 men would on an average in the West, where they probably would go, raise 500 bushels of grain each, besides what they would consume. This would be one hundred millions of bushels. Besides which, they are now supporting themselves, and are not customers as before to the farmer-giving a demand for 30 bushels each, or six millions of bushels, equal to the market, within a fraction, which we now find with Englandbesides the one hundred millions to spare which must find a market somewhere. Where will you find it? It comes in at any rate to compete with the general surplus, causes a glut, and brings down the whole produce of the country in price. The consequence will be that the labor employed in raising breadstuffs will seek other employment, and much of it go to raising cotton. When down comes the price of cotton. Now, to be exceedingly reasonable, I will presume a very small effect, say that the bringing of this labor from manufacturing into agriculture will cause only a decline of half a cent per pound. I really believe it would be two cents per pound-but say half a cent. This is two dollars and a half per bale, or $1250 which he loses by failing to protect the manufacturers, while to protect them it only cost $300leaving a clear balance against him of $950. And this is on the supposition, that the tariff is all added to the price of the goods, and is so much lost to the consumer. But experience proves such not to be the fact. When a tariff is laid, the increased price in the goods is perhaps half the amount of increased tariff for the first year. But every year this price diminishes, and in a few years the goods so tariffed become cheaper than before the tariff was laid. This is the result of the competition created by protection. I do not venture this as a mere opinion-it is history -the archives of our country will prove it to be the fact. And I venture to say, that but for the home competition, created by the

fostering of our own manufacturers, we would at this time be paying to England for every thing we get of her a price much greater than we are paying, which would equal double the tariff our manufacturers ask for.

F. What do they ask for-what tariff will satisfy them.

P. They ask an increase which would not be felt the nation in twelve months could find every thing as cheap as it is now. They ask only fair play in their own market. They want a small addition, but they more need guarding against fraud than they do an increase of the tariff. The ad valorem system of levying duty, seems to be equitable-but it is not so. It is a system which generates corruption to an enormous extent, because the invoice of the importer is in general the guide as to value. It is so invariably unless the appraisers are able to detect fraud, and it is not once in twenty times that the appraiser is so accurate a judge as to know the value, and the invoice has to be taken as the guide. This invoice is made out at from 33 per cent. to fifty per cent. under the actual cost of the goods to enter them byand a different invoice is sent to sell by. That the importer has to swear to the invoice amounts to nothing. If our own citizens are too scrupulous to perjure themselves, there are foreign tools. enough who will do it. Our own citizens generally will nothence most of the foreign goods are now sent by the foreign manufacturers to resident agents here, whose scruples are not in their way. These agents have now almost monopolized the importing business-driving our own honest merchants out of it. I went in April 1849 to England, in the Canada with 163 passengers, of which number about 100 were resident agents in New York of foreign manufacturers, and I recollect of but one single native American importing merchant among the passengers.

These agents who make fraudulent entries of their goods, can afford to sell them to our own merchants cheaper than they can import them. 'We are thus not only cheated out of our revenue, but have a set of foreign factors to displace our own honest merchants-not only taking the bread from our manufacturers, but from our honést merchants too. This is abominable.'

F. Well, what remedy would you propose?

P. I would agree upon an ad valorem duty, as a basis for a specific duty. Fix any duty deemed reasonable by existing values then by those values, fix a specific duty on every species of goods. So many cents per square yard upon cottons, woolens, silks &c. of certain weights, and fineness &c.-so much on pig iron, bar iron, rail road iron &c. Then there will be but little room for fraud, and then the home manufacturer will have a fair chance -but not under the present system. Take the last specific duties before the tariff was changed as the guide. That tariff worked well. You cannot make a specific tariff without objection. You

must range every thing into classes, and in doing so the ad valorem principle will necessarily in some degree be varied from, but the variance will be occasional only, whereas by the ad valorem plan there is fraud throughout. The bribery offered for perjury by the ad valorem system, is enough to banish every thing like morality or honesty from the importing merchant. It is bad policy it is introducing the dry-rot of corruption into all the transactions of the country.

F. You seem to have made this subject a study-I confess I am not prepared to meet all your arguments, but I will hunt up Mr. Walker's report, and it perhaps will furnish me with answers. There is no subject where more can be said on both sides, than this one on the tariff.

P. As to Mr Walker-if we are to estimate him by the truth of his prognostics, in regard to the effect of his policy on our exports, I should suppose his authority would be of little weight. Such was his sanguine view of the effects of reducing the tariff in 1846, that he estimated our exports in consequence thereof as follows-viz: for 1848, $222,289,352-1849, $329,959,9931850, $488,445,046. Whereas our actual exports were for those several years $132,934,121-$132,666,955-134,900,565. In 1847, they were more on account of the famine in Ireland-but for the last three years, notwithstanding the high price of cotton, there has been no material increase, but on the contrary, as compared with our population, a falling off. Of what value then are the estimates of a man who shows himself so utterly ignorant of the effects of his own policy upon the trade of our country.

I admit there is much to be said on both sides-but there are some self-evident propositions, which I think you will admit, that are conclusive in favor of such a tariff as will maintain our home manufacturers in fair competition with the foreign.

1st. As the object of free trade is to find a market for our produce, where we obtain our supplies-if we can make that market at home, there is no reason why we should not obtain our supplies at home, if to be had on as advautageous terms as abroad. I think I have heretofore shown that a reasonable specific tariff will enable us to do this.

2nd. By making a market at home, which we do by withdrawing a portion of our redundant farming population from that pursuit, and putting them to manufacturing, we create a market which is all our own, the supplying of which belongs to ourselves, and where foreigners cannot interfere with us. But while our consumption of near two hundred millions of foreign goods, gives England the means of buying seventy odd millions of dollars worth of bread stuffs-we only get the supplying of six millions five hundred thousand dollars worth of this. Encourage our own manufacturers, and they will furnish an equal market to you for

bread stuffs, and this markot of $72,000,000 will be all our own, and not $6,500,000 of it.

3dly. Accidental circumstances will occasionally give us a high price abroad for our bread stuffs-this stimulates us to extravagance that year, and the habit then acquired is continued, so that we consume a vast amount of foreign goods over what our exports will pay for, as this year this excess is, I sec, estimated to amount to about sixty millions of dollars; and thus periodically about every twelve or fifteen years we have a crash, which spreads ruin over our whole country. If we dealt at home, this could not happen, for however extravagant an individual might be, his money being spent at home remains in the country, and no such crash could occur. He may fail, but his failure does not effect the country.

4thly. Home manufactures give employment to a vast amount of labor which otherwise would be idle as to women and children, and their earnings add vastly to the national wealth.*)

These four classes of facts you cannot deny. But you are tired of the subject no doubt, and we will drop it-I go to morrow to -county, if you are not engaged, I have a spare seat in my buggy—the journey will be a pleasant one, and I think you will be gratified by the trip-will you go?

F. Yes, with pleasure.

*) In illustration of this fact, I will relate an Incident of travel. Many years since, travelling in the county of Henderson in the state of Kentucky, I stayed all night near a place called "Harpshead," from the sticking of a robber's head upon a pole at the forks of a road there, after the robber had been shot. My host was a Mr. M Here I saw all his children at night picking cotton from the seed, except one, who was spinning on the spinning wheel. This wa a primitive condition of things, which I had not seen since I was a child. Upon inquiry I found that each had picked about two ounces of cotton each nightthis made about three fourths of a pound per week-cotton being 8 cents per pound, this would have been one cent per night, had the raising of the cotton cost nothing. The spinning met with about an equal reward. To me it seemed an utter waste of labor, and I so stated to Mr. M, telling him that he could for one cent buy all the cotton which any of his family could pick of an evening. Perhaps you may,he replied-that however, said he, is not my way of calculating. I need so many yards of cotton for my family-my boys can raise this cottonmy daughters can spin and weave it, and I do not feel the cost. I raise my own cows, continued Mr. M., and tan their hides for leather-and my boys make our shoes-my sheep furnish wool, which my family card, spin, and weave into cloth, and make into clothes, and they knit our socks, and stockings-and our hats and bonnets too we could make, but as yet do not. "Now stranger," continued the old man when a man can make all he wants at home, and has something to spare to sell, I guess he is doing pretty well-I have money lent out to many of my neighbors, who think I am a fool for my way of getting along-and may be I am, but I want all my children to be fools like me, and make all at home they can then they will be always independent, and can hold up their heads against the world." Now, thought I, here is a case, an extreme one to be sure, as strongly illustrative of the real policy of a government to arrive at national wealth as can be given.

NEXT DAY. Scene in the Wilderness in miles from the Ohio.

county, a few

About a month ago

F. What have you here-iron ore? P. Yes, we will alight, and examine it. I got a neighbour to come with me here and bring a boy of fifteen years of age, who from Eleven o'clock until an hour by sun dug up this ore, estimated to be at least two tons. It is very rich and pure; has been analysed and reported to yield 65 per Cent of iron. The regular vein is two feet thick, and over it, is ball ore, about six inches thick. I am satisfied from the work of this boy that an able, grown man could dig five tons in a day.

F. Why, it ought to be exceedingly valuable. Why do not have it worked?

you

P. I will answer you that query on our return home. Let us now continue our ride (entering the buggy and driving on). Observe now, as we go along, you will see this ore on all the hills over which we pass.

F. Yes, I see-from the signs I would judge there was a great quantity here. But what is this in the hill side here? A coal bank? (Driving up to it.)

P. Now get down, and let us go in and examine it (alighting). F. Gods! What a sight-what splendid coal! You seem just to have opened it. Why do you not work it? And is it through all those surrounding hills?

P. Yes, sir. And here in this valley, of about fifty acres, you might set fifty founderies, factories, or establishments of any kind, for working which coal is required, and they would have a never ending supply of coal.

F. Well, is this coal and the iron ore you showed me also, not each very valuable? How far are they apart?

P. About two miles; but they may possibly be found together in some of those hills. As to their value, I cannot speak, except by reference to such property which I have seen in Scotland. Near Glasgow a nobleman owns an iron ore bank, from which he allows three large iron furnaces to supply themselves at two shillings and six pence per ton. I estimate that the vein of iron which I shewed you, will yield one ton and a half to the square yard-which at the price aforesaid, would be about 80 cents per square yard, or four thousand dollars per acre. I was at the Monkwearmouth Coalmines in England, from which they raised coal eighteen hundred feet, from a vein only six inches thicker than this. That land could not be purchased for a thousand pounds an acre ($5000). I was at coal mines in Saxony, at Zwacow, where the vein was very thick, where a sale had been made but a short time before, at fifty four thousand dollars per acre.

F. Well; but this ought to be valuable here; is it not?

P. On the Ohio, a few miles from us, some small sales have been made, equaling about sixteen hundred dollars per acre, for