PREFACE.

In presenting to our fellow-citizens these addresses, collected together, we cannot refrain from expressing our high sense of the favourable reception they have experienced. The various defects of style and arrangement which pervade them, have been overlooked, in consideration of the magnitude of the subject they embrace.

We feel persuaded that the cause we advocate yields to none in importance. It is a great error to suppose, as unhappily is too frequently done, that it is the cause of the manufacturers alone. Nothing can be more foreign from the real fact. It is the cause of the nation. It is the mighty question, whether we shall be really or nominally independent-whether we shall persevere in a policy, which in four or five years has done more to prostrate our strength and resources than a fierce war of equal duration could have done--a policy similar to that which has sunk and degraded Spain for centuries, notwithstanding her immense internal and colonial resources—a policy which has never failed, and never can fail, to debilitate and impoverish every country where it has prevailed or may prevail—a policy discarded by every wise nation in Europe-a policy in direct hostility with that of England, Russia, Austria, France, Holland, and Denmark-a policy, in a word, that fosters and promotes the wealth, power, resources, industry, and manufactures of foreign nations, and sacrifices those of our own country.

If there be any one truth in political economy more sacred and irrefragable than another, it is that the prosperity of nations bears an exact proportion to the encouragement of their domestic industry--and that their decay and decrepitude commence and proceed pari passu with their neglect of it. The wonderful resources of England, so far beyond her intrinsic advantages, and the prostrate state of Spain and Portugal, place these great truths on the most impregnable ground.

We pursue a wayward and short-sighted policy, of which the world affords few examples, and which evinces how lit

tle we have profited by the experience of other nationsand how much we neglect the maxims of the wise statesmen of Europe and of our own country.

With a capacity to raise cotton to supply the whole world, our treasures are lavished in Hindostan to purchase cotton of inferior quality, which is now manufactured in the United States, to the injury of our cotton planters. And with skill, talents, water-power, capital, and machinery to supply our utmost demand for cambrics and muslins, millions of money are in a similar manner lavished in Hindostan and England, to procure those articles; while tens of thousands of our own citizens, capable of furnishing them, are pining in indigence; their employers ruined; and machinery, that cost millions of dollars, rusting and rotting; and while hundreds of manufacturers, invited to Our shores by the excellence of our form of government, are unable to earn a subsistence at their usual trades, and are forced to go to Canada or Nova Scotia, or to return to Europe. About fifty sailed from hence in one vessel a few days since.

This destructive policy is about to receive a considerable extension, to the injury of our farmers. Wheat, we are informed, can be sold in our ports from Odessa, at seventyfive cents or less, per bushel; and we are assured, that large quantities of it will be imported. Thus this unhappy nation, by a miserable and mistaken policy, is doomed to bleed at every pore.

Under the influence of such a wretched system, is it wonderful that distress and embarrassment pervade the nation--that the enlivening sound of the spindle, the loom, and the hammer, has in many places almost ceased to be heard--that our merchants and traders are daily swept away by bankruptcy, one after another--that our banks are drained of their specie--that our cities exhibit an unvarying scene of gloom and despair--that confidence between man and man is almost extinct--that debts cannot in general be collected-that property cannot be sold but at enormous sacrifices--that capitalists have thus an opportunity of aggrandizing themselves at the expense of the middle class of society to an incalculable extent-that money cannot be borrowed but at an extravagant interest-in a word, that with advantages equal to any that Heaven has ever bestowed on any nation, we exhibit a state of things at which our enemies must rejoice--and our friends put on sackcloth and ashes!

We trust the day is not far distant, when we shall look back with as much astonishment at this lamentable folly, as we now do at the folly and wickedness of our ancestors in hanging and burning witches. The folly in both cases is about equal. Theirs, however, was limited to a narrow sphere, out of which it was perfectly innocuous. But ours extends its baleful influence to the remotest extremities of the nation.

We are gravely told, by writers on whom great reliance is unfortunately placed, that our circumstances as a nation being materially different from those of other nations, we require a totally different policy-and that however proper or necessary it may be for England or France, to encourage manufactures, sound policy dictates a different course for the United States.

These positions are the reverse of truth, and, so far as they have had influence, have proved highly pernicious. We are, on the contrary, more imperiously called on to encourage manufactures than most other nations, unless we are disposed wantonly to sacrifice the interests of a most important and numerous portion of our population, those farmers and planters who are remote from the seaboard. We request a patient hearing while we offer our

reasons.

In a compact country, like England, where inland navigation is carried to such a wonderful extent, there are few parts of the kingdom that are not within one or two days carriage of the seaboard-and consequently their productions can be transported to foreign markets at a moderate expense. Whereas a large portion of our agricultural citizens are from three hundred to a thousand miles distant from any seaport, and therefore almost wholly debarred from all foreign markets, especially at the present and all probable future prices.

Flour has been forwarded to the Philadelphia market from Pittsburg, at a freight of four dollars per barrel. Some of it was probably brought to Pittsburg, from fifty to a hundred and fifty miles, at considerable expense. Deduct the expenses and profits of the Pittsburg merchants, from six or seven dollars, and in what a lamentable situation it places the farmer-how miserable a remuneration he has for his labour-and how " dear he pays for the whistle,” in buying his goods cheap in Hindostan, and depending on European markets for the sale of his productions!

The folly of this system is so extravagant, that it requires a little further notice. A farmer in the neighbourhood of Pittsburg, sends his produce to that city, whence it is conveyed to Philadelphia, three hundred miles by land--or to New-Orleans, two thousand miles by water. It is thence conveyed four thousand miles to Liverpool, from whence he receives his china, his delftware and his pottery. From the amount of his flour, as sold in England, all the expenses of transportation are to be deducted-and to the price of his china and other articles the expenses of the return voyage are to be added. What a frightful view of the situation of a large portion of the people of the western country does this sketch exhibit? Is it difficult to account for the prostrate state of affairs in that part of the union, and under a government which, emanating more completely from the mass of the people than any other that ever existed, might have been expected to have extended a more paternal care over its citizens than the world ever witnessed!

It is therefore indubitable, that to the reasons for encouraging manufactures, that exist in England and France, all of which apply here, is to be added a powerful one peculiar to the United States, arising from the distance between so large a portion of our territory and any seaport towns, as well as the immense distance from those towns to the places whence we draw our supplies.

Let us suppose for a moment, that the western farmer, instead of purchasing his pottery and delftware in England, had in his own neighbourhood manufactories of those articles, whence he could procure them free of the enormous expenses of sea and land carriage, amounting in many instances to treble the first cost--and that in return he supplied the manufacturer, of whom he purchased them, with his wheat, and corn, and other articles!--What a different face that country would wear! What rapid strides it would then make in the career of prosperity!--What additional allurements it would hold out to emigrants!

We offer for reflection, fellow-citizens, an important fact, that sheds the strongest light on this theory. The settlement of Harmony in the western country, was conducted on this plan. This little commonwealth depended wholly on itself for supplies. It had, to use the cogent language of Mr. Jefferson, "placed the manufacturer beside the agriculurist." What was the consequence? The settlement made

a more rapid advance in wealth and prosperity than any equal body of men in the world at any period of time-more, in one year, than other parts of the United States, which depend on foreign markets for the sale of their produce and the supply of their wants, have done in ten.

It is frequently stated, that as some of the cotton manufacturers in the eastern states have prospered, the protection to the manufacture is adequate. If this argumen. warranted the inference drawn from it, it would prove that the policy of Spain is sound, and fraught with wisdom; for notwithstanding the decay of that nation, there are in it many prosperous manufactures, which, from particular circumstances, are, like some of those in the eastern states, enabled to struggle against foreign competition.--But the decay of so large a portion of the manufacturing establishments in the middle and eastern states, notwithstanding the enterprise, large capital, and industry of the proprietors, is a full proof that there is not sufficient protection to this important branch.

Public attention has unfortunately been diverted from the real sources of our prostrate state, by certain trite common places, re-echoed throughout the union,—that it is a time of general suffering--that distress and embarrassment pervade the whole civilized world-that we are no worse than other nations--and that we cannot hope for an exemption from the common lot of mankind.

This appears plausible--but will not stand the test of examination. It is not wonderful that the nations of Europe, exhausted by a twenty years war--pillaged and plundered by hostile armies-with expensive governments and immense armies to support in time of peace--and groaning under the weight of enormous debts and grinding tithes and taxes, should be in a state of suffering. But there is no parallel between their situation and ours. Our short war, far from exhausting our resources, developed them. We retired from it prosperous and glorious. Our fields are as fertile--our citizens as industrious and ingenious--our capacity for manufacturing as great as ever-and our taxes are comparatively insignificant. Our distresses cannot therefore be traced to the same source as theirs. They flow wholly from our own mistaken policy, which leads us to purchase abroad what we could produce at home-and, like thoughtless prodigals and spendthrifts, to incur debts beyond our utmost means of payment.