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THE

AMERICAN REVIEW,

No. XXI.

FOR SEPTEMBER, 1849.

SHORT CHAPTERS ON PUBLIC ECONOMY.

I.

Constitutionality.

It arrived only at its perfect and full development within the last few ages, and stands immoveable, by the accumulated strength of all its past existence. It came into perfect being, not by revolution, not by a change of principles, but by the native force of an internal life, which impelled it to throw off a foreign incumbrance, and stand free in the vigor of independant youth. It is a government of principles, not of prescription, nor of forms. Its traditional forms are few; it did not come down to us loaded with the corrupt

Ir is never to be lamented when men are driven to search into the foundation of the commonwealth; as it is necessary for the conduct of life that the divine and abstract principles of virtue should have a conscious existence in the intellect, and should be frequently agitated and discussed; so, if we intend to maintain in their original purity and force, those ideas of authority, of right, and of obedience, upon which all government is founded, we must often reflect, and induce others to reflections of former ages, to be maintained by upon them, in their simplicity. It is ne- the timid and condemned by the wise. cessary to revive and fortify the spirit of the Constitution by frequent recurrence to the rights and opinions upon which it rests; tracing these to their principles, and casting an historic glance upon those conditions of society-those exigencies of humanity-from which they took their rise, and through which they became apparent; rights, in our own case, derived from a recognition of the imperious necessity of freedom to the full development of our nature; principles, grounded in human nature, tested by the experience of all time, and suggested as rules of legislation from an observation of the evils that arose upon their absence. Ours is not an hypothetical government; it was not erected upon an imaginary basis; the first fibres of its roots can be traced backward into the darkness of primeval liberty; its growth has been gradual through many centuries. VOL. IV. NO. III. NEW SERIES.

It is a government of necessity; it arose from necessity, and exists by necessity; it is therefore not subvertible while its moral conditions exist. But the necessity which gave it birth is not that with which the mathematics are conversant, nor the wants and desires of the grosser nature of man. The necessity with which our laws are in accordance is of a moral nature, and can be found only in the operation of moral causes.

In the course of history, philosophers observe series of events signifying the existence and operation of certain divine and moral laws, by which the superior destiny of man is distinguished above his physical and sensuous destiny. Governments founded like ours upon a recognition of of justice, of faith, of beneficence, of honor, of liberty and of constancy, are imperishable governments; and die only with the races which gave birth to them.

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rine and fire insurance, labor, wharfage, brokerage, wholesale and retail profits, and profits of manufacture; subject also to detention in Massachusetts, by speculators waiting for a rise of price-a grand subject of contemplation and argument for southern statesmen.

Georgia has gone farther still in the race of improvement, and has already 38 cotton mills; the city of Augusta, by the enterprise and foresight of its corporation, has provided a water power sufficient to move any number of mills. In addition to this, other factories are being established.

The

The consequences of these reforms and improvements in the South can hardly be estiinated above their value; there will be, of course, a vast increase of the free white population, who will not be slaveholders. The capital of the State will be diverted from investment in slave property, and employed in a much more profitable kind of industry. necessities of the poor white population will keep down the price of labor for many years to come. A valuable class of foreign emigrants, mechanics and operatives, will be drawn toward the South. Slaves will be gradually excluded | from inventive and mechanical occupations, which will pass into the hands of free white men; and while the current prejudices against slavery in the minds of the poorer classes will be by no means diminished, and a necessary amelioration take place in the condition and treatment of slaves, the state sovereignty itself, will, at the same time, by the increase of wealth and power in the State, become better able to protect itself against the encroachments of foreign reformers, and to subdue the great domestic evil of its institutions, by its own free and unassisted force. It will soon be beyond the power of any combination of free States to drive or compel the South into an unwilling reform of her institutions.

has made it impossible to live comfortably in this country by authorship. Literature is a poor and precarious occupation, book-selling on the contrary has been a good and a profitable one. The consequences are that the intelligence of America is, in great part, educated and controlled by England and France. Soon however, we shall have the booksellers in the same predicament with the authors. "One of the strangest literary novelties of the day," says the Republic, (July 12th,) "is the fact that this country is now flooded with German reprints, in English, of the standard classics of our tongue, which are sold at so cheap a rate, as not only to force from the market English editions, but to compete successfully with the American."

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"The pioneer of this enterprise in Germany was the celebrated Tauchnitz, well known as the publisher of those small and very accurate editions of the Greek and Roman classics, which have for fifteen or twenty years beea used in all the higher schools of the country. Printed on fine and white paper, and with a beautiful type, they compare at infinite advantage with the bad editions of the best authors, with which booksellers and the reading portion of the American people have too long been content. Before us are editions of Shakspeare, Byron, Moore, Bulwer, and Sir Walter Scott, together forming a collection of about sixty volumes, each of which the publishers are able to send to America, pay duties, and sell at thirty-one and a quarter cents per volume. The above are but a fifth portion of the works printed by Tauchnitz, his library containing the chefs-d'auvre of the modern and fashionable authors. These books are to be had of all the German booksellers in the country, and, in these days of bad type, and worse paper, are luxuries."

When Germany does all our publishing and printing, England all our manufacturing; when The Necessity for Protection to American Book France makes our hats and shoes, and the English philosophers regulate our politics, what an intellectual, happy, shrewd, and prosperous people we shall be!

Publishers.

The vast number of foreign books and periodicals reprinted and sold cheap in America,

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