upon each other, and upon the rest of the community. The middle classes of society would partake of the distress of the lower, and the sources of the revenues of the higher orders be dried up.* And all this terrific scene of wo, and wretchedness, and depravity, is to be produced for the grand purpose of procuring broad-cloth, and muslins, and shoes, and iron ware, in remote parts of the earth, a few shillings per yard, or piece, or pound, cheaper than at home! The manufacturers of Bombay, and Calcutta, and Paris, and Lyons, and Stockholm, are to be fed, and clothed, and fostered by English wealth, while those of England, whom it ought to nourish and protect, are expelled from their workshops, and driven to seek support from the overseers of the poor. We trust this will not be thought a fancy sketch! Such a view of it would be an extravagant error. It is sober, serious reality; and puts down for ever this plausible, but ruinous theory. Ponder well on it, fellow citizens,

Let us suppose another strong case. The cotton produced in this country, amounts, probably, to 40 millions of dollars annually.† We will suppose the minimum of the price, at which it can be sold, to pay for the labour and interest on the capital employed in its culture, to be 12 cents per pound. We will further suppose, that the southern provinces of Spanish America have established their independence, and are able to supply us with this valuable raw material at the rate of ten cents. Ought we, for the sake of saving a few cents per pound, to destroy the prospects, and ruin the estates of nearly 800,000 inhabitants of the southern states-to paralize a culture so immensely advantageous, and producing so large a fund of wealth, and strength and happiness? Should we, for such a paltry consideration, run the risk of consequences which cannot be regarded without awe, and which could not fail eventually to involve in ruin, even those who might appear in the first instance to profit by the adoption of the system?

It may be well worth while to proceed a step further, and take the case of a nation able to supply us fully and completely with wheat and other grain at a lower rate than our farmers can furnish them. Thus then we should find

* No small portion of this picture is rapidly realizing in this country. + Tench Coxe.

ourselves pursuing Adam Smith's sublime system; buying cheap bargains of wheat or flour from one nation, cotton from another, hardware from a third; and, to pursue the system throughout, woollen, and cotton, and linen goods from others; while our country was rapidly impoverishing of its wealth, its industry paralized, the labouring part of our citizens reduced to beggary, and the farmers, planters, and manufacturers, involved in one common mass of ruin. The picture demands the most sober, serious attention of the farmers and planters of the United States.

It may be asserted, that the supposition of our country being fully supplied with cotton and grain, by foreign nations, is so improbable, as not to be admissible even by way of argument. This is a most egregious error; our supposition, so far as it respects cotton, is in "the full tide of successful experiment." That article, to a great amount, is even at present imported from Bengal, and sold at a price so far below our own, (difference of quality considered) that our manufacturers find the purchase eligible. Let it be considered, that in 1789, doubts were entertained whether cotton could be cultivated in the United States;* that in the year 1794, there were exported from this country, of foreign and domestic cotton, only seven thousand bags;t and yet, that in 1818, the amount exported was above ninety-two millions of pounds. No man can be so far misled as to suppose that Heaven has given us any exclusive monopoly of the soil and climate calculated for such extraordinary and almost incredible advances. rapid strides we have made, may be also made by other nations. Cotton is said to be shipped at Bombay for three pence sterling per lb.; and therefore, setting South America wholly out of the question, it can hardly be doubted, from the spirit with which the culture of that plant is prosecuted in the East Indies, and the certainty that the seeds of our best species have been carried there, that in a few years that country will be able, provided Adam Smith's theory continues to be acted upon here, to expel our planters from their own markets, after having driven them from those of Europe. It is not, therefore, hazarding much to assert, that the time cannot be very remote, when southern cotton industry will be compelled to supplicate + Idem, p. 94.

*Seybert's Statistics.

The

congress for that legislative protection, for which the manufacturing industry of the rest of the union has so earnestly implored that body in vain; and which, had it been adequately afforded, would have saved from ruin numerous manufacturing establishments, and invaluable machinery, which cost millions of dollars-now a dead and irreparable loss to the enterprising proprietors. Had these establishments been preserved, and duly protected, they would have greatly lessened our ruinously unfavourable balance of trade, and of course prevented that pernicious drain of specie, which has over-spread the face of our country with distress, and clouded (we trust only temporarily) as fair prospects as ever dawned on any nation.*

We have given a slight sketch of the effects the adoption of this system would produce in England and the United States, if carried into complete operation; and also glanced at the consequences its partial operation has already produced here. We now proceed to take a cursory view (reserving detail for a future occasion) of its lamentable results in Spain and Portugal, where the statesmen

*This view may appear too gloomy. Would to heaven it were! A cursory glance at some of the great interests of the United States will settle the question. Cotton, the chief staple of the country, is falling, and not likely to rise: as the immense quantities from the East Indies have glutted the English market, which regulates the price in ours. Affairs in the western country, on which so many of our importers depend, are to the last degree unpromising. The importers, of course, have the most dreary and sickening prospects before them. They are deeply in debt, their resources almost altogether suspended, and a large proportion ultimately precarious. Commerce and navigation languish every where, except to the East Indies, the most ruinous branch we carry on. Further, notwithstanding nearly eight millions of specie were imported by the Bank of the U. States at a heavy expense, in about one year; so great has been the drain, that the banks are generally so slenderly provided, as to excite serious uneasiness. We are heavily indebted to England, after having remitted immense quantities of government and bank stock, whereby we shall be laid under a heavy and perpetual annual tax for interest. Our manufactures are in general drooping, and some of them are one-half or two-thirds suspended. Our cities present the distressing view of immense numbers of useful artizans, mechanics, and manufacturers, willing to work, but unable to procure employment. We might proceed with the picture to a great extent; but presume enough has been stated to satisfy the most incredulous, that the positions in the text are by no means exaggerated.

are disciples of Adam Smith, and where the theory which now goes under the sanction of his name has been in operation for centuries. As "foreign countries can supply them with commodities cheaper than they themselves can make them," they therefore consider it "better to buy from them, with some part of the produce of their own country."

Fellow citizens, consider the forlorn and desperate state of those countries, notwithstanding the choicest blessings of nature have been bestowed on them with lavish hand; industry paralized, and the enormous floods of wealth, drawn from their colonies, answering no other purpose but to foster and encourage the industry, and promote the happiness of rival nations; and all obviously and undeniably the result of the system of " buying goods where they are to be had cheapest," to the neglect and destruction of their domestic industry. With such awful beacons before your eyes, can you contemplate the desolating effects of the system in those two countries, without deep regret, that so many of our citizens, and some of them in high and elevated stations, advocate its universal adoption here, and are so far enamoured of Dr. Smith's theory that they regard as a species of heresy the idea of appealing to any other authority, on the all-important and vital point of the political economy of nations!

To avoid prolixity, we are obliged to postpone the consideration of other positions of Dr. Smith on this subject; and shall conclude with a statement of those maxims of political economy, the soundness of which is established by the experience of the wisest as well as the most fatuitous nations of the earth.

1. Industry is the only sure foundation of national virtue, happiness, and greatness: and, in all its useful shapes and forms, has an imperious claim on governmental protection.

2. No nation ever prospered to the extent of which it was susceptible, without due protection of domestic industry.

3. Throughout the world, in all ages, wherever industry has been duly encouraged, mankind have been uniformly industrious.

4. Nations, like individuals, are in a career of ruin when their expenditures exceed their income.

5. Whenever nations are in this situation, it is the impe

rious duty of their rulers to apply such remedies, to correct the evil, as the nature of the case may require.

6. There are few, if any, political evils, to which a wise legislature, untrammelled in its deliberations and decisions, cannot apply an adequate remedy.

7. The cases of Spain, Portugal, and Italy, prove beyond controversy, that no natural advantages, how great or abundant soever, will counteract the baleful effects of unsound systems of policy; and those of Venice, Genoa, Switzerland, Holland, and Scotland, equally prove, that no natural disadvantages are insuperable by sound policy.

8. Free government is not happiness. It is only the means, but, wisely employed, is the certain means of insuring happiness.

9. The interests of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, are so inseparably connected, that any serious injury suffered by one of them must materially affect the others.

10. The home market for the productions of the earth and manufactures, is of more importance than all the foreign ones, even in countries which carry on an immense foreign commerce.

11. It is impossible for a nation, possessed of immense natural advantages, in endless diversity of soil and climate -in productions of inestimable value-in the energy and enterprize of its inhabitants-and unshackled by an oppressive debt to suffer any great or general distress, in its agriculture, commerce, or manufactures, (war, famines, pestilence and calamities of seasons excepted) unless there be vital and radical errors in its system of political economy.

NO. II.

Philadelphia, April 7, 1819. DR. SMITH'S maxim, discussed in our first number, inevitably involves in its consequences, as we have proved, the destruction of those manufacturing establishments, which produce articles that can be purchased "cheaper abroad than they can be made at home;" and its necessary result is, to deprive those engaged in them of employment. The