quarter of the present fiscal year, which is here compared with a similar return for the quarter ending December 31, 1845, a period long preceding the slightest apprehension of any deficiency in the potato crop of Ireland :—

1845,.. Quintals exported,.. 15,779 Value,..$42,417 Per Quintal,.$2.70 1851,.. 22,530

66

8,127

66

66

2.78

Instead of a vast increase of quantity and increase of price, we see here that it is only at the cost of nearly one half of the trade the price is being maintained. It is really to be regretted that gentlemen occupying so responsible a situation as that of a member for the enlightened State of Massachusetts should permit themselves to be deceived into the endorsement of statements so utterly fraudulent, and particularly when the interests of their own immediate constituents are so deeply involved as is the case in the present instance.

It was asserted that the tariff of 1828 tended to diminish our commerce with the world, and it was abolished to make place first for the compromise and then for the strictly revenue tariff, under which the nation was involved in bankruptcy, that led to the reëstablishment of the system of 1828, under the tariff of 1842. The same assertion was then made in relation to that tariff, which was replaced by the act of 1846, under which we were to extend our commerce with all the nations of the world, and to supply them with food to the extent of hundreds of millions of dollars. How far the results obtained have corresponded with the predictions, may be judged from the following statements of the value of exports of fish, at intervals of five years, under the different systems :*

1830.

1835.

1840.

Second Year of Last Year of

1845.

1850.

Tariff of 1828. Comp. Tariff. Comp. Tariff. Tariff of '842. Tariff of 1846.

$857,580

$895,679

$550,325

$810,557 $372,886

11177

1,121

32,810

$891,511

4,395

47,609

$947,683

1,300

42,176

$593,801

7,335 51.289

$869,181

3,725 52,774

$429,385

The direct trade with the consumers of our products thus declines with the progress of British free trade, as it grows with that of American free trade. While the exports of American labor and American grain and pork, in the form of fish, thus decline, the imports of foreign labor and foreign grain and pork, in that form, grow as steadily, with daily increasing tendency to a transfer of the whole fishing trade to foreign shipping; and this, too, under a system that was to give us a larger control over the navigation of the world, based as it is upon the supply of seamen furnished by the fisheries. The movement, both as regards the quantity imported and the character of the shipping, is shown in the following table :

Deducting the import from the export, we now obtain as the net export

It would certainly seem that the Hon. member must have permitted himself

* For the figures which follow in relation to the fisheries, we are indebted to a valuable article in the Merchants' Magazine for the present month, March, 1852.

to have been most egregiously deceived by some one when he permitted himself to claim that, under the system known as British free trade, we either exported more in quantity or obtained a higher price for that we had to sell; for it is quite clear that we send to the world far less fish, and obtain for it lower prices than we did fourteen years since, and that while we are closing our mills, our furnaces, and our mines, and thus imposing upon ourselves a necessity for buying cloth and iron, we are from day to day more and more losing the power to pay for them in fish, as well as in all other articles of food.

Another important article of export is NAVAL STORES, which we propose to examine, with a view to show that the result is every where the same, and that, whether we exvmine the movement of the products of the North or the South, the East or the West, the price diminishes as quantity increases, and that the result of increased dependence on foreign markets is diminished return to the labor of our own people, followed by increased necessity for soliciting loans at the hands of the bankers of Europe.

In 1838-9 the first year of the period embraced in the Hon. gentleman's calculations—the export of naval stores amounted to

258,851 barrels. Valued at....$688,800.

Average Value,...$2.67

In 1841-2-the last year of the revenue tariff-the quantity had increased to 330,000 barrels; but so far was this increase from being attended with corresponding increase of return, that the value was only $743,329, an average of only....

2.25

In 1845-6, we find that the export had risen to 417,719 barrels, being an increase in the four years of more than twenty-five per cent., and an increase in the return of almost fifty per cent., the total value having been $1,085,712, giving an average of...

2.55

This would scarcely seem to bear out the Hon. gentleman's statements, but still less will it be found to be the case with the years that have followed the adoption of the policy of 1846

1847-8, Export,...385,078 Value,... $752,103

Av. Value,..$1.95

In 1845-6, we sent abroad four hundred and seventeen thousand barrels, and obtained for them $1,085,000. In 1850-51, we increased the quantity to half a million, and obtained $1,063,000, thus giving away eighty-three thousand barrels, and suffering a loss of $22,000; and this under a system that was to make so great a demand for ships as could not fail to enrich the producers of all those commodities required for their construction or management!

Having given several extracts showing the present condition of things among the producers of food, we now give the following from one of the papers of the day, with a view to show what it is among the producers of naval stores and cotton

"Far South, customers have purchased very lightly, and the North Carolinians who are now buying, make small purchases, and complain of the difficulty of collecting, and dulness of trade generally; therefore we must not expect to close the season's trade as profitably as last year."

The state of things here described is easily accounted for, when we reflect that cotton now sells at little more than thirty dollars a bale, when it would be fifty dollars, had we permitted the domestic consumption to extend itself as it was extending under the tariff of 1842; and when we reflect that the manufacture of food into pork and beef, lead and hemp, coal and iron, is steadily diminishing; and when the only effect of an increase in the manufacture of food into naval stores, is attended with the results exhibited in the following diagram:

Having arrived at the close of the statements of the Hon. member for Massachusetts, we may now notice, en passant, those just made in the Senate by another of the advocates of that British free trade which looks to limiting the planter to a single market in which to sell his cotton, and a single market in which to purchase his cloth and linen. In the course of the debate on Intervention, the Hon. Mr. Soulé states, that

"In the year 1900, according to the same ratio of increase in exports during the last fifty years, the American exports would be $700,000,000. These exports are the excess of our wealth."

Having read this, we beg our readers to turn back and re-read Mr. Walker's predictions as to our capacity to supply with food the hundreds of millions of the Eastern world, and then to remark the fact, that our exports of food and cotton were, before this time, to have amounted to some three hundred millions of dollars; after which they may advantageously reëxamine the tables by which it is shown that just as we diminish the manufacture of iron, cloth, and lead, we diminish the manufacture of pork, beef, lard, butter, cheese, hemp, and wool, and thus diminish our power to maintain foreign commerce precisely as we increase our necessity for it. The more iron we buy abroad, the less food we have with which to pay for it. The calculation of the Hon. Senator from Louisiana would seem to be on a par, as regards probability, with those of Mr. Secretary Walker, who found the product of the nation so large that he adopted the most certain means for diminishing it; and did this under the idea that he would thereby increase the power to maintain commerce.

With the steady diminution of production throughout the West, there is a corresponding diminution in the value of land. We have now before us a statement, that a single county in Wisconsin has lost by emigration in the last three years, not less than $650,000; and that real estate has fallen in value fifty per cent. The "benign influence" of the tariff of 1846 seems to

be tolerably equally divided among the smelters of iron, the makers of cloth, the growers of corn and cotton, and the owners of Western lands.

It will not now, we think, be difficult for our readers to understand why it is that there is a daily diminution in the consumption of cloth and of iron. They must see that it results from the fact that there is a daily diminution in the product of commodities to be given in exchange for them. The less pork, beef, lead, or hemp, that is made, the less cloth and iron can be purchased. What have been the changes in this respect, under the different systems, will be seen on an examination of the following diagrams, which represent the total consumption of iron and of cotton cloth, domestic and foreign, in the last fourteen years.

In 1842, the people and the banks, the States and the nation, were either bankrupt, or on the verge of bankruptcy. With the passage of the act of 1842, confidence in the future began to make its appearance, and in the brief period of four years the people were restored to prosperity, commerce grew, banks resumed payments, and States were restored to credit, while the public revenue so far increased as greatly to exceed the expenditure. So magical a resuscitation the world had never before seen; and the very idea of interfering with a system under which such results had been obtained, was calculated to strike with awe even the fiercest advocate of the system which looks to limiting the planter to one market for the sale of all his cotton, and one market for the purchase of all his cloth and iron. The poet tells us, however, that "Fools rush in where angels feared to tread;"

and so was it here.

In saying this, we beg to disclaim the slightest intention of any disrespect

to the author of the tariff of 1846. Undoubtedly a man of ability, he had unhappily none of the knowledge required to fit him for a reformer of the commercial system of the country. His knowledge of trade and of political economy was derived exclusively from books, and our readers do not need to be told that a farmer who has no practical knowledge, and who depends entirely on books, will ruin himself, even on the best farm. To this absence of knowledge on the part of Mr. Walker are we indebted for the tariff of 1816, under which our consumption of cotton has fallen so low as to force on the European market so large a quantity as to have brought the price down to a point almost as low as has ever been known-under which the consumption of cotton and woolen cloth is daily diminishing in actual quantity, notwithstanding the rapid growth of population-under which we consume far less iron than we did four years since, notwithstanding an addition of more than three millions to our population-under which we have every year less pork and beef, butter and cheese, ashes and fish to sell, and more hemp, lead, cloth and iron to buy-under which we have issued bonds for a hundred millions, to make amends for a diminution in the productive power that now amounts to hundreds of millions annually, and by aid of which the country is now brought to the condition in which it stood in 1836, and that in which Great Britain stood in 1846, on the verge of an explosion-and yet honorable gentlemen can be found who suffer themselves to be misled into assuring the people that we not only obtain better prices for all we have to sel, but that the quantities for sale have vastly increased. The day is at hand when the destructive effects of the tariff of 1846 are to be fully experienced: and for the sake of the Honorable member's future peace of mind, we cannot but hope that he will examine carefully the statements we now place before him, and that he will then relieve himself from all responsibility by publicly acknowledging that he had been mistaken— that the tariff of 1846 was producing the worst effects that had been anticipated from it-and that he had at length become convinced that the road to perfect freedom of trade could be found only in the adoption of protection to the farmer and the planter, in their efforts to bring the loom and the anvil to take their natural places by the side of the plough and the harrow.

In our next we shall continue our examination of this remarkable speech, and trust to satisfy our readers that its author's knowledge of political economy is on a par with the accuracy of his facts. Need we say more to commend it to their careful perusal?

In the meantime, we invite their careful attention to the following brief summary of the real facts of the case :

UNDER THE TARIFF OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO,

we built mills and created machinery that enabled us, in less than six years from the date of its enactment, to increase the consumption of cotton from 267,000 to more than 600,000 bales; and to increase the consumption per head from seven to thirteen pounds, with every reason to expect that it would soon reach twenty pounds, to the great advantage of the producer of cotton and the consumer of cloth.

We built mills and created machinery that enabled us, in six years, to increase the domestic manufacture of woolen cloth from fifty-five to eightyfive millions of pounds.

We opened mines and built furnaces that enabled us to increase the domestic production of iron from 200,000 to more than 800,000 tons, and to increase the consumption per head from thirty-eight to ninety-eight pounds per head.