perous nation in Europe. Should the mighty secret be asked by which this all-important change has been effected, it is reducible to a few words-she was not afraid of the ideal danger of "taxing the many for the benefit of the few." She protected the industry of her subjects, making a small temporary sacrifice for an immense permanent benefit. While our statesmen were calculating about sav ing a quarter, or half, or three quarters of a dollar per yard, by buying goods in Europe and in the East Indies, she for a while bought at home at double price, in preference to purchasing cheap abroad. She trusted that com petition would produce the effect ft has ever produced, that is, to bring prices to a proper level. The maganimous policy succeeded-and now affords a rich harvest of private happiness and public prosperity. We have bought cheap abroad-and distress overspreads our land! She bought dear for a while at home, and is repaid ten fold for the temporary sacrifice!

It is but just to state her policy in Chaptal's own words; We hope they will sink deep into the minds of the states men and politicians of this country.

"Our casimers cost twenty-five francs per ell, to the manufacturer, at the commencement of our operations. The English offered them at half price, to the consumer. Our cambrics and calicoes, ill manufactured, cost us seven to eight francs. The English delivered theirs at three.

"Ought we, therefore, to have renounced this project of manufacturing conquest? No. It was our duty to persist and improve. This therefore is the course we pursued. And we have arrived at such a degree of perfection, that our industry excites the jealousy of those from whom we have borrowed it.

"If during twelve or fifteen years, in which we pursued our essays, our researches, our experiments, we had not excluded the competition of foreign rival articles by prohi bitions, I ask of the partisans of fifteen per cent. duty, what would have become of this admirable industry, which constitutes the ornament, the glory, and the riches of France?"*

*"Nos casimirs coûtoient 25fr. l'aune au fabricant, dans le principe; et les Anglois offroient les leurs au consommateur, à moitié prix; les percalles, les calicots, mal fabriqués, nous revenoient á 7 á 8 fr. l'aune; les Anglois les livroient á 3 fr.

"Falloit-ill renoncer à ce projet de conquête manufacturière? Non, il falloit persister et se perfectionner. C'est aussi la marche

250

While ruin was successively swallowing up various manufactures, and reducing to bankruptcy their owners, who were shut out of the markets of foreign nations by the wisdom of those nations and deprived of their own by the want of protection, their prayers and supplications were met by a clamour against the danger of smuggling that would arise from high duties. On this real or supposed danger, the changes have been rung from New Hampshire to Georgia, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. It has been regarded as a conclusive and unanswerable argument, and as forming an insuperable bar against making such a radical change in the tariff as would afford protection to the manufacturers, whatever might be their sufferings.

An objection which is regarded as so powerful, and which closes our ears to the cries, and shuts our eyes against a view of the distresses of so large a body of our fellow citizens, ought to be founded on an impregnable basis-and demands the most rigorous scrutiny before it be admitted as orthodox. An error on such a point is liable to produce deleterious consequences.

We shall therefore once more investigate the ground on which it rests. Reduced to plain English, it is1. Smuggling is a dreadful and demoralizing evil that ought to be avoided.

2. High duties encourage smuggling.

3. Therefore high duties ought to be avoided.

To render this syllogism applicable to the case in hand, two things are necessary to be proved. If either fail, it falls to the ground:

1. That the duties requested by, or necessary to afford adequate protection to, our manufacturers, would be so immoderately high as to encourage smuggling.

qu'on a suiviê: et nous sommes arrivés à un tel degré de perfection, que notre industrie excite aujourd'hui la jalousie de la nation qui nous l'a transmise.

"Si, pendant douze à quinze ans qu'ont duré nos esais, nos recherches, nos tâtonnemens, on n'avoit pas écarté du concours, par la prohibition, les produits étrangers, je demande aux partisans des 15 pour cent, ce que seroit devenue cette belle industrie qui fait l'ornement, la gloire et la richesse de la France?"-De P' Industrie Francoise, tom. II. p. 431.

2. That our duties, in general, are calculated on a moderate scale, predicated on a dread of the danger of encouraging smuggling by high duties.

Neither of these positions is founded.

We will specify a few out of a great variety of manufactures, which have been either wholly ruined, or greatly impaired in their progress, since the peace, by the inundation of rival articles, and hope it will appear to our readers, that the duties might have been raised to double their present ampunt-so as to preserve the manufactories, without danger of smuggling-and without impairing the revenue.

Gold Leaf,
Linens,

Manufactures of flax,

are subject to fifteen per cent.

Manufactures of Steel,

Brass,

Glass,

Iron,

Lead,

are subject to twenty per cent.-And

Fine cottons, and

are subject to twenty-five per cent.

Slates,
Sealing wax, &c. &c.

Earthen ware,
Japanned ware,
Pottery,
Stone ware,
Woollen stockings,

Woollens,

Of these manufactures, several, which, in consequence of the exclusion of foreign rivalship, were in a flourishing state during the war, have since been laid prostrate. A duty of 30 per cent. on some, and 40 on others, would have effectually secured them.

Now, we freely appeal to men of candour and fairness, whether those duties would have been more likely to produce smuggling than the duties we have stated, on snuff, tobacco, rum or gin at sixty or eighty or one hundred per cent.? or those which we shall produce in the next table?

Will it be asserted, that if pottery, for instance, had been subject to a duty of 60 or 80 per cent. it would have been more likely to be smuggled than any of those articles? Surely not. The idea is inadmissible.

On the second head, the objection still more completely falls to the ground. Our tariff imposes duties on various articles extravagantly high. We have already stated the cases of cotton, cheese, manufactured tobacco, snuff, rum, and Geneva. We proceed to wines, teas, and salt.

Thus it appears that there are no terrors felt on the subject of smuggling, when those articles are in question which do not interfere with the national industry! On these 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 125 per cent. are unhesitatingly imposed. But, when those manufactures are to be dutied, of which we have the raw material to the utmost extent of our wants (as, for instance, cottons, and, with some qualification as to present supply, we might add woollens) water power to manufacture them without limitation-and industry and enterprise never exceeded in the world-then the appalling spectre of smuggling arises, at the mention of 35, 40, 45, or 50 per cent. to blunt the feelings of our legislators to ruin a large and valuable portion of our citizens to make us tributaries to all the nations of the civifized world, on whom our treasures are wantonly and prodigally lavished-and to tear up by the roots a large portion of the productive industry, the wealth, power, and resources of the nation!!

To these facts we most earnestly invite the attention of those who have any thing at stake on the welfare of their country. In five years, we repeat, without war, pestilence, or famine, we have fallen from a towering eminence into an abyss, where we find bankruptcy; character impaired at home and abroad; forced idleness, misery, and distress, among thousands able and willing to work; demoralization; emigration of our citizens in quest of an assylum which their own country does not afford them; and finally legislative suspensions of payment. We believe the great mass of those evils due to the policy we have pursued, the antipodes of that of all the wise nations of Europe-but the counterpart of that of Spain and Portugal.-Nothing can save us but a full and complete protection of the domestic industry, which we fervently pray, may take place without

* Cost at the places of shipment respectively.

delay, for the happiness of our citizens, and for the honour of our republican form of government.

P. S. In order to afford our fellow citizens a fair view of the deleterious consequences of the policy we have pursued, on the welfare and happiness of this nation, we annex authentic documents of the calamitous situation of Philadelphia and Pittsburg, which afford a practical commentary on the delusive system of " buying cheap goods abroad,” and unfeelingly consigning our fellow citizens to ruin, and our country to a premature decrepitude. The destruction has been in about the same proportion throughout the state.

"Philadelphia, Oct. 2, 1819. "The committee appointed by a meeting of the citizens of the city and county of Philadelphia, held on the 21st August, at the county court house, to make inquiry into the situation of the manufactures of the city of Philadelphia and its vicinity, in 1814, 1816, and 1819, beg leave to report

"That they have performed the duty assigned them with as much attention as in their power; and regret that notwithstanding all their diligence, they have been unable to procure the necessary information from more than thirty branches of manufactures, of which they annex the result.

Y