sell more of his manufactures, and to do this he must employ more journeymen and borrow, or unite with a larger capital, and put his wares for sale at a lower price, besides engaging in a system of correspondence and advertisement. If he has not the ability to launch out on such a tide, he must dismiss his journeymen, sell his machinery and again live as before, by his daily wages paid him by some more able or fortunate person than himself.

He takes the former course. He is bold, skillful and thrifty. He becomes a large manufacturer. By competition prices have fallen to such a pitch he must now sell ten or an hundred times as much as formerly to make the same profit. A great number of journeymen have learned the business; it has become common and its wages are less. They have fallen from $1,50 to $1 a day. But the profits of the master workman have fallen in a much larger ratio, and for that which used to bring him two dollars, he now gets perhaps only one, and of that one he has but a small share himself-the profits of his manufactures not much exceeding the interest of the capital borrowed for their production. When our artizan began life he could make his borrowed capital double itself in two years. He now barely pays the interest and supports his family, and is involved in the care and responsibility of managing a large amount of other people's money.

The whole attention of our adventurous manufacturer is now directed upon two objects: first to extend the sale of his wares to the utmost, by forcing them into every market and at every sacrifice, short of ruin; and second, to make them at the least wages and with the cheapest and most rapid machinery. The likelihood is, that by this time he has connected himself in partnership with some large capitalist, who has money to employ, and who now becomes the real owner of the establishment. To this person the financial department is made over. It is he who stimulates production, who reduces wages, who multiplies operatives, and extends the business by his agents into every region of the earth.

Other capitalists have meanwhile become employed in the same kind of manufacture, and by competition prices and consequently wages, are driven down to the lowest point.

As long as other fields of industry continue open, the production of any particular manufacture will not, in the natural course of things, exceed the limit of a reasonable profit. Workmen's wages will never be ruinously low, and the prices of manufactured articles will at the same time fall to the limit of the least possible profit to the capitalists who produce them.

We have now to consider the effect of the introduction of several disturbing causes into the above described natural order of events. Let us suppose that in the country where these manufactures have grown up, it was thought necessary that the revenues of the state should be collected by a duty upon imports. This duty was laid as a most convenient method of collecting the revenues of government; a method by which to avoid, in the most effectual manner, the expense, the trouble, the danger, and the odium of a direct taxation of personal and real property in the country. This method of collecting revenue was esteemed to be an equitable and a just method, and one which, more than any other, would compel the wealthier part of the people to bear their full share of the expenses of government; for as the greater part of the imports of every country have the character of luxuries, which can be dispensed with by the poor, a revenue collected chiefly upon imports would be very effectually a tax upon the rich, but which avoids entirely the odium of an excise or of a graduated tax.

While there was a manufacture of these imported articles in the country which received them, the duty advanced their price much more than it checked their consumption, so that the importers had to pay but a small proportion of the duty-they sold off their goods somewhat less, or at slightly reduced prices, throwing the payment of the duty back upon the foreign producer. As soon, however, as manufactures of the same articles and at the same prices began to spring up in the country, it was found necessary by the importers either to withdraw from the trade or to sell at reduced prices; this went on until the profits of importation began to be less than the profits of manufacture, which had the effect to divert capital in New England from commerce to manufactures.

The very large and powerful importing

:

the foreigner, he will not lay out his wealth to the advantage of the country in which he is; he will spend his surplus in the purchase of foreign luxuries and conveniences, which the poor man, having no employment to which he can turn his hand, that will yield him any profit, contents himself with cultivating a small farm, just sufficient for his own maintenance and that of his family. As soon, however, as the capital of the wealthy is forced to remain at home, and employ itself for the benefit of home industry, a positive increase begins to be perceived in the productive power of the country; population increases with greater rapidity; a distribution of employment ensues; numbers engaged in agriculture, quit that employment for manufacture; the consequence being that those who remain upon their farms find themselves able to produce more, and at better prices. The distribution of employment tends invariably to the increase of productive power and of production. Every new mode of industry, which makes the proportion of agriculturists or food producers smaller in proportion to the whole, augments their profits, and gives them opportunities of disposing of a larger surplus. Let us imagine a community composed of one thousand men, with their families, employed in agriculture. They produce enough for themselves and their families, and, having no market, their wealth does not increase; add to that community a thousand more, with their families, employed as artizans, in various trades, that community will shortly become rich. The agricultural part of them have found a market for their surplus, and the artizans at the same time, have found a market for their wares. A healthy man is always able to produce more than is enough for his own immediate necessities, in any occupation; and therefore it is that free and orderly communities become wealthy when a market is opened to them for a sale for the products of their industry.

We have said that the commercial power of a country depends upon two circumstances; that the first of these is its ability to produce, and the second its ability to command a market; for the first is needed an industrious and frugal population; for the second, a naval armament; but it is the first necessity that we are at present

more than is necessary for its own consumption ere it can become rich by a commerce with foreign nations, and that the greater its home production, the more certain, and extended, and profitable will be its foreign commerce. The prohibition, by tariff, of a foreign manufacture, in such a country as ours, creates a home manufacture of the same. By the introduction of this new species of industry, either a new population is introduced from abroad, increasing the market of the agriculturalist, or the same number of persons is withdrawn from agricultural and other occираtions, leaving of course a smaller number engaged in these, and consequently securing to them not only a larger market, but a larger profit in that market. If one man supplies an entire village with food produced upon his own land, he will become the most important man in it, and other things being equal, the wealthiest. The smaller the proportion of population engaged in agriculture, other things being equal, the larger the profits of the agriculturalist; indeed, nothing could be a greater proof of the stupidity and dullness of the agricultural population generally, than their opposition to the introduction of manufactures. By the most stupid jealousy they mar their own fortunes.

The ability to export will be measured by the ability to produce;* the ability to produce will depend upon the variety of occupation assisted by the economy and industry of the population. An economical and industrious population, working at a variety of employments, will produce everything out of the earth, in such a country as ours, (that is to say, if they are well protected,) everything that is necessary for sustenance, clothing, and habitation. For these purposes they will require no foreign assistance. The raw material of iron and steel, of copper, zinc, tin, and lead, and other valuable metals used in the arts; every species of timber; every material used for the manufacture of clothing, rough cloth, cordage, and felts; every kind of grain and serviceable fruit, all kinds of animals employed in the economy of the farm, there is, in short, nothing that can be esteemed absolutely necessary

* First shown by H. C. Carey.

and abundantly procured in the temperate climate of the North American Continent. If every want of the people, nay every comfort, is not fully and effectually provided for, it is because of some serious error, or some wilful perversion in the mind of the governing power; that is to say, of that portion of the people who make government and its offices their peculiar care ; to which may be added, those whose fortune or whose ability gives them power over the prejudices of that nameless multitude whose opinions are all prejudice.

When every thing has been produced and wrought up-when the last degree of value has been communicated by agriculture and manufacture to the material which the earth offers to the industry of man-when the iron has been wrought into steel, and the steel into implements-when the wool, the flax and the cotton have been made into cloth, and the hemp into cordage-when the copper and its kindred metals have been wrought up into utensils and ornaments; in short, when every possible value has been communicated to the raw material -when the home market is supplied with these, it then becomes advantageous to a country to export its surplus to foreign countries, and not before. During the famine in Ireland, two years ago, grain was exported from Cork and from Dublin; that exportation, although profitable to the merchants who engaged in it, was injurious to Ireland. The exportation of food from England at the present time, to a country where food happened to be dearer than in England, might indeed bring fortunes to a few grain producers and exporters, but it would be highly injurious to the English artizan who starves when grain rises beyond a certain price. Political economy, after the school of Malthus and Ricardo, regards all laws against exportation as a mere absurdity-as contrary to the laws of trade-as an interference with the natural and indefeasible right of free trade. Humanity and common sense may sometimes, it seems, array themselves against our political economists; a prohibition of exportation may sometimes be absolutely necessary to the safety of a people, and so may a prohibition of importation. The rule of common sense and of true statesmanship is to legislate, not from a theory, either of free trade or of protec

The ability to export is measured by the ability to produce a surplus for exportation; it is also measured by the value of that surplus. If it is the raw material, the ores of metals, the first substance of cloth, or the like, it is not, and it never will be a profitable exportation: the risk and the expense of its conveyance will fall upon the producer; that this is the fact may be easily shown from the history of the cotton trade. It has been demonstrated, in the previous number of this journal, that the expense of exporting the raw material of manufacture is far greater, in proportion to its value, than the expense of exporting the manufactured article. The expense of transporting a rod of iron worth only one dollar is greater than the expense of transporting a case of surgical instruments worth one hundred dollars, and so of other articles; the higher the value communicated to them by the industry of artizans, the less the expense to the producer and manufacturer of bringing them to market.

Because the supply in general exceeds the demand, or very nearly equals it in most branches of trade, the producer is continually seeking a market; that is to say, the commerce of the country is eagerly and assiduously extending itself, seeking new customers in every quarter of the globe, and sending out ships of war to establish its markets in foreign ports, to open new channels of commerce with barbarous nations-to negotiate treaties for the advantage of home industry, and sometimes to make conquests for the establishment of mercantile colonies.

It is thus absolutely shown by the conduct of all trading nations, from the earliest periods of time, that it is, in general, the producer and the manufacturer who bear the cost of transportation, who send out their products in their own ships, and defend their commerce by expensive naval armaments. That it is on the producer that all risks fall, or if not all, the greater part of risks, may be seen in the trade between any manufacturing town and its neighboring great city, to which it sends its merchandize. It is chiefly the manufacturer who loses, and not the commission merchant, by fluctuations of the market. It of flour, and behind him the farmer in whose hands the miller's notes are protested.

The commerce of a country depending on its ability to produce and its ability to command a market, successful and profitable commerce will be that which commands the widest and the most universal market; that can send the same cargo to many different ports; that has its choice of markets, and is not shut up to one or two; it is therefore absolutely certain that an exportation of grain or of any species of raw material or first product of the earth, can never be as sure or as safe, or as continuous and steady, as an exportation of manufactured articles. When the European markets are shut, there is no corn trade; but the same corn that would have been exported to England, being used for the food of artizans at home, may be exported in the shape of cloth or cutlery, to almost any part of the world: if one market is closed, another is opened; if England will not receive our cloths, France, or Germany, or Holland, will perhaps receive them; or they can be sent into the Mediterranean, or to the South Sea Islands, or to South America, or to many other places; or, if there is no foreign market, they can be laid up at home and bide their time. The expense of their transportation is comparatively small; their durability under all climates makes them always insurable; the profits on their sale are the profits of agriculture on the food which feed the workmen who were employed in making them, and those upon the ores and other raw material, used for the machinery and fabric all these profits being concentrated in the manufactured article; a consideration which ought to show the agriculturalist that it is rather a commerce in manufactured articles which he should support by his vote and his influence, than a commerce in grain.

Very slight circumstances occasion an over production of grain or of raw material of any kind, and for the time, render it profitless. The closing of the European markets against American bread-stuffs will throw an indisposable surplus upon the hands of the farmer; a vote of parliament will ruin the hopes of tens of thousands in

tion of grain for the European markets. An unusually fine harvest in France and in England will have the same result. Fifty millions of English capital turned into the improvement of agriculture in that country and in Ireland, as two years ago it was turned into rail-roads, and before that into cotton mills, would have the same result. It is clear that this trade in bread-stuffs is subject to the most alarming contingencies; and it is well known to be the most speculative and irregular department of com

merce.

The reason of this latter peculiarity is not to be sought only in the fluctuations of a foreign market; we may find it as well in the destructibility of the material. A cargo of flour cannot be carried across the Equator with safety; a cargo of meal is very apt to turn sour before it reaches Liverpool. Another reason is, that the natural profit on raw material is necessarily small, and that, under ordinary circumstances, the food of life cannot be made an article of commerce between distant nations. It is a dreadful necessity which compels one great nation to purchase food of another, and is always a token of destitution and suffering in the country which receives it.

The commerce of a country is sustained by its productive energy. Not by the richness of its soil, but by the productive energy, directed by ingenuity and ability, of its inhabitants. Its productiveness is measured not by the quantity of fruits, grain, ores, or other raw material which it produces, but by the value which it has communicated to these raw products previous to their exportation. The steel instrument, worth one dollar and weighing a few ounces, has concentrated in it the value of a bushel of corn worth one dollar and weighing many pounds. The one almost imperishable; saleable in all markets, easily transported at a very trifling cost, through all climates, over all seas-the other, occupying a large space, difficult of transportation, destroyed by a very moderate rise of temperature, or by the slightest dampness, saleable only in countries where the poorer class are perishing of hunger. The one, intrinsically worth nothing, and having all its value imparted to it by the ingenuity of artizans, a thing created out of dirt, and stones, and rubbish the rubbish of the ground; the