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H. OF R.]

The Tariff.

[MAY 10, 1830.

the whole body of the earth. When Napoleon could not fabrics of the North are depreciated in our own market conquer England by the sword, he determined to wield by a competition with all the world; and this is done for the spindle against his great rival. The continental system originated by him, gave an impulse to the manufacturing power of France, in competition with that of Eng. land. The effects of that impulse continue to this hour, though the mighty hand which gave the movement long ago ceased to conduct the machinery.

feed, to thrive, and to rail at the whole working world, who do not drive slaves, and make cotton and tobacco! Away, then, with this insensible South Carolina dogma, The American system does not diminish, but does, by competition between England, France, and America, greatly increase the price of cotton. It does not increase, but, does, by a like competition between the same great rivals for the market of the world, diminish the price of manufactured fabrics.

the benefit of southern consumption. The planters of the South exclude the cotton of all, the world from the United States; they bring the demand of all Europe into that market, and by this competition with all the manufacturing world, appreciate their cotton for the consumption of northern manufacturers. Who, sir, who is the mone This rivalry of nations, this competition between Eng- polist? Who is most protected by the American sysland, France, and the United States, the English system, tem? Whose product is reduced by competition; whose the continental system, the American system, interest, is raised in price by monopoly? Is it the manufacturer of power, ambition-what have they not done? What would New England, who patiently toils at his trade, and eats the England alone, and without this competition, have achiev- bread of labor and carefulness? or is it the South Carolina ed? Have not all these united, increased the consump-planter, lord of a thousand laborers, whose only care is to tion, the demand, the market value of the great staple of South Carolina? Why, sir, look into your own records; you will find this question fully answered, and that, too, by the soundest commercial men of the nation. They tell you that when the English, French, and.American agents enter into competition, in the cotton market of the South, they do, by this very competition, advance the price of that product nearly two cents on each and every pound. This, at the present cost, equals twenty per cent. on the whole amount of the whole annual production. What, then, would South Carolina, in the madness of her mistaken policy, what would South Carolina do? She would destroy one of these great rivals—and, O most unnatural, she would destroy her own country. For what? For her own benefit No. For the benefit of Old England? That she will deny. What then? Why, simply, sir, that New England may be destroyed, and because South Carolina politicians do verily believe that one cotton market is better than two. Will nothing satisfy the avidity of South Carolina politicians? They hold a monopoly in the cotton market of the United States. Climate secures this monopoly. We cannot grow cotton in New England. Labor further secures this monopoly to them. Slaves, they tell us, work for twelve cents a day; but free men cannot work for less than fifty. Their monopoly is moreover secured and confirmed to them by this very system, by a duty under it of more than thirty per cent. Is any monopoly of manufactures secured to New England? Are there not waterfalls, and capital, and cheaper labor in the South? Can they not spin? Do they not spin, in South Carolina We can never take cotton growing from them; but they can take cotton-spinning from us, whenever, like the patriot, David Williams, they may choose to be their own overseers.

The member from South Carolina, equally regardless of fact, and unmindful of justice, denounces the manu facturers of the free States. "They are monopolists, whose whole souls are absorbed in their capital; without feeling, and without regard for the suffering condition of South Carolina planters. Do you expect humanity from them? Sooner would the cannibal be moved to compassion by the wailing infant destined to feed or to feast him." Yes, sir, these terms of abuse are vociferated through your halls, until the very echoes have learned the indecent calumny, and cry out tariff, manufacturers, monopolist, assassin, cannibal Where is the truth? Overwhelmed, sir, in this roar of contumely. The tariff, the tariff, I say, gives to the cotton planters of South Carolina a monopoly of the whole cotton market of these United States. This monopoly is secured to them by a duty of thirty-three per cent. by a perfect protection. They compel northern manufacturers to pay them ten cents for cotton, when, if this tariff were removed, these manufacturers might import that product from other countries at seven. Does his tariff, in return, secure the whole market of the Unit ed States to northern manufacturers? No, sir. It perits southern planters to bring into that market, in exhange for their own products, forty millions of foreign abrics, and that to the exclusion of a like amount, which Light be produced by domestic labor and capital. The

Does the American system give a bounty to the sugarmaking, grain-growing, and manufacturing States! This is the third South Carolina allegation against that system. The member from that State did, in this House, in 1828, declare it to be a postulate in political economy, that all duty on imported commodities is to its full amount a tax on the consumers of these commodities, and a bounty to the like amount on all commodities of the same kind produced in the country. If a package of cotton cloth, worth one hundred dollars, be imported into the United States under a duty of thirty per cent., that cloth will be raised in price thirty per cent,, and must sell in the mar ket for one hundred and thirty dollars. If the manufac turers of the United States produce cloth of the same kind and quality, it will sell at the same price. So that, if the domestic cloth brought one hundred dollars before the duty was imposed on foreign cloth, it will, after the duty is imposed, bring one hundred and thirty dollars. The duty will, in the one case, be a tax on consumption, and, ia the other, a bounty to the same amount on manufactured production. The tax on consumption goes into the revenue, and the bounty into the pocket of the manufaeturer. If you raise the duty to perfect production, so that importation of the foreign fabric is prohibited, and the market is wholly supplied by the domestic, the tax will cease for benefit of the revenue, but the bounty will continue for benefit of the manufacturer. This was, in 1827 and in 1828, the dogma of the member from South Carolina. It was, and still is, taught by Dr. Cooper. You will find it in the Southern Review; there the writer has laboriously made out a tabular statement of bounties, paid, as be alleges, by the people of the United States to the producers of various encouraged and protected products, and which, by his calculation, amounts to more than thirty millions of dollars.

Let us

What, air, is the object of this argument? Why, truly to convince the people of the United States that the American system is fabricated for the purpose of fraudulently exacting money from one part of the nation, that the same money may be gratuitously bestowed on another part of the nation. It should, therefore, be abolished. examine this question. If the dogma of Dr. Cooper and of South Carolina be true in the United States, it must be true in England. The English have a protecting system; their corn laws and their tariff. In 1824, all woollen cloths imported into England paid a duty of fifty per cent., all white cottons a duty of fifty, and all colored cottons a duty of seventy-five per cent. What might the farmers say to the manufacturers of Old England? Just what the planters of South Carolina say to the manufacturers of New

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England. These duties raise the price of your fabrics. | seen, amounts to more than one-fourth part of the whole. We pay you a bounty of fifty per cent. on your white, of Are cotton planters one-fourth part of the domestic proseventy-five per cent. on your coloured cottons; and we ducers of the United States! No, sir; not one-sixth part. pay you a bounty of fifty per cent. on all your woollen If, therefore, impost duty, on imported products, be a cloths. Your tariff is a system of fraud and exaction; it bounty on domestic products, who are the greatest gainers is calculated and intended to draw money from the by this system of bounties, the manufacturers of the North, pockets of farmers, and place it in the pockets of manu- or the cotton planters of the South; the men who rail at the facturers. Let all this be true, sir, if you please, for the laws, while they are enriched by their provisions, or the purpose of this argument; and, indeed, if it be true in men who submit to their operation, and patiently labor for New England, it must be true in Old England. It will be their own and the general good of all the nation? Sir, admitted, I presume, that goods of the same kind and the animal which growls while he is fed, and bites the quality, are sold in the English market, at one and the hand holding food to his mouth, is, of all beasts, wild or same price, to all purchasers. At any rate, the American tame, most odious in the sight of God and man. purchaser will get them at a price no lower than the Eng- I have run this doctrine of bounties out into all its lish purchaser gets them. In 1824, we imported cloths branches, not because I believe in its soundness, but to from England. Our whole consumption was not less than demonstrate, if it be sound, that South Carolina planters, one hundred millions of dollars. Had we purchased the of all men, have least cause to complain of its operations. whole amount from that country, what amount of bounty I now ask the attention of the committee, for a few moshould we have paid to English manufacturers? Not less ments, while I attempt to explain the true doctrine of imthan fifty millions of dollars. If Dr. Cooper and South post duties, both for encouragement and for protection; Carolina be correct, abolish the American system, pros- and show that the American system does not, and in its ultitrate the manufacturing establishments of the United mate effects cannot secure any bounty to any class of do States, import all your fabrics from England, and you en-mestic production. The object of this system is to furnish sure, on your whole manufactured consumption, a bounty the great staple necessaries of national consumption, from to the capital and labor of that country, equal to three the land, labor, and capital of our own country. The times the amount of your whole annual revenue. The gentleman from New York, [Mr. CAMBRELENG] equally provident of the great interests of both nations, has laid a bill before us, as a sort of codicil to the last will and testament of the American system, which, as he foresees, must give up the ghost under the hands of his learned friend in the Department of State. By this, the gentleman has provided that Great Britain shall never exact of the American people, for the benefit of her manufacturers, a higher bounty than thirty per cent, or what may amount per annum to fifty millions of dollars.

founders of this system, the first Congress under the present constitution, did not believe it wise or just to compel the cultivators of the American soil to send their products three thousand miles, under the perils of the seas, the hazards of war, and the oppression of foreigu laws, that they might there be wrought into clothing, furniture, or the instruments of their labor, and then reshipped, and brought back in like manner for their use. That they might be relieved from this immense expenditure, nor always rely on the workshops of Europe, provision was early made to erect such workshops this side of the AtlanThe gentleman from New York would abolish the Ame- tic, on their own lands, and enable them to furnish themrican system; the member from South Carolina would selves with these staple necessaries, by exchange of their abolish the American system; Dr. Cooper would abolish surplus products with their own immediate neighbors. the American system, because it secures a bounty to the The very first law which provided for revenue, provided American manufacturer. Abolish this pernicious system, also for the encouragement of the manufacture of all faand you transfer that bounty, that money, from the pocket brics needful for domestic consumption. The duty on of the American to the pocket of the British manufac-imported manufactures was intended to encourage Ameriturer. You cannot relieve the American people from cans to commence, and to perfect the like manufactures. this tax; but you will not only make them all pay, but It raised the price of the foreign fabric, because it was pay to Old instead of New England manufacturers. This added to their cost, when imported, and placed in the will secure equality, though it sacrifice independence, and give to the South the glory of being tributary to a great monarchy, rather than a few inconsiderable republican States. Is this, sir, the patriotism of these times? This our emulation of the glorious ancestry from which we are descended? The first bold brotherhood of American States, were they thus envious of mutual benefits, or tamely subservient to English influence? No, sir, not a cent for British aggrandizement; but millions to advance American independence, wealth, and glory.

market of this country. In form, but in form only, it was a bounty on incipient domestic fabrics of the same kind. When the domestic manufacturer could bring products into the market, of that kind, and of a quality equal to the foreign, he could then, but not till then, receive the same price for them. So long as want of skill, deficient capital, or imperfect machinery retarded the progress of his work, and rendered his fabrics inferior in quality to the foreign, he was compelled to sell them at inferior prices. The first cloth, the first cotton, the first sugar made in this country, If the South Carolina dogma be true; if all impost be brought a loss, not a bounty, to the producer. When skill to an equal amount, a bounty on domestic production, is acquired, capital obtained, and machinery perfected, the then, whenever you find such impost, and such produc- producer may receive benefit from impost duty. This can tion, you must find 'such bounty. Do not South Carolina never be the fact, for any considerable length of time; for, planters touch the accursed thing? Is there not an im- as domestic production increases under encouragement, post, a duty, on imported cotton, amounting to at least importation will decline, and a want of revenue will call thirty per cent. Here, then, according to their own pro- for an increased amount of impost duty. This, again, infessed principles, is a bounty on the whole cottrn produc- creases encouragement of domestic productions, and again tion of the South. Whenever their export amounts to diminishes importation; and this induces another advance twenty-eight millions, the whole crop must equal thirty-of impost. This is repeated, until domestic production, unfive, for they sell one-fourth of the whole crop to north- der improved skill and increased encouragement, supplies ern manufacturers. The bounty to cotton planters must, the domestic market. Impost amounts to protection; imin ordinary years, therefore, amount to ten million five portation ceases; and competition, among domestic prohundred thousand dollars. The Southern Review places ducers, reduces the market price to the natural price, that the whole bounties paid on all domestic products, at about is, to the fair cost of production. All benefit from encou thirty millions of dollars; but the writer of those articles ragement is then at an end. Let any man be at the labor prudently omits to insert the bounty on cotton. This, it is of examining the history of every domestic fabric which

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now supplies our market, and he will find this to havebeen the progress. The whole benefit received from impost has never more than equalled the extraordinary expense of perfecting the skill and machinery necessary for a perfect production of the fabric. The nation has been at some cost for these improvements; the manufacturer is not enriched; but the people now reap the benefit, by having their market supplied with domestic fabrics of equal quality with the foreign, and discharged, not only from the duty, but from the cost of importation, and at a price as low as foreigners can buy them in their own market. I assert it as fact, and I do not fear contradiction, that every domestic fabric, which now wholly, or almost wholly, supplies the market of the United States, is sold in that market at as low a price as English fabrics of the same kind and quality are now sold in Liverpool, Manchester, or London. What is the price of nails, glass, shoes, boots, hats, cotton cloths, woollen cloths, yarns, furniture, saddlery, carriages? It is as low in the United States as in England; and that, too, when English excise is deducted from the English fabric. Dare the member from South Carolina contradict the asBertion? I know he dares not?

Where, then, is the bounty? By whom is it paid? Who receives it? It is, sir, a baseless fable; contrived and circulated to deceive the uninformed-to create excitement move animosities-effect divisions-achieve political purposes, and, if possible, to overthrow the manufacturing establishments, the great interests of the northern States. One more objection to the American system remains to be considered. South Carolina alleges that she has, by its operations, lost her natural market, the market of England. This, sir, adds ingratitude to the catalogue of unjust and querulous accusations brought against the farming and manufacturing States. In the progress of the American system, their cotton has, in the West, in the North, and in the East, taken the market from the native flax, hemp, and wool of those regions. By a great competition, growing up under kindred systems, between the rival nations of Europe and America, the same material has usurped the legitimate markets of the flax, the hemp, and the wool of England and France; and, to a great extent, that of the silk of France and Italy. The fabrics from this cotton are spread over all Europe. They are sold in every maritime town of Africa. You find them in southern America, from Rio to Lima, and from California to the Cape. The Hindoo, whose daily food is a handful of rice, his daily wages the smallest division of silver coin, can hold no competition with southern cotton, wrought by American or European machinery. The turban of the Great Mogul, once spun and woven from Thibet wool-a fleece more resembling, in fineness, pencils of moonbeams than any palpable, material thing-of so fine a web and woof, the whole texture so evanescent, that, although one yard in breadth and sixty in length, the whole fabric was lightly packed in a richly ornamented box, elegantly wrought from a small cocoa-nut shell; the turban of the Great Mogul, the successor of Aurungzebe, the descendant of Tamerlane, whose camp exceeded in splendor the richest cities of the East, whose sword made more women childless, than that of the most renowned conquerors of ancient or modern times; the turban of the Great Mogul, sir, now a finer, a richer, and more highly finished ornament, is woven in the British loom, and from the Sea-Island cotton of South Carolina.

To what further extent would she push her legitimate commerce! Russia still grows and wears some hemp. The silkworm of southern Europe and Asia is not altogether shaken from the mulberry groves of those regions; and the luxurious inhabitant still weaves and wears, for some part of his dress, the product of his native clime. Otherwise the kingdoms of the world have submitted to the empire of cotton; and, like the people of these States, wear this badge of commercial brotherhood with the southern sisters of our Union.

[MAY 10, 1830.

If the demand for cotton in the markets of the world be extended to its utmost limits; if that market, already filled with American cotton, can receive no more; what claim can South Carolina have on the States of this Union for any aid in a further extension of her commerce in that product? She can sell no more, unless some other product can be excluded from the consumption of the world, that cotton may take place of it. The great, enduring ne cessities of the world demand food, clothing, and habi tation; civilized and stationary nations will never build houses of cotton; and though South Carolina, aided by the machinery of America and Europe, may push her eommerce, in that product, into the consumption of the nomade nations of Asia, so that her cotton shall furnish tents for the Arab aud the Tartar, yet she can never make any pro gress in compelling men, wild or tame, to consume her favorite commodity, for any part of their food. Her great competition is now with the flocks and the herds of the world; and if she could banish leather and woollen cloths from use among the human race, ber triumph would be complete. Climate, not the American system, is here her great adversary. Were it not for this, every sheep in the United States would, long ago, have been sacrificed for the extension of South Carolina commerce. Winter will return once a year; and the people of northern climates will if they can obtain them, wear woollen clothes. It was said two years ago, in a celebrated report on the state of the finances, made by the then chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, that the people of the United States annually consume woollens, amounting to seventy-two millions of dollars. Since that discovery, the claims of South Carolina have been extended, and the denunciations of the American system, from that region, are, if possible, terfold more loud and boisterous. Here they are met by a physical barrier; not only the unconquerable obstinacy of climate, but the utter impossibility of admitting one fibre of cotton into the woollen trade. The growers and manufae turers of sheep's wool are the great consumers of the fabrie Until, by some great discovery, you can spin and weave cotton into woollen broadcloths, this trade, to the full amount of their consumption, must, to the utter exclusion of South Carolina commerce, remain with the wool grow ers and woollen manufacturers of the world. Exchange how you will, it must come to this at last. If the grower of cotton exchange it for sheep's wool, he must exchange that again, if he do not consume it himself; and again, and again, it must be exchanged, until it comes to its proper consumer. The cotton must follow the same round in quest of a consumer; until both the cotton and the wool come back again to their original producers, or perish in this round of useless exchange and circulation. If South Carolina denominate the woollen trade her legitimate commerce, the laws of nature, not the American system, stand in her course; and until she can rail wool from the backs of our sheep, snows from the hills of New England, and scowl winter, with all his storms, back to the polar regions, she may, she must, without advancing one step in her progress, exhaust all the vengeance of her State sovereignty on the innocent provisions of that system in vain, utterly in vain.

While South Carolina incessantly complains that the grain-growing and manufacturing States will not aid ber foreign commerce, by their consumption of foreign commodities, let ut look at her own exertions, and learn how she aids that commerce by her own consumption. In 1827, she exported eight million one hundred and eighty-nine thousand four hundred and ninety-six dollars. She im ported one million four hundred and thirty-four thousand one hundred and six dollars, in the same year. Of that amount, one hundred and thirty-three thousand and sixtyfive dollars were re-exported. With a population of more than five hundred thousand, South Carolina aided her own commerce by a consumption of foreign products amount

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ing to one million three hundred and sixty-one thousand and, system, to a rate sufficient only for the purposes of reveforty-one dollars. These were probably teas, coffee, sugar, nue. That revenue, when the national debt is paid, (and wines, woollens, and hardware, eight articles. If she im- under the present policy, the other great branch of the ported of each an equal amount, it was, in each article, American system, the improvement of harbors, rivers, one hundred and fifty-two thousand four hundred and thirty roads, and canals, is abandoned)-that revenue will not be dollars and ten cents. Three of these, cottons, hardware, required to exceed ten millions of dollars. In any event, and woollens, were probably received from England. The fifteen per cent. on all imported commodities will, in time whole amount from her dear commercial friend was three of peace, supply the treasury, and pay all officers their hundred and twenty-seven thousand nine hundred and annual and other salaries. The duty on British fabrics three dollars and thirty cents, in exchange for about se- will be reduced to fifteen per cent. What will be the ven millions of dollars in cotton, her own great staple. effect? Importation of foreign manufactures would be inFor the balance, the cotton planters drew bills, and sold creased to a great amount, and sufficient to deluge the them to the northern importers of English fabrics, at twelve markets. Could American manufactures resist the tide ? per cent. advance. In this liberal manner, South Caro- Prices must fall to a very low rate. Losses, to the amount lina planters aid by their consumption the legitimate com- of at least thirty-three per cent. on the whole supply of merce of that State with England-a foreign export of our market, would follow. That supply is furnished, at eight million one hundred thousand dollars, sustained by this time, one-fourth of it by English, three-fourths by a consumption of foreign products amounting to one mil- American capital. Three-fourths of the loss must fall on lion three hundred thousand. This, too, was done with a American capital; less than one-fourth on English. One population of more than five hundred thousand souls. year would sink one-quarter of our capital; while that of England would suffer little more than one per cent. A second importation would complete the overthrow; and, after two years of abundant supply, and low, very low prices, leave our whole cousumption to the mercy of foreign manufacturers, exasperated by the competition, exulting in their triumph, and determined to reimburse their loss, by charging, on our defenceless country, the whole expense of the war. For having dared to attempt independence, the Holy Alliance of Europe would punish you and your children, through a long course of years, and until some more wise and patriotic generation, like your and their illustrious ancestors, shall arise, and again dare to throw off the ignominious yoke,

How do the manufacturing States aid South Carolina, in her natural market with her dear England? Take Rhode Island as a sample. In 1827, that State, with a population of eighty-three thousand, imported one million two hundred and forty-one thousand eight hundred and twentyeight dollars; re-exported two hundred and eight thousand and ten dollars; and consumed one million thirty-three thousand and eighteen dollars. How just, how liberal, how grateful is South Carolina to the manufacturing States, which so aid, sustain, and extend her foreign commerce! What fair and honest claim has she, by which to compel them further to purchase and consume English fabrics, that she may sell a greater quantity of cotton to English manufacturers, when she will not take them for her own consumption in exchange for her own products? Why, sir, for this very purpose, what a storm of anathema did, for three days, rage through this Hall? O! had Jove, for that brief time, but yoked his lightning to those volleys of sound, whose head would now be above his shoulders!

Such, sir, are the wrongs of South Carolina, these are her complaints, her accusations, and thus she sustains them against the grain-growing, the sugar-making, and manufacturing States of this Union. What remedy does that State propose for all these imaginary grievances? You find this remedy in the amendment proposed by the member from South Carolina. That State would overthrow the encouraging, the protecting, the American system, and build on its ruins a structure, such as cannot be found in any nation of Europe, and because the scheme of it was devised and delineated in England, called the English system. By this, when it is perfected, these United States, abandoning all other employments, must farm, and plant, and fish; and import froin England all, all their necessary manufactured fabrics. It is, sir, the very system of the colonies, the revolution revolutionized. I will examine it, and, in that examination, inquire whether the South will probably be placed in a more prosperous condition by this exchange of systems.

To illustrate the effects of this revolution on the South, it is needful, first, to show what will befall the North under its operations. The overthrow of the American system, the repeal of the laws enacted for the encouragement and protection of American industry, would, at once, bring the manufacturing capital of England into a war of competition with that of the United States. Which is most powerful! The capital devoted to that purpose in England was, in 1812, one hundred and fourteen millions of pounds sterling. It probably, at this time, equals one hundred and forty millions of pounds, or about six hundred and forty four millions of dollars. Let the manufacturing capital of the United States be estimated at one-sixth part of that sum; and it does not, in all probability, exceed that amount. Impost duty is to be reduced, under the new VOL. VI-118.

What must be fall the capital and the labor of our country, before such a revolution could be achieved? The circulating capital is swept away by the competition. Fixed capital must become useless, and follow the same fate. First of all, the great investments in works for the manufacture of iron would be thrown out of employment. The gentlemen from Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, from right to left, in this committee, can tell you the extent of this ruin. Next to these, all the structures, raised and filled with machinery for spinning and weaving the wool of our farmers into fabrics for their and our clothing, must stop their wheels. Capital invested in cotton mills, with all their preparation, their spindles, their looms, will next fall into the procession; and these, together with all expenditures made for raising and using water power, for all other purposes throughout the whole extent of our country, shall be thrown out of use, decay, perish, and be lost to the nation. Tell me not that the owners may sell out, or change their capital to some other employment. Who will buy what no one can use? To what other purpose would you convert a forge, or a furnace, than the making of iron Woollen and cotton factories; what will you do with them, when you can no longer manufacture cloths Mill dams, water wheels, conduits, gates, flumes, sluices? You cannot work them up into ships, or wagons, or ploughs, or convert them into manure, and spread them out on your farms. When all your manufacturing fixtures, and the millions of machinery now moving in them, are destroyed, the skilled labor at this hour, operating on all these great engines of production, will, like these their instruments of toil and livelihood, be useless and out of employment.

Water power, now performing so much labor, must cease to be of any use. Plunge the sword to the heart of five hundred thousand horses, such as transport loaded wagons from Pittsburg to Philadelphia, and you would not put to death a squadron of efficient and productive power, such as must perish under this new system of slaughter.

Labor-saving machinery; what are the achievements of

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[MAY 10, 1830.

this mystery, in multiplying human labor? Some tell us | tended to sustain him in the immense expenditure neces that, with this machinery, one person will do the work of sary in commencing, and carrying on to perfection, the one hundred and fifty; others, one hundred; but all agree growth and manufacture of a production so necessary and that one hand will, with these instruments of toil, perform important to this nation. When the crop is seventy millions more than fifty can without them. Have you five hundred of pounds, the whole encouragement amounts to two milthousand persons thus employed? You realize the labor lion one hundred thousand dollars. Under the English of twenty-five millions of people. This pestilent gas, gene- system, intended to be established by the amendment prerated by Dr. Cooper and his persevering disciple, this posed by the member of South Carolina, this duty wil simoom from the South, shall pass over your rivers and ultimately, be reduced to fifteen per cent, or to about waterfalls; and death, and silence, and desolation will lie seven mills and one-half on a pound. Can Louisiana, in down together on the banks of every stream. the present state of her culture and finances, sustain this shock? Sir, the enterprise of that State has more adver turously engaged in agricultural improvements, than that of all the other parts of the country united. That State has been, by a gentleman of South Carolina, of classic taste, denominated on this floor, "A Delta of more than Egyptian fertility;" but it should not be forgotten, that, like Egypt, it will require the wealth of another Sesestris to reclaim this region from the dominion of its overwhelming river. Take away the encouragement now given by the tariff to her production, prostrate her sugar culture, for the establishment of which she has been st such immense cost, and you give back this "Delta of Egyptian fertility" to the dominion of the Mississippi. The levees, already raised on the sides of that stream above this State, confine to the channel of the river those waters which heretofore spread out upon the lands of Arkansas, and the adjacent States. Stop the progress of improvement in Louisiana, by a destruction of her great staple production, and these waters will soon spread out on the already reclaimed and cultivated lands of that State. The effect is beyond calculation. The planters of that State are known, not only for their enterprise, but for their hospitality. Their abodes are open to the stranger. The cultivator, "when the toils of the day are done," in the midst of his household of love, and friendship, and joy, looks out on his “moonlight groves of cane." The English system shall pour the waters of the Mississippi over his plantations, and put an end to his prosperity, his joys, and his hopes. Alligators, old and young, may float on the stagnant lakes, or hold their family gambols over his buried halls. I would not longer look at the picture; I leave it to the crocodiles of the new world, and to the member from South Carolina.

By these events, agricultural labor and capital, now employed in feeding manufacturing labor, will have lost that employment, and become useless. That agriculture, which produces provisions and bread stuffs for distant markets, is not here intended. The manufacturing labor required to make, to move, and to keep in repair one hundred spindles, with all their accompanying machinery, will consume annually to the amount of one thousand dollars in agricultural products. These, almost all of them, from their quality, must be consumed near the time and place of their production. Among them are pasturage, vegetables, fruits, milk, butter, cheese, poultry, meats, the produce of the orchard, fuel, timber, forage, beasts for travel or transportation. When the machinery, and the labor which operates that machinery, are gone, the demand for these products will be gone with them; and they will cease to be produced, and the land, labor, and capital employed in their production, must remain uncultivated and useless. The trade of one must become the trade of all. No one would purchase agricultural products, and, therefore, no such products would be grown for sale. Manufacturing labor must turn to agriculture, and migrate in quest of cheaper lands and various employment. Villages will be deserted, and fall into decay; cities depopulated; the grass shall grow "where merchants most do congregate." Surrounding lands are left without culture, because the people fed by their fruit are in other climes, to return no more. Orchards, and gardens, and meadows, and pastures, are given up to weeds, thistles, and brambles. Flocks and herds are not seen in the land. Rivers, no longer controlled by the skill, labor, and power of man, have torn down all obstructions by him placed in their way, and roar on towards the ocean in that ceaseless stream, begun by them, before the first morning, after the deluge was dried up from the face of the earth.

Left, as in the days before the revolution, with a diminished and sparse agricultural population, we shall be without encouragement to increase our production. Europe, abundant in ber own resources, would receive from us no provisions, bread stuff, fish, or lumber. We could sell nothing to the nations beyond the Atlantic; and we could, therefore, buy and consume none of their manufactures. By the mere force of our condition, we must return to our colonial habits. Again, our native flax, hemp, and wool would take the place now filled by cotton. Our women, mindful of independence, will take the distaff; the wheel and the loom shall again be heard in our habitations; and household cloths take the place of manufactured fabrics.

Sir, I narrate these things as the historian will hereafter narrate them to marvelling nations, when the tongue that now speaks, and the ear that now hears, shall be forgotten. I narrate them, that the politician of the South may hear and triumph in the hope of these coming events; that the patriots of the South may hear and unite with us to prevent their arrival. To warn these patriots, I will at tempt to portray what things may, as the sequents of our northern_desolation, come upon their and our beloved South. Let the politicians, the friends of England, and the English system, look at the picture and be refreshed. The American system places an impost, a duty of three cents a pound on imported sugar. This duty is, to that amount, encouragement to the Louisiana planter, and is in

Louisiana has not deserved this; and the States of the South will learn that she cannot be made to suffer alone. Her sugar culture has created an immense demand for labor. This demand, like a demand for any other commodity, has raised the price of that labor, and increased their cost to the owners of those persons who perform it. Various opinions are holden on the amount of this increase of price; it will be found to vary, as you approach to, or recede from, Louisiana, the great market for this labor. It is probable the average market value of slaves, throughout the whole slave-holding region of the South, is raised not less than two hundred dollars a head, by the increased demand for their labor on the sugar-raising plantations of Louisiana. The slave population of the whole South amounts to about one million five hundred thousand. This population is said to double once in twenty-five years; and, therefore, gives sixty thousand slaves for the average annual increase number. At two hundred dollars each, the whole increased value is annually twelve millions. This amount is realized by the whole South, in the advanced value of their stock, or in the increased money amount of the annual sales. The establishment of the English system, labored after by the member from South Carolina, when it shall have reduced the encouragement on sugar to seven mills and one-half on the pound, and overthrown all the sugar-making planters of the South, will strike from the annual amount of southern wealth this item of twelve millions of dollars. The learned political surgeons of that State will find, when they have

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