OCR Text |
Show Appendix. of dollars for the purchase of Cuba, or making war to acquire it nt still he a vier cost. The them existing policy tended to strengthen the free lnborrr~ , and therefore was it seen that it must be broken down i but this object could not be accompli hed without an cnlargemrnt of th~ Slave tl•rritory. Texas must be brought into the Union, as she woulu gtve two ~1.orc Srnator~;, representing a tate in which mr~ wcr~ held as. propc•:ty.. 1 hat done, the Secretary of the Treasury found ltttle dtffi culty m furn1. hmg abundant arguments favorable to the Slave-labor policy. Addrc~;sing l1imsclf to the farmers, he assured them that their revenues were largely decr C'nsed by the enormous advance on manufactured goods consequent upon protN·tion ; * but when he spoke of the public revenue, he assured them that priers were falling, nnd th e re was danger that importations would fall off, :m el that a direct tax might be required for the maintenance of the govrrnment. It was the fable of the wolf and the lamb 0\' <'1' again. The Free-labor policy was to be reversed, and if one reason would not answer, another eonlcl be made that would. The advocates of Slavery had obtained power by aicl of two votes dragged into the Senate in defiance of the Constitution, and for the purpose of drpriving the people of the North of all control ovrr their own actions in reference to the important question whcth<'r laborers should be Slaves or Freemen. Four years later the production of iron had fall en below ha1f a million of tons, when it g]wuld have 1·rachcd twcl rc hundred thon~; and, if not n million and a. half, and the domrgtic con sumption of cotton hnd fallrn off a hundred and fifty thonsand bales, when it should have increased two hundred and fifty thousand, and would have so increased but for the drtcrmination of the sla,•e power to direct the whole movement of the government. Before this day, the production of iron wonlcl h ave reached two millions of tons, and the consumption of cotton a million of bales, while the woollen and other mamtfactures would have attainr<l a corre~;ponding development, and we should now be ind<•pendrut of all the world for hundreds, if not thousands, of thr commocliti<'s for \\'hi (•h we have b<'cn giYing bonds to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars, until om credit l1as been so far afi'ected that they can now with difficulty be sold, and only nt prices so low as to secure the payment of enormous interest. ·what, howryer, it will be asked, should we be doing with all this enormous mass of iron, cloth, and other commodities? In answer, we Sc\)' that we should be consuming it. Had the manufacture of iron been permitted to grow as it was growing in 181G, the fanners and planters of the country would now be supplied at fifty dollars a. ton instead of having to pay seventy or eighty, nnd they would be mnl<ing two miles of railroad where now they arc making one, and buying two dollars' worth of agri cnltural machinery for every one they now can purchase. Increased faciliti es for going to market, and the presence of markets among the mines, furnaces, nnd factories that would now be found among nll the States from Maine to "'Thero is no doubt about that; else why have protection at all ? J . R. Appendix. Texas, would be rendering their labor twice more valtt :lble, and enabling them to purchase twice the cloth they llow cau buy.~: '\Vhen mt•n produce largely and exchange rca.clily, they can consUJJlt! largely. The only clifHculty now in the way of doubling the consumption of Htanufa ctt~n·s, is the fact that more than h alf of the pt·odt~cts of agricultural labor arc t•atrn up in tran spor tation to the place at which thry nrc to be cxchnngrd for iron and cloth. 'Verc th(! mines of l\Iissomi and Illiuois, Ohio and Pcnn~ylvania n ow in full opNation, the fann ers of those States would be producin< Y far m ore than at this time thry do produce, and obtai11ing twice as mu~h iron and twice as 1nuch cloth for every bushrl of grain th0y hat!. to Rcl l. Of these mighty brncHts, and of the in creased power, freedom, and popular progress that would have rrsnlted from them, the North has hccn dept ivrd by t ltc tlomination of f1la\'C owners in our nntion:tl counc·ils. And now the Freemen of these States arc called on to j oin in extending that domination, and gi\'iug it fS\ICh power that it can never he l' <' lllovcd. \Viii thev lend themselves to the bal>c and unholy schemes of th o:sc who would fa i-n r educe all laborers to the weakness, ign orance, and stagnation of bondage? rH.OTl<.CTION AND SOUTIIEHN IN'rlo:Tn:RTS. \Ve arc tolcl, however, that protection is adY<'nw to the int<'re~o,ts of the men whose property co u s i:ts of men, women, and <'hilrlrcn, :1ncl wl1o raise cotton. In answer, we say that the real intl'rr ~ts of the South nrc ns much promoted by protection as arc thosr. of the North, and that n othin~ bnt its absurd jealousy, and its dcterminatton to grasp at power, pr('vent tls people from seeing that such i s the fa ct. It is protection that has ca u~C'd the domestic consumption of cotton to attain its present large amount, the consequence of which is, that the quantity required to be forc·<·cl on the market of Rn3land has been ~;o far lessened, and the price so far snstaiucd. "\Vere we now consuming a. million of bale~, as we should be doing had tho tariff of 1842 been maintained, the qn\lntity going to that ntarkct would be less by three or four hmHlred thousand bales than it is, and we should not now be called to record a <laily decline of price, notwith~;tancling a diminution in the amount of crop. Prot<'ction has largely increased the market for cotton in France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, and Spain, while in the unprotected countries th ere has been no increase. The direct t~ndency of the Free-labor policy is to increase the market for ~olton by mcreasing the numb<'r of its purchasers, and to r educe the pncc of cotton goods by increasing the number of persons who have cloth to sell: Rvcry farmer knows well that the O'reater the competition among the mlllrrs the t> • • • higher is the price of \\'hcnt, and the less the chargr for convertmg tt mto flour. The object of protection is to increase the number of persons who require to purclutse fo od and wool, and to sell iron and cloth.t * flold UflfH' rtinn!'l, hut al'! fal flc n~ hold; tho rontrary would hnve boon tho result. I Thon it is allo"cthcr stqwrlluou ·,for tho Lord ntt 'Julod to that matter long ago. Marriage fulfils tha~ t ohJcn bottor t hau "protcctJ.O H , J•R • |