to nothing by Mr. Raguet's supposed foolish imposts, and exported nothing for nothing, she would indeed be bankrupted in every thing.

But there is still another view of the case. It is admitted, by our opponent, that Buenos Ayres levies the first duty on our trade, an injury to us as well as to her, but he insists we should only make it greater by resenting it. How is this? Between individuals, is not any attempt at overreaching without an equivalent a fraud in law? And should we not consider it a contemptible policy in any nation tamely to submit to the first insult on her honor, whether by fraud or force. The champion of free trade, however, is for taking it philosophically, and turns both cheeks to be smitten under the plea of benefiting ourselves by the folly of our adversary. We doubt if such an abstraction is of American origin. It appeared not in our Declaration of Independence, and forms no part of our free Constitution.

If Buenos Ayres has the right of imposing a restriction, we have a like right; and honor as well as interest bids us retaliate. If she resolves to destroy her exporters of hides to raise a revenue, or to build up flour-mills, our farmers should be protected in the raising of cattle to supply the diminution of the flour business. It is idle to stand still and have duty after duty levied on our declining trade, and bounty after bounty bestowed by foreign governments, to supersede us in the production of our agricultural and manufacturing staples, as has been the case with indigo, and may soon be with cotton, and for us to still keep our ports open for the free admission of these articles out of courtesy to any country.

But there is still another fallacy in Mr. Raguet's argument, that we must now make appear. He asserts that duties imposed by us in retaliation, are a dead burden upon the people; whether 20, 40, or 100 per cent, only aggravates the evil inflicted on us by foreign imposts. Is this so? What becomes of the revenue, we would ask? Is it collected in specie only to be thrown away ? Or is it used for the necessary support of government, the maintenance of a navy for the protection of commerce, and of our army to secure peace within our borders? Is not the expenditure for the public offices and post-roads, for the establishment of internal improvements, widening the sphere of support to our laborers and artisans, of some advantage to the nation-and are not these vast blessings paid for by the revenue? It is not true that nothing is to be gained by a countervailing policy but the "cutting off of our own fingers," as Mr. Raguet politely assumes. Nations are not all independent of the necessaries and luxuries we have to part with, and people are not such idiots, as he supposes, to stand still and do without them, if we resist their anti-reciprocal encroachments. A tax on tea, indomitably resisted by a handful of freemen, convulsed the world in its consequences. It gave birth to the true principles of free trade; the only kind, indeed, that a free and honorable nation can encourage. The "let alone and take what we can get" policy, advocated by Mr. Raguet and his southern friends, is not American in any shape false philosophy may place it.

Protection to all the interests of the country includes free trade. They are, and of right ought to be, inseparable. We are not pledged to the manufacturers merely, nor can we tolerate any system that is not national and reciprocal. Our agriculturists, first and foremost, free as the soil they cultivate, must be protected. A foreign market, if possible, but at all events a home one, must be secured for them. Our planting producers must not be interfered with, we will not say protected, for that is not permitted by them as constitutional. But to our mechanics, laborers, artists,

and manufacturers, no doubtful or temporary protection must be given. Let them thrive, and then commerce, cherished daughter of all other pursuits, will thrive with them.

What then shall prevent the union and advancement of all these co-relative interests? Happy are we if we would only know and preserve our own privileges! But we are too free and too visionary to act in harmony, and have been lamentably unfortunate of late years in putting our faith in princes of high pretensions and broken fortunes, who have all but ruined our self-respect. Let our working, thinking men, rouse then to the

rescue.

The world is getting skeptical concerning the efficacy of governments of any sort in bringing about human perfectability. Our own "last found and ever new delight" already exhibits symptoms of fallibility, and people begin to find out that they may depend too much on being governed by fixed laws in perpetually changing circumstances. Legislation, and too much of it, plods on behind the age, whilst speculation hurries us away ahead of it. Implicit faith, therefore, can neither be placed in constituted forms nor in fallible theories, constantly demanding "a change of times and states." Much depends upon coincidences that no human sagacity can predict or avert. There is scarcely a nation to which wealth, power, and glory have not occasionally been given, or the same taken away, unexpectedly. Whether in monarchies the most absolute, or republics where scarcely a phantom of law exists to guide them, the mass of the people have appeared to be the playthings of chance, rather than the architects of their own fortunes. Still, how many there are among us who profess to understand exactly how to set every thing at rights, and to govern the world precisely as it ought to be governed!

Among these, political economists take the lead. One gives us, "The Wealth of Nations;" another, "A Sound Currency;" a third, "Free Trade with all the world;" a fourth, "The impolicy of countervailing duties;"-and such wise conceits have been so often put forth to gratify a heated fancy, and gather homage from the ignorant, that the due respect which is usually granted to wisdom, learning, and virtue, among men, is now no longer cheerfully accorded to philosophy, found fallible. Success obtains the crown of merit, and time and chance happen to all. But it is time for us Americans to learn, that even success is not always to be obtained by the aid of princes or philosophers-nor by the people who worship them, or are worshipped by them. Humbler pretensions on all sides, with a steady aim at human improvement, should be inculcated. The world will go on probably as of yore, and we shall find that there will ever be a mixture of good and evil in all things; that the selfish principle in man is not yet matured; that the millennium will not dawn until all the Jews are called home; nor until these things are accomplished can a universal free trade be established, nor the hopes of Christians and philosophers be consummated. Under these conditions, therefore, the governing principle best adapted to our nature, and likely to be most successful with that nation that follows it, is a prudent confidence, under Providence, in our own moral exertions, steady industry and economy, increasing knowledge and virtue, and respect for such laws and rulers as will faithfully protect those who yield obedience to, in order to be protected by, them.

Those who contend against this order of things in our country, are probably not aware of the mischiefs they produce among us. Their imprac

ticable theories have already led us into a thousand foolish experiments, and almost to a dissolution of the Union. Under the plea that trade governs the world, they are perpetually seeking to array one section of the country against another; the merchant against the manufacturer, and the producers against the consumers, as if we were not naturally bound together in one common interest. They do not, or pretend not, to see that the laws of trade are fluctuating and conventional, and subject to the control of wise legislation or arbitrary despotism. To submit to them, therefore, in all cases, may neither be wise nor politic. Who is there that will now contend that the slave trade was ever just, or that the British orders in council, and the French decrees, which excluded our commerce with every port from Bayonne to Libau, ought ever to have been tolerated? Who is there that now sees any advantage in impoverishing and demoralizing our country with a flood of champagne, or the costly silks and gewgaws of France; or the excessive imports of articles which we can make ourselves, from England, merely to encourage commerce, or benefit an unreciprocated trade, falsely called free? Or who is there, except Mr. Raguet and his infatuated adherents, who will say it is for the advantage of two countries like Buenos Ayres and the United States, both capable of produciug wheat and hides for their own use, to exchange these articles with each other, merely to maintain a carrying trade of seven thousand miles, when the whole expense of freight and charges could be saved by supplying their wants at home? What prudent father would beggar his son by preventing his learning every useful trade necessary for his support, or desert him when just entering into business, a victim to an overreaching, jealous rival? Or what paternal government will refuse to patronise the useful arts, and to foster the manufacturing establishments necessary to its security and independence? And yet there are those who constantly decry such a policy to be absurd, because "trade governs the world." Why! Is not England, our greatest rival, doing precisely as we should do, now? Has not this always been her policy? Let those who think otherwise study the following account of her meditated overthrow of our cotton trade. Not merely the south, but our whole country is interested in its consequences. There are those among us who are jealous of the forced industry of our cheap state-prison convicts, as an interference with the labor of honest American mechanics. Will they be content to foster the cheaper labor of their Bombay rivals?

THE EAST INDIA COTTON TRADE.

The New Orleans Advertiser, of recent date, contains extracts from a letter written from Bombay, to a gentleman in New Orleans. The writer had resided in Hindoostan for fifteen years. He gives it as his opinion, that in less than five years the India product will supplant American cotton in the English markets.

Nothing but the unsettled state of many districts, the high rates of transportation, the rude mode of culture and of separating the seed from the wool, and the rapacity and extortion of the East India Company, have prevented a competition long since. But now, it is added, the absolute submission of the hostile and rebellious rajahs, the decline of the opium trade, the war with China, and the introduction of the saw-gin, have brought about a new state of things, and every district in the country is now engaged in the culture of cotton.

The shipments of cotton from India to England for the current year, are estimated at 450,000 bales: it is believed that during the next season at least 600,000 bales will be shipped.

To these facts, the writer adds other items which are worthy of notice: "The government at home has left no stone unturned to free Great Britain from dependence on you for the raw material. The use of the saw-gin in two years time will be universal. Orders have been sent to the United States for a supply of the best Mississippi. Labor is lowfrom three to six cents a day. The average product per acre is 200 pounds of clean cotton. Our cane-brakes and low lands, as with you, yield immensely, while the hilly districts do quite as well as those in Mississippi. Even now, where the saw-gin is used, cotton is delivered in this city (Bombay) at two cents a pound.

"The substratum of our soil varies. It is either granite or volcanic, according to the position, and though we may not be able to produce as good a staple as you can, yet I am sure we shall soon be able to drive out of the English market all your low priced cottons.

"Even in Sea Island cottons we are making headway. digenous to Ceylon and the Coromandel coast.

They are in

"Your planters must look to the cultivation of the better qualities, if they would keep the East India cottons out of the European markets. As to the English markets, they will not have them long, for the home government has it in contemplation to lay a heavy duty on American collons." To this statement the Baltimore American adds:

"The advocates of free importations at the south will, in all probability, have an opportunity very speedily of enjoying the blessings of that sort of 'free trade' which the other portions of the Union have been made to experience. The price of cotton is already affected by the introduction of the India article into the British market. When the Government of Great Britain shall lay a heavy duty on American cotton,' will it be unconstitutional then to insist upon reciprocity of trade? Will countervailing duties be impolitie, or a tariff oppressive?

"We alluded some days ago to the history of the Indigo culture in Hindoostan. The results of that undertaking speak in a language too plain for misconception. If it is proper for this government to take any steps in view of the present designs of Great Britain in India, the time has surely arrived for doing something. It is, however, for the South to judge, in so far as their staple constitutes the basis of our national interest. The middle, western, and eastern States, whose interests have been already affected by the restrictive policy of England and other European nations, are preparing to move. It would be better for all if a harmonious and concerted system of action could be agreed upon, which, while it embraced every interest, should bear oppressively upon none."

In addition to the above, we quote the following extract from a recent report to the British parliament, showing the intended appropriation of British capital, and a system of bounties in order to encourage the culture of cotton in India, and secure a supply of that necessary staple for their domestic use, without being dependent on foreign nations for it,-a hint to our growers of the article to encourage manufacturers at home to use up what the planting interest cannot export when superseded by their India competitors. A home demand from numerous customers is more secure than any foreign one from a large monopolizing rival, whose custom depends upon caprice, or an uncertain continuation of peace.

[From the Boston Atlas.]

EVIDENCE RESPECTING THE EAST INDIA COTTON TRADE.

"The minutes made by Lord Auckland, the Governor General, on this subject, contains the plans which he wishes to have adopted, and the information which gave rise to them.

"1st. That there be an alteration in the rate and mode of taxing cotton lands: the rate being erroneously supposed to be a maximum one, and the amount often taken in kind, thereby inducing the grower to produce quantity or weight, without regard to quality or cleanliness.

"2d. That encouragement, or reasonable inducement, be afforded to the influx of capital, and to its application to this particular cultivation. A special mode of encouragement is indicated in the offer of a fitting bounty, either by reducing the assessment on the lands on which foreign cotton seed is grown, or by stimulating industry by large grants or prizes.

"3d. That experimental farms be instituted, and rewards given, for improved produce, or for improved machines for cleaning cotton-this last being the great desideratum, especially as regards the cotton of Bombay. Seeds to also be procured of the best foreign cottons, and distributed.

"4th. That the transport of produce be facilitated by the formation of roads, and its preservation and shipment by the erection of warehouses at the ports of shipment.'

We will give one further illustration of the value of foreign friendly feeling towards American interests. Governor Cass, our envoy in France, in a late report to the government, states, "that two thirds of all the importations into the United States from France were duty free. Not one article imported into France from the United States is exempt from duty. Cotton pays a duty there of between four and five per cent on its value more than Egyptian, thus far operating as a bounty in favor of the latter."

Do our cotton growers see no mischief in this preference for the foreign cultivators of their staple, or must a narrow jealousy of their brethren at home, who are their natural customers, forever blind them against perceiving the invidious policy of others?

We will suppose now that in five years, England not only supplies herself with cotton, but our other customers for the article are supplied by her, or from some other cheap-labor countries. Will the south then subscribe to the "impolicy of protective duties," or consent to be the one Nation, shut out by the restrictive policy of the ninety-nine? Or will she then consent to see her best interests preserved by encouraging domestic consumption? Will she not then discover that there is no natural hostility, but a reciprocal amity between the interests of the northern manufacturers and the southern producers; that they are all, in short, producers, capitalists, traders, and fellow-laborers? Will she not then admit the unity of one consecutive and conservative operation between the laborers in every department of the product raised-First, the sower of the seed and planter with his hoe; next, the mechanic who gins the cotton from the pod; then the trader who buys and transports it to the market where it is manufactured, and from the manufacturer back again to the producer, or to other consumers who furnish in return the articles of luxury or ne cessity which he wants? Is not all this a confederate and desirable union of interests, worthy of liberal protection? Will commerce be the sufferer? We have the experience of the past to assure us that if the home market for manufactures is secure from foreign interference and domestic monop