per acquisition stands that of Internal Improve- had passed the House, supported by a few ment. A nation can not simultaneously devote Democratic' and nearly all the Whig votes, its energies to the absorption of others' terri- making appropriations for the further imtories and the improvement of its own. In a provements of rivers and harbors throughout state of war, not law only is silent, but the the country. That bill came up in course to pioneer's axe, the canal-digger's mattock, and be acted on in the Senate. Every question the house-builder's trowel also. Vainly should involved in its passage had been heretofore we hope to clear, and drain, and fence, and discussed in either House, so as to be fertilize our useless millions of acres, at the fectly understood from the outset, and nothing same time that we are intent on bringing the could be effected by its discussion but the whole vast continent under our exclusive consumption of time. But though a decided dominion. It is by no accident, therefore, majority of the Senate was of the party termed but by an instinct profounder than any processDemocratic,' yet that majority included a of reasoning that the Democratic party arrays number who, if this bill were pressed to a itself against the prosecution of Internal Im- final vote, would be impelled by local interest provements. Individuals in that party may or personal conviction to support it, so that demur, and local or personal interests may such a vote would insure its passage; while overbear party tenets and tendencies; but it several 'Democratic' Senators, representing is none the less true that 'the party' is essen- States deeply interested in the prosecution of tially hostile to the Improvement policy. We these improvements, but themselves aspirants see this evinced in its votes against and vetoes to the Presidency, and depending on antiof river and harbor improvement bilis, in its Improvement support, were unwilling to vote repudiations, its hostility to corporations, &c., either for or against the bill. In this dilem&c. Individuals in the party will pretend to ma, an understanding was had, in caucus, be in favor of the prosecution of such improve- that the bill should be talked to death, no ments, but not by the General government, matter at what cost. In pursuance of this nor by the State government, nor yet by a plot, day after day was wasted in timecompany of citizens, unless clogged with con- killing talk; amendment after amendment ditions which render such prosecution morally was moved, merely to hang speeches upon; impossible. Thus, New-Hampshire, under and even old reports and veto-messages sent 'Democratic' guidance, undertook to saddle to the clerk, to be read through. Nearly all all corporations with the individual liability the important business of the session remained of each stockholder for the full amount of every unperfected. At length, on the last evening debt incurred by the Company, thus repelling of the session, Mr. Clay, on behalf of the men of large capital or caution, and effectu- friends of the bill, rose and said substantially: ally obstructing progress. To this succeeded" Gentlemen opposite! We know you can a party attempt to make every railroad com- talk this bill to death if you will; and it is pany buy every foot of land it was compelled understood that you have agreed to do so. If to cross at the owner's valuation, in effect this be your determination, tell us so frankly, giving one rapacious or perverse landholder and I myself will move that this subject be on the line of a projected railroad a power to laid on the table, and the Appropriation bills prevent its construction. This ground was taken up instead." He paused, but no one refinally receded from, when the combination sponded. The men who had no scruple as to of local interest with Whig resistance threat- the deed were ashamed of its appearance, or ened to revolutionize the State; but the spirit afraid of its responsibility. So the debate which dictated the effort still lives and reigns, went on, and the game of staving off was though deterred by fear of consequences from persisted in, until four o'clock of the morning that particular mode and measure of self- after the session should have closed, when all exhibition. hopes of its passage having died out, a maI watched with intense and painful interest jority voted to lay the Harbor bill on the table, the last hours of the late Congress. A bill and proceed with the ordinary appropriations, which were rushed through somehow by greatly benefited and enriched our own and noon or a little after. Can a party which other countries, I can no more doubt than I can thus fights Internal Improvement and skulks from responsibility, have any just claim to be distinguished as Democratic? my own existence. I defy any of its adversaries to point out an instance wherein a branch of industry, required for the supply of our own So with the question of Protection to legitimate wants, has been naturalized among Home Industry. I am tolerably acquainted us by means of Protection, where such trausfer with all that has been urged on behalf of the has not decidedly conduced to the general welpolicy known as Free Trade; but it has fare of our people. The reason of this is too never shaken my conviction that a tariff of plain to escape the discernment of any who duties, wisely adjusted so as to afford both with unprejudiced eyes will attempt to see. Revenue and Protection, is essential to the That our Cotton, Corn, Wheat, Beef, Pork, national growth and well-being. What do &c., come cheaper to their consumers in this we mean by Protection? Simply the restric country than they would if we imported tion of importations of foreign manufactures them, is not more self-evident than that the to such an extent that their younger and less Cloths, Silks, Wares, Crockery, &c., which hardy American rivals may take root and we now import, would cost us less, if made flourish. How far do we propose to prosecute on our own soil than they do while imported this policy? Until our country's legitimate from Europe. For to make them, whether wants are supplied by her own labor, so far in Europe or America, requires substantially as Nature may have interposed no impedi- the same amount of labor, which, in either ment. We never proposed nor intended to case, must be paid for by our farmers, &c., naturalize here any branch of industry for with the fruits of their labor; but, so long as which Nature had indicated a different soil they are made in and imported from Europe, or climate than our own, such as the growing of another large amount of labor will be recoffee, or spices, or tropical fruits; but wher- quired from one class or both classes of proever Nature is as propitious to the production ducers, to pay the heavy cost of transportation on our own soil as any other, we maintain from producer to consumer, and to carry that self-interest and the interest of Labor back our heavy staples, in which the payuniversally demand the encouragement and ment must mainly be made. It may easily fostering of Home Production, up to that point be, that the nominal or money price of our where such production shall be found to equal wares and fabrics shall be lower, while they the Home Consumption. In other words, we are mainly produced abroad, and yet their hold it the interest of Labor universally, that real cost be far higher. We say, the farmer producer and consumer should everywhere pays so many dollars for his Cloths, his Wares, be placed in as simple and direct relations as his Tea and Coffee; but practically he does possible, so as to relieve them from the neces- not pay money, but grain or meat, even though sity of paying transportation and three or he sell the latter for cash, and hands that over four profits upon the interchange of their for his goods. The vital question with him mutual products in different hemispheres, is, 'Under which policy can buy what I when those products might with as little need, not for the least money, but for the labor have been produced in the same neigh- least aggregate of my own labor, as applied borhood. We contend that in this great to the improving and tilling of my land? and work of bringing consumer and producer this question the money-test does not connearer each other, and thus diminishing the clusively answer. Suppose an Illinois or cost of a factitious commerce, Government Wisconsin farmer could supply his annual has an important and beneficent function as signed it, which it can not abjure without gross dereliction and serious detriment to the public weal. needs of Cloths, Wares, and Groceries, for eighty dollars while we buy them mainly abroad, while it would cost him one hundred to buy them if produced (under stringent Now that Protection, wisely directed, has Protection) at home-what then? 'Then he saves twenty dollars by sticking to Free] ninety instead of forty or fifty per cent, of Trade,' says an advocate of that policy. what the consumer of his products pays for Ah no, sir! You have answered quite too them, and is enabled advantageously to grow hastily. For the change from Free Trade to many articles which, with our workshops Protection inevitably brings markets for his in Europe, must have rotted on his hands, own products nearer and nearer to his farm, had he grown them. Every dollar thus increasing their cash value, and extending saved in the expense of needless transportahis range of profitable production. With Free tion, by drawing the manufacturers nearer Trade and our workshops in Europe,' he and nearer to the side of the farmer, is a new had no choice but to grow wheat and cattle stimulus to production; and the hundred acres for exportation, and to take such prices for which gave scanty employment as herdsmen them as the competition of all the world in and wheat-growers to two or three hands, the open markets of Great Britain would afford ample employment for a dozen to allow, less the cost of transportation from his twenty, when, by reason of the neighborhood farm to Liverpool; but let Protection supplant of manufactories, wheat and grass have been Free Trade, and now he begins to feel the in great part supplanted by gardens, fruit, stimulus of near and nearer markets urging and vegetables. There is no more mystery him to produce other articles far more profit- in the increase of Production and Prosperity able than wheat growing for the English under a judiciously-directed Protective Policy, market. Should a manufactory of any kind than in the fact, that a team immediately bebe established within a few miles of him, he fore a wagon will draw a heavier load than finds there a market for Wood, Vegetables, it would if fastened forty rods ahead of the Poultry, Veal, Fresh Butter, Hay, &c.,-&c., at load. Protection diverts Labor from nonprices much better than he could have ob-productive to productive employments-that tained while we were buying our goods in is the whole story. By diversifying industry, Europe; his labor produces more annual it calls into active exercise a wider range of value; his farm is worth more than it was or capacities, and develops powers which would could be while we were dependent on Europe otherwise have lain dormant and unsuspected. for a market. Many things are now turned Thousands who, in a community wholly agrioff from his farm at good prices, which had cultural or wholly manufacturing, would find no money value while an ocean rolled between nothing to do, are satisfactorily employed him and his market; he becomes thrifty, and and remunerated where diverse pursuits are buys more, far more, than formerly, because being prosecuted all around them-Protection he is able to buy far more. Instead of one or and Internal Improvement work from optwo hundred dollars' worth of Wheat or posite directions to one common end—namely, Pork to sell at one particular season, he is the diminution of expense in the transportaturning off a hundred dollars' worth of Milk. tion from producer to consumer-Protection Fruit, Timber, Vegetables, &c., each month, aims to bring the consumer,wherever this may keeping out of debt at the store and else- be practicable, to the side of the producer; where, and laying up money. He improves Internal Improvement essays, where that is his buildings, and thus gives a job to his not practicable, to bring the product from the neighbor, the carpenter; he fills up his house latter to the former at the least possible cost. with furniture, to the satisfaction of his neigh- Now there was a time when, out of the bor, the cabinet-maker; he sends his children narrow circle of Importing influence, these to a seminary, and thus increases the income truths were admitted and acted upon by the of the teacher. On every side, the farmer's whole American People-at least, throughprosperity overflows, and conduces to the out the Free States. Nobody pretended that prosperity of his townsmen. And the basis Protection was anti-Democratic fifty, forty, of all this is the fact that, by a benignant policy, thirty, or even twenty-five years ago. On adequate markets have been brought nearer the contrary, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, his doors, whereby he receives eighty or then ranked among the most 'Democratic' but Principles are eternal. Protection is just as Democratic to-day, as if it had been endorsed and commended by five regiments of ravenous office seekers, styling themselves Democratic National Conventions. States, were the earliest and most decided like tendency, which the European Democ champions of Protection, throughout the ear- racy stands ready to realize whenever it shall lier decades of the struggle. Even Jackson, have the power. Its policy is constructive, when a candidate for President, and even after creative, and beneficent, while that of our he had been transformed from a Federal' self-styled 'Democracy' is repulsive, chilling, into the Democratic' candidate, was vaunted nugatory,-a bundle of negations, restricby his friends a sturdy Protectionist. His tions, and abjurations. Can there be a letter to Dr. Coleman, of North Carolina, was rational doubt as to which of these is the repeatedly published to sustain the claim. true Democracy? Who does not see that The Tariff of 1828 (the highest and most the fundamental ideas of our party Democracy Protective we have ever had) was framed by are as radically hostile to Common Schools, a Jackson Committee, passed by a Jackson and to tax-sustained Common Roads, as to a Congress, and boasted of as a Jackson Protective Tariff, a National Bank, or to the measure. Party exigencies, and the supposed National Improvement of our Rivers and necessity of retaining the good-will of the Harbors, if it dare but follow where its Cotton-growing interest, have since veered principles lead? the Party' completely off the Protective There is another point on which I must track, but it is none the less essentially Dem- speak frankly; and I ask you not to take ocratic' on that account. Men are mutable, offense at, but earnestly ponder it. You and I prefer the society and counsel of those who walk, so far as we may judge, in the ways of Virtue, to that of the reckless, ostentatious servitors of Vice. You, I am confident, will not stigmatize this preference as There underlies the practical politics of Aristocratic, nor seek to confound Poverty our time and country a radical diversity of with Vice, in the paltry hope of making sentiment respecting the appropriate sphere capital out of the natural indignation of the of Government. On the one hand, Repub-former. The great city of my residence is, lican Government is regarded as the natural perhaps, a fair sample politically of the whole friend and servant of the People, whose country-its parties almost equal in numbers, proper function it is to lighten their burdens, and each composed of rich and poor, native and to increase their facilities of intercourse or in- foreign-born, informed and ignorant. Doubttelligence, and to contribute in all practicable less, the great mass, of whatever party, sinways to their progress, comfort, and happi- cerely desire the public welfare; doubtless, ness. On the other, Government is regarded rogues and libertines are to be found in the with jealousy and distrust, as an enemy to be ranks of each of the great parties. But point watched, an evil to be restricted within the wherever you please to an election district narrowest limits. The mottoes of this latter which you will pronounce morally rottenschool are significant: 'The world is governed given up in great part to debauchery and vice too much,'--' The best Government is that -whose voters subsist mainly by keeping which governs least,'-'Laissez faire' ('Let us policy-offices, gambling-houses, grog-shops.. alone'), &c., &c. Now these maxims seem to and darker dens of infamy,-and that district me unwisely transferred from Governments will be found at nearly or quite every elecdirected by despots to Governments controlled tion giving a large majority for that which by and existing for the People. They are styles itself the Democratic' party. Thus, nowhere recognized by the Democracy of the Five Points' is the most 'Democratic' Europe, which plainly contemplates the insti- district of our City; 'The Hook' follows not tution of Governments more pervasive and very far behind it, and so on. Take all the efficient than the world has yet known. Free haunts of debauchery in the land, and you Education, Insurance by the State, the Right will find nine-tenths of their master-spirits to Labor, these are but a part of the ideas of active partisans of that same Democracy' What is the instinct, the sympathetic chord, | PUBLIC DEBTS AND STANDING ARwhich attaches them so uniformly to this party? Will you consider? I States. MIES OF EUROPE. Debts. Army. Ves'ls. Guns Great Britain....$5,000,000,000 129,000 678 18,000 Spain.. ..1,300,000,000 160,000 50 721 Austria ...1,000,000,000 300,000 156 6,00 Russia and Poland.733,000,000 700,000 175* 7,000 Prussia The Netherlands... 731,000,000 50,000 125 2,500 .180,000,000 121,000 47 114 .1,330,000,000 265,463 328 France....... Bavaria.. 8,000 Saxony Wurtemburg.. Greece... 25,000 220,000 800 1,800 18,000 .30,360,000 21.000 19.000 8,900 34 131 4,700 Democracy is, I know full well, a word of power. I know that it has a charm for the hopeful, the generous, the lowly, and the aspiring, as well as for many darker spirits. know that he who aspires to influence. office, and honors, rather than to usefulness and an approving conscience, will naturally be led to Sardinia... enlist under its banner, often drugging his moral Naples sense with the sophistry that he who would do good must put himself in a position where the power to do good will most probably attach to him. But I know also that names must lose their potency as intelligence shall be diffused more and more widely. I know that to be truly Democratic is of more importance than to win and wear the advantages connected with the name. Of that Democracy which labors to protect the feeble and uplift the fallen I will endeavor not to be wholly destitute, while of that which claims a monopoly of office and honors as the due reward of its devotion to equality, I am content to be adjudged lacking. Of that Democracy which robs the effeminate Mexican of half his broad domains, and regards with a covetous the last of Spain's declining valuable poseye sessions-which plants its heel on the neck of the abject and powerless negro, and hurls its axe after the flying form of the plundered, homeless, and desolate Indian,-may it be written on my grave that I never was a follower, and lived and died in nothing its debtor! My friend, I think you now understand what are my political convictions, and why I cherish them. If they differ widely from yours, I can but hope that time and reflection may bring us nearer together, and that in whatever your views are humaner, more conducive to general well-being, more truly Democratic than mine, I shall learn of you, and become filled with your wisdom and imbued with your spirit. That our common country may discern and follow that path which leads through Truth and Right to Prosperity and enduring Greatness, is ever the prayer of Yours truly, New York, October 1st, 1851. HORACE GREELEY. City of Lubec.... .6,000,000 Saxe-Coburg-Gotha...2,556,000 Saxe-Meiningen... .2,500,000 Duchy of Parma.. .1,800,000 12,000 10 150 1,300 3.000 42,000 11,000 490 2,000 700 500 1,200 2,400 3,500 5,000 300 .1,500,000 1,000 .1,500,000 23,000 160 560 .1,200,000 600 .860,000 350 540 450 6,800 Schwarzb'g Rudolstadt 250,000 Mecklenburg Strelitz. " Switzerland.. 66 66 Rep. of San Marino.." The total public debt of Europe amounts to $11,897 096,000, of which Great Britain, without her colonies, owes nearly one half. The paper-money in actual circulation in Europe represents a value of $1,261,428,520. The above figures represent the military forces of the several countries in time of peace; but many of them are now on the war-footing, and cousequently much larger than here represented. The Austrian force in actual service is probably nearer larger than the table represents it. 500,000 than 300,000. That of France is also much ment or war vessels. Of these Great Britain has The vessels referred to are of course governabout two-fifths in number, and nearly one half in force. Of the standing armies of Europe that of Russia is nearly or quite one-third in numerical force. * Also 440 gun-boats. † Annual tribute to Turkey. |