Echoes of Harpers Ferry

Page 249

Appendix. fordshirc would cease to fix the price of iron, and we should cea!ic to issue bonds for twenty-five millions a yrar to pay for iron to be laid on:-r the great coal and ore rrgions of the 'Y~ st. T~1 c products o.f the farm would then in crruse in both quantity and pncr, wlule cloth and 1ron would be far rhcnprr than thry arc now. L abor would thrn be more productive of all the commodities required by the laborer, who would then enjoy adnl n­tages to which he now can make no claim, because the whole policy of th~ country is, and long has been, controlled by men who wi h to purchase labor, nnd desire that bonr, mu clc, and sinew may be cheaply sold. Let our readers now C5timatc for thcm:.;clves the annual loss to which our farmers are subj ected by reason of the distance of the markets to which th ey arc forced to carry their products, because of the di£riculty, under Southern policy, of bringing into activity the coal, the various orcs, and the va t water powers of the Union, and sec if it will be covered by ten, or rYcn twenty dollars a head. To this let them add the annual lo, s from taxation for extending the a rea of SlaYery b.r the pur:::hnsc of terri­tory, for the projected purchase of the Mesilla Yalley and Cuba, for the maintenance of fleets and armies required by these n ew posses ions, nnd the further loss from the fact that the co nstruction of h arbors and the im­provement of ri\'crs arc, by the advocates of Slavery, deemed to be uncon­stitutional- nne! let them then det ermine if the estimate that has been submitted to them of the cost of the Union is not below the truth. NORTH AND SOUTH. \Vc beg our readers, now, to compare with us the relative position of N orthern and Southern States and cities. Sixty years since, Virginia stood at the head of the Union, with ten r cprcsenta tiYes in Congress, while New York had only six. \ Yhere stand they now? New York has thirty­three and Yirginia thirteen. Sixty years sin ce, South Carolina had five representatives, while Ohio had scarcely a white inhabitant. N ow, the former has still her old number of five, while the lnttcr has twenty-one. In that time, .1\Iassachusctts has grown from eight to rlcvcn; P ennsyl­vania from eight to twenty-five, and even little N ew Jersey, which then had only four, now balances the State which furni shes the great aristocracy of the land in its Pinckncys, Rutledgcs, Chcvcscs, and Gadsdens. At that time, New York, Norfolk, and Charleston, might fairly have disputed the chances of commercial greatness that hung upon the future; but where stand they now ? At the last census, Charleston h ad 42,806 inhabitants, haYing increased in ten years precisely 1,669. Norfolk had 14,320, or 3,400 more than she had in 1840, while N cw York and Brooklyn h ad risen to more than 600,000. 'Ve nrc told, howe,·cr, that this is all due to the action of the Federal Government; that" the immense commercial resources of the South are amongst the most startling and certain resources in all emergencies; " that" if there was no t~niff of any kind, and ab olutc free trade, the Southern seaports would in a quarter of a century surpass the Northern • Appendix. 491 ones not only in imports and exports, hut also in population and the arts," -and that the way to bring about this reign of free-trade and prosperity is to tax all merchandise imported from N orthcrn ports, or in N orthcrn ships, while admitting free all those imported from };urope, or in Southern Ycsscls. Incredible as it may seem to our readers, such is the mode we find ad\'ocatcd in the R icltmoncl Enquirer as the one required for the es­tablishment of perfect free-trade. If, however, the prosperi ty of New York, .1\fass~rhnsctts, or P ennsyl­, ·~nia, which arc manufa.cturi11g States, has really been due to the tari ff, and if protection is injurious to agricultnral communities, how, we would ask, can we account for the growth of Indiana and Illinois, which are n ot mnnufacturing States ? Agreeably to the Slavery theory,''lf they should suffer equally with South Carolina and Virginia, and yet we find thrm growing to almost a million each of population; while Arkansas, almost as old, has less than 200,000. Their railroads count by thousands of miles, while Arkan sas has yet, we believe, the first mile of road yet to make. Southern men can scarcely charge the new State of 'Vi consin with pro­tection, and yet she bids fair to have a thousand miles of railroad before Texas shall have completed the fi rst hundred miles of her fin;t road. Telegraphs abound through the 'Vest and North-western States, nncl Ohio prcs,..nts a perfect n etwork of them ; while Virginia, the Car olinas, :md Georg ia present to view little more than a single line, and thnt m:-~intaincd almost cxclush·cly by the transmission of i:ltelligencc across them from Northern cities to New Orleans. Look where we may, we find the same result; throughout the N orth there is the activity of Frecuom and life, while throughout the outh there is the palsy of S!a,-cry and death. The prosperity of the North-west is, however, as we arc told, also due to the partial ity of the l"ederal Government, the nlmost cxclusi,·c manage­ment of which has been so generally in , outhern hands. 'Vhat Massa­chusetts and this State gain from the tari ff is made up to the newer States by donations out. of t he common treasury of lands. On this head we quote from the Uidmwncl JV/iig: "Illinois is indehted for these two thousand miles of rnilrond to t~10 honnty ~ f the Federal (~ nvernutc nt , a hnunty indul~ecl at the expense o~ the ~outhern Stntes, whO!-iC feehleness and deray are sneered at. l~vcry foot ol thC!-iO _roads has hocn lllado hy appropriations of Jllthlic lands. Not a ront hn!-i come ont ol the pocl~~ts_o f tho people. And railroads nrc not the Oldy fnvor,; hestowcd upou tf10 lJJtelJ n~ tate;;. l lll llle nsc rontriltutions have !teen 111ade to thc111 all, for srlloofs ar1!l rol­lel! es. \Ve dare say, if the !i:une li beral 111ensurc had ho~n clc~lt Ollt _t~l ~he ~lavc­holdi ll" ~t ·ltCR · if thei r territo ry had hcen permeated hy t·.tnn ls and r .ulwads, and school; ~,_;ahli~hcd in every nc.ighhorhood, at tl10 e.\pcnse c~f tile 'o.rr_herr~. ~ tate:'~• we, too, rni :.!ltt hoas t of ou r prosperity. It wolllcf JHlt ~~c 1!0111~ too f.~t t o_~···Y: _tl_1·lt Illinois hcr:>clf, if, in addition to tf10 111ill ion.s she has rcceJv~c.l frc11ntho l·~dcl.ll .' ,•,c,ts­ury, had had the henetit of Slave labor, J111gftt Jtavo heo11 sttll lllorc prospcrou:s. In reply to this, n contemporary furnishes the following abstract.of a report from the Drpartmcnt of the Interior, made a. few week~ smcc, showino- ::. the donations of land to six 'Vcstcrn Free States, and s1x Slave States, to which we bC'g the attention of our readers : * \Yhich, be it noted, is not the free-trade theory. J. R.