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brings them employment, nor professional men and merchants, who rely in no small degree on the laboring classes for support.

No one would be injured, then, but every one benefited, if only the single article of iron was protected, and all, perhaps, more than the manufacturer himself, who would see new mills constantly arising around him, to reduce his profits. The idea that one interest is injured by what benefits another is a fallacy which it would hardly seem possible for a man of ordinary reflection and observation to entertain.

The true principle upon which a tariff should be framed I take to be this. In the first place, the great iron, woolen, and cotton interests, together with whatever else we are in a condition to manufacture, should be completely protected. The effect of this is to develop our resources, create a market for the planter and farmer, multiply our laborers, reduce the cost of manufactured goods, and add enormously to our wealth and means of consuming foreign luxuries, which can neither be produced or manufactured at home. On these luxuries let the duties be placed : as, for instance, on tea, coffee, silks, satins, ribbons, high cost wines and brandies, spices, and a long list of similar articles.

A very few years under such a system, together with our great natural advantages and the immense flood of emigration pouring in upon us, would soon

give us the foremost rank among the nations, and make them our debtors and tributaries, instead of being debtors and tributaries to them.

As it is by the adoption of a false system, we find ourselves, with all our unparalleled advantages, yearly falling behind, becoming more deeply in debt abroad and embarrassed and demoralized at home, with a government falling into bankruptcy, as well as countless individuals, who require a national bankrupt law to set them free. How long would the credit of our government suffice to carry on such a war as that in the Crimea or in India, which England has and will come out of stronger than she went into them? We may safely answer, not many weeks, to say nothing of months or years.

The protective policy has piled up wealth and solid capital in England, until she can buy and sell a large part of the world, and reduce us, with other nations, to a state of comparative dependence. This is the policy which I have endeavored to urge upon our own Government, and it is one which the continental nations of Europe have long since adopted in self defence, as the only means by which they can maintain their own security and independence.

It has been often argued in Congress that a tariff, enacted for the purpose of protection and not for purposes of revenue only, is unconstitutional. In answer to this it is only necessary to say, that the

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States cannot protect themselves, having parted with that right by the constitution of the United States. If the right does not exist in Congress, then it is lost, or exists only "in nubibus." Thus, one of the highest acts of sovereignty, and one held by the most advanced and civilized nations of Europe to be the first and highest duty of all governments, cannot be exercised here at all, the States having parted with the power and Congress not having received it. There must certainly be a mistake somewhere, and as certainly I think it will be found not in the framers of the constitution, for they had no doubt of the existence of such a power in Congress, but in those who, in these latter days, have received a new light, by the aid of which they seek to fetter that great national charter by new and strange interpretations.

HENRY C. CAREY.

APRIL 9, 1858.

LETTERS TO THE PRESIDENT, ON THE FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY OF THE UNION, AND ITS EFFECTS, AS EXHIBITED IN THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE AND THE STATE. BY H. C. CAREY. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. These letters, which have appeared simultaneously in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, have now been published in pamphlet form. Mr. Carey has reviewed the commercial history of this country and Europe for the last fifty years in a masterly manner, and has presented an immense amount of statistical information. The conclusions which so eminent a political economist draws from these statistics are entitled to the greatest weight, and should be carefully examined by every one who holds the responsible position of a voter. Whatever may be the uncertainty inherent in many of the subjects of political economy, here is something tangible and susceptible of demonstration, and Mr. Carey has demonstrated, by the recent history of France and other enlightened nations of Europe, the wisdom and necessity on the

part of every State of protecting, in the most complete manner, its manufacturing industry. Portugal, Turkey, and the declining prosperity of the United States, present the reverse of the picture.

The tariff of 1846 is supposed by many, with great reason, to have been passed by the magic influence of English gold. The history of that bill is curious, and in time will no doubt come to light. Had the people been instructed in those plain and obvious principles of political economy so admirably illustrated by Mr. Carey, it is quite safe to say that no such bill could have been forced through by any amount of foreign influence or bribery. The planter and the Western farmer would have seen that protection was as necessary for them as for the manufacturer, the interests of all being in fact identical.

Ample protection would in time bring the cotton mill alongside of the cotton plantation, the woolen mill alongside the sheep pastures of Ohio, the rolling mills and machine shops alongside the Western farmer. This is considered by Mr. Carey the great desideratum in political economy. Free trade removes the planter three thousand miles from his market. The Western farmer is, by the same process, obliged to send all he can scrape from his farm three thousand miles for a market, where he must come into competition with the pauper labor of the grain-growing people on the Baltic and on the Dan