gaining strength. No particular obstacle now opposes the development of this branch of industry, which, on the other hand, is favored by the present state of foreign commerce, and the payment of the public debt. Under these circumstances, new manufacturing establishments are forming; flourishing and populous villages are rising in various quarters; the fairest prospects of future prosperity are opening upon us: but all this admirable creation is still in infancy. These young establishments cannot yet contend with the practised skill and accumulated capital of European industry, still less, with the tremendous fluctuations to which the state of that industry is subject. It is admitted by all, as your memorialists have already remarked, that, without protection, our manufactures cannot exist. It is the object of the opponents of the protecting policy, by gradually withdrawing this protection, to bring them by a slow process, with as little injury as possible to vested interests, to destruction. Excepting, as far as this is accomplished, the repeal of the protecting duties would work no change in the condition of any portion of the country. It would neither increase the sales of agricultural produce in foreign countries, the importation of foreign manufactures from abroad, nor the amount of navigation employed in bringing them home. Is it desirable that the existing manufacturing establishments of the country should be destroyed, and the present prospects of future progress in this branch of industry blasted? What is the operation of domestic manufactures on the wealth, population, and general prosperity of a country? Is it favorable, injurious, or simply indifferent? If favorable, is there any thing in the operation of the protecting policy which tends to counteract their good results, and to what extent? These are the questions which appear to your memorialists to be the leading ones in the present inquiry, and which they will now briefly attempt to resolve.

In

The time has been, and it is not a very remote one, when the question, whether the operation of domestic manufactures is or is not injurious, would have been readily answered by many persons in this country in the affirmative. They were habitually viewed with distrust, as likely to exercise a pernicious influence on the morals of the persons employed in them. the earlier discussions of the protecting policy in Congress, and up to the period immediately preceding the war, this was the argument principally urged in opposition to it, and it was urged with peculiar zeal by the representatives of the eastern States. Experience has since corrected this error, and has shown that, in well-managed manufacturing establishments, the only ones which can long thrive, and which, of course, determine the average condition of the whole, the standard of morals is as high, if not higher, than it is in those belonging to any other branch of industry, not excepting agriculture in its best estate. The same experience has amply demonstrated the great positive advantages resulting from the possession of domestic manufactures, the most important of which your memorialists will now very briefly recapitulate.

The first and principal one is an accession of wealth, population, and political importanee, exactly proportioned to the whole amount of capital, and the whole number of persons which they employ. This proposition may appear at first so trite and obvious as to be nearly or quite self-evident. That an agricultural village, town, and country, which obtains its supplies of manufactured articles within its own limits, is, in the same proportion more wealthy, populous, and flourishing, than one, in other respects similarly situ

one from actual observation, to be made the subject of question. It is also apparent, that the remark is equally true of communities politically independent. But, as this truth, however obvious, is constantly denied by the opponents of the protecting policy; and as the denial of it forms the first step in most of the reasoning by which they endeavor to support their opinions, it may be proper to dwell upon it for a few moments, for the purpose of stating it in a more precise form, and examining the objections that are alleged against it.

It may be remarked, then, that, in every community, the wants of the people are regularly supplied by the co-operation of the three great branches of industry, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, in proportions determined by the degree of civilization. The three classes of laborers who are respectively engaged in these three different employments, all derive their means of subsistence, and the manufacturers their materials, from the products of agriculture, and must receive their share alike, whether they dwell within. or without the country. If they live abroad, they still consume the same amount as before, of the products of the community for which they work, and the wealth and population of the latter are of course regularly smaller in the same proportion. If it be supposed, for example-and such is nearly the case in the wealthy and civilized parts of the Christian world-that these three classes of laborers are regularly equal in number, then a community which receives its manufactures from abroad will regularly export one-third part of its agricultural produce in exchange for them, and will be one-third less wealthy and populous, than it would be if they were all supplied at home. Besides this, the labor required for exchanging the products of the two classes of workmen now belonging to distinct communities, regularly divides itself between those communities, and the agricultural country will thus sustain the loss of half its commercial, in addition to the whole of its manufacturing population. The distance at which the exchanges are made being now greater, it requires a greater amount of labor than before to effect them; or, in other words, to carry on the necessary commerce; so that, if this branch of industry before occupied a third part of the laborers, it will now occupy more. On this first and simplest view of the effect on a community of the absence of domestic manufactures, there is, therefore, a loss of more than half the wealth and population that naturally belong to it. But the wealth and population of every country form the true measures of its general prosperity and political importance; and a community which receives its manufactures from abroad, sustains, therefore, in each of these rerespects, a positive loss of half its natural advantages. But this is not all. The wealth and population thus lost, go to swell the wealth and population of some other country, of necessity, one with which the losing people have a close relation. If the elements of wealth and power belonging to the countries thus situated, be, in other respects, naturally equal, one now gains, and the other loses more than half the amount, and the relative forces of the two become as three to one. Thus, the want of domestic manufactures deprives a country of half its positive, and twothirds of its relative importance; degrades it of course from its rank among the nations, and places it at the mercy of the powers with which it has the closest connexion, and to which it is naturally equal.

It is said, however, on the other hand, that the foreign manufactures which we obtain from abroad in exchange for our agricultural exports, are as much the products of American industry as if they were made at home, and that they, of course, put in motion an equal amount of American capital

origin of the doctrine they are noticing, in the most imposing form in which it has yet appeared, is apparent on its face as quoted above, and that a foreign origin not unfrequently indicates a foreign interest. The British, the French, and the Swiss manufacturer, would gladly persuade us, and have an interest in persuading us, that we lose nothing by consuming their products instead of our own; but it is plain, that if the American cultivator give a product upon which he has employed a certain amount of labor and capital to an American manufacturer, in exchange for an American product which has employed another equal amount of American labor and capital, the operation puts in motion twice as much American labor and capital as if he gave the same product to a foreign manufacturer, in exchange for a foreign product which has employed an equal amount of foreign labor and capital. The point is too clear to admit of argument, and yet we are told that the error of the "restrictionists consists in not perceiving that the foreign trade promotes, (puts in motion,) two equal amounts of foreign and domestic industry." The friends of the protecting policy know very well that the foreign trade puts in motion two equal amounts of industry, one foreign and the other domestic; but, though emphatically charged with blindness, they cannot help seeing that the internal trade puts in motion two equal amounts of industry, both of which are domestic; and that it employs, of course, twice as much domestic labor and capital as the other.

It is said, again, that the whole capital of every community is at all times employed; that the establishment of manufactures can only be effected by withdrawing from agriculture or commerce a portion of the capital that was previously employed in them; and that, as the reward of labor is equal in all its departments, the community gains nothing by the operation, and of course loses to the full extent of any sacrifice that may have been made for the purpose of effecting it. "Legislation," we are informed on respectable authority, "cannot generate the smallest amount of capital, it can only transfer the capital already existing from one employment to another. It is said to be "obvious that a certain amount of American industry, which was or might have been employed in producing one million of dollars worth of articles intended for exportation, and to be exchanged for an equal value of foreign goods, cannot, if employed in a domestic manufacture of goods of a similar nature, be any longer employed in producing the exportable articles; and that the only question is, whether that amount of industry is more or less profitably employed in its new, than its former employments." This, as your memorialists conceive, is the radical error in the theory of the opponents of the protecting policy, and it appears to them not less obvious than it is important. It is no doubt perfectly true, that a portion of capital which was, or might have been, employed in one branch of domestic industry, cannot, in general, be rendered more productive by being transferred to another. But how does it appear that the capital and labor which are put in motion by the establishment of manufactures in a country where they did not exist before, was, or might have been, employ-. ed in some other way? How does it appear that all the capital and labor of every community are, at all times, employed in such a way as to yield the ordinary return? Many persons of great discretion believe, that there is in most, if not in all countries, at all times, what has been contemptuously called an imaginary dormant capital; in other words, that a certain por-. tion of the capital and labor of almost every community, is at all times either unemployed, or not employed so as to yield the ordinary returns.

A circumstance which renders practicable the introduction of a new branch of industry that did not exist before, by stimulating enterprise, has a tendency to bring this dormant capital into activity. We are assured, in fact, on authority which will not be contested by the opponents of the protecting policy, "that, by multiplying in any country the channels of domestic industry, a greater scope is given to its application, a market more diversified and less likely to be glutted procured to its products, and a larger field opened to every species of skill and labor." Now, an act of legislation which connteracts the danger of foreign competition, is precisely one of those circumstances that multiply the channels of industry. Such an act renders it practicable to invest in manufactures capital and labor which would not otherwise have been employed in that way, and, of course, has a tendency to bring into action a portion of capital and labor existing in the country, which was not, and, even if it might, would not have been employed in any other manner. It is admitted, that the female labor employed in the cotton and woollen manufactures, is an example of a result of this description, although, at the same time, the importance of this particular branch of employment is studiously underrated. Your memorialists have no disposition to exaggerate it. They deem, it in fact, themselves, a comparatively insignificant item in the great sum of national industry. They will remark, however, in order to set the matter right, that the number of females so employed, at present, is calculated at not less than 100,000. Most of them are the daughters of the cultivators living in the neighborhood of the manufactories in which they are employed, and, if not employed in this way, would have had no occupation whatever of a lucrative kind. They now earn, we are told, from three to four dollars a week, but if we calculate the average earnings of all, over what they would have gained in their former situations, at only $100 a year, we have already, from this single source, a clear addition to the annual revenue of the community of ten million dollars. The profit derived by the country, merely from the female labor which is brought into action by the protecting policy, trifling as it is represented, and comparatively speaking undoubtedly is, nevertheless equal, very nearly, the annual expenses of the Government. In eonnexion with the remarks on female labor here alluded to, an attempt is made to estimate the total value of all the profits accruing to the country from the encouragement afforded to our domestic industry by the establishment of manufactures. We are told that, "making the most ample allowance for errors or omissions, it is utterly impossible, on any rational and candid calculation, to swell their aggregate value to an amount approaching the national loss arising from a difference of 20 per cent. between the respective prices of the domestic and similar foreign commodities." A very easy calculation, founded on data furnished on the same authority on which this assertion is made, The total value of manuwill show how far it is consistent with facts. factures, foreign and domestic, annually consumed in this country, is esti mated, on this authority, at about $200,000,000. The supposed national loss, resulting from the rise of 20 per cent. in the prices of these occasioned by a duty on foreign goods to that amount, cannot be felt on the whole, because it is admitted that the duty on coarse cottons, the most extensive branch of our domestic manufactures, is nominal. But admitting that the supposed loss is felt on the whole, the amount will be only forty millions, while the single unimportant item, on the profit side of the female labor