Texas, would be rendering their labor twice more valuable, and enabling them to purchase twice the cloth they now can buy. When men produce largely and exchange readily, they can consume largely. The only difficulty now in the way of doubling the consumption of manufactures, is the fact that more than half of the products of agricultural labor are eaten up in transportation to the place at which they are to be exchanged for iron end cloth. Were the mines of Missouri and Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania now in full operation, the farmers of those States would be produ cing far more than at this time they do produce, and obtaining twice at much iron and twice as much cloth for every bushel of grain they had to sell.

Of these mighty benefits, and of the increased power, freedom, and popular progress that would have resulted from them, the North has been deprived by the domination of Slave owners in our national councils. And now the Freemen of these States are called on to join in extending that domination, and giving it such power that it can never be removed. Will they lend themselves to the base and unholy schemes of those who would fain reduce all laborers to the weakness, ignorance, and stagnation of bondage?

PROTECTION AND SOUTHERN INTERESTS.

We are told, however, that protection is adverse to the interests of the men whose property consists of men, women, and children, and who raise cotton. In answer, we say that the real interests of the South are as much promoted by protection as are those of the North, and that nothing but its absurd jealousy, and its determination to grasp at power, prevent its people from seeing that such is the fact. It is protection that has caused the domestic consumption of cotton to attain its present large amount, the consequence of which is, that the quantity required to be forced on the market of England has been so far lessened, and the price so far sustained. Were we now consuming a million of bales, as we should be doing had the tariff of 1842 been maintained, the quantity going to that market would be less by three or four hundred thousand bales than it is, and we should not now be called to record a daily decline of price, notwithstanding a diminution in the amount of crop. Protection has largely increased the market for cotton in France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, and Spain, while in the unprotected countries there has been no increase. The direct tendency of the Free-labor policy is to increase the market for cotton by increasing the number of its purchasers, and to reduce the price of cotton goods by increasing the number of persons who have cloth to sell. Every farmer knows well that the greater the competition among the millers the higher is the price of wheat, and the less the charge for converting it into flour. The object of protection is to increase the number of persons who require to purchase food and wool, and to sell iron and cloth.✝

* Bold assertions, but as false as bold; the contrary would have been the result. †Then it is altogether superfluous, for the Lord attended to that matter long ago. Marriage fulfils that object better than "protection."

J. R.

Twenty years since, Germany exported almost all her wool, and imported nearly all the cloth and the iron she consumed. Now she converts her food and her wool into cloth, and the laborers who eat food and wear cloth convert her fuel and her ores into iron; the consequence of which is, that her own people are so cheaply supplied that they compete with England for the supply of foreign markets. That country has, fortunately for it, no slave power — no men who buy and sell laborers and all feel that it is for their interest to enhance the value of the laborer.* Throughout Germany, there is a constant tendency towards an extension of the area of Freedom; whereas here, as the Charleston News informs us, the great question is, whether the area of Slavery shall or shall not be extended. In protected Austria, serfdom has lately been abolished; whereas our whole energies are at this moment directed towards preventing the enfranchisement of the Slaves of Cuba. Protected Russia has just diminished by one third the labor required to be given to the owner of land; whereas we are anxious to enlarge the area of Slavery by reintroducing it in the island of Hayti, as the means required for establishing, in its most perfect form, a republican government. Freedom grows in those countries in which the farmers are protected in their efforts to draw the mechanic to their sides, and it grows nowhere else; ✝ and therefore it is that British free-trade is advocated by the men who purchase bone, muscle, and sinew, in the form of laborers, and hold in such disesteem the freemen of the North, who sell their own labor.

It is said, however, that the South is taxed for the maintenance of these "hireling laborers" of the North. We, on the contrary, maintain that it is to the skill and industry of the North that the South is indebted fur the maintenance of the price of cotton, and that, were they left to themselves, they would not obtain one half the price at which it now is sold. Further, we maintain that it is greatly to Northern ingenuity they are indebted for the reduction in the price of cloth; and that, were they left to themselves, they would pay more for clothing their property, while obtaining less for their products. It is the North that stands between them and ruin. In protecting themselves for the purpose of obtaining a great domestic market, the farmers of the Middle and Northern States make no war against natural obstacles. Their water-powers are as good as those of Europe, and the coal and iron ore, by which they are every where surrounded, are as accessible as are those of England; and the only difficulty they have to overcome is that of the time required for the perfect establishment of a manufacture, by the proper education of those required to be engaged in it. Skill in the production of iron or of cloth is not obtained in a day, but, when obtained, it is never lost, except where mills and furnaces are every where closed, as was the case, to so great an extent, under Southern policy, in 1836—40, and 1848-52. In both these cases, the work-people who had acquired skill were scattered to the four winds of heaven, and in both the work of instruction has required to be recommenced; and so will it ever

Fudge but it has a mill power-just as we have.

↑ What about England, then, which is freer than any of those countries? J. R.

be while the South shall continue to exercise its present control over all the operations of the government.

The farmers of the North know well that the nearer the market the greater is the value of their labor and their land; but whenever they undertake to govern themselves, and endeavor to bring the market to their doors, they are met with a demand to pay for more Slave territory, to be used in depriving them of all power to act in accordance with their own views of their true interests. They are asked now to yield up Nebraska on one side, and purchase Cuba on the other, and for what purpose? To rivet their chains by making eight, ten, or twelve more Slave votes in the Senate, that shall refuse them protection against a difficulty that tends steadily to diminish, while the advocates of Slavery take for themselves protection against a natural obstacle that time can never either diminish or destroy. Cuba and Brazil have advantages for the growth of sugar that are entirely wanting in Louisiana and Texas, the States purchased by the government for the extension of the area of Slavery. In the one, the cane is required to be planted but once in fifteen or twenty years, and the planter makes his crop at any time that suits him; whereas in the others it has to be planted annually, and must be cut before the frost; and yet the planter is well content with the protection against nature that he now enjoys, while denying the propriety of any protection to the Nothern laborer, who wars not against nature, but only against those difficulties that time must unquestionably remove. The people of the North pay fourteen millions annually for the same quantity of sugar that they could have from Cuba and Brazil for ten; and this is really a tax upon them, for they enjoy no advantages resulting from it, whereas the people of the South profit by Northern protection, in obtaining more for their cotton and paying less than they would otherwise do for their cloth and their iron.* In a Northern Union there would be no duty on sugar, and the gain to the people of the North from the abolition of this interference with the trade with Cuba, Brazil, Hayti, Liberia, and other sugar-producing countries, and the consequent extension of trade with them, would, as we believe, be fully equal to all the profits now resulting to the trade for which the North is indebted to the Union.

That, however, is but a small portion of the tax paid by the Free people of the North for the maintenance and extension of Slavery, and it is but a small part of the cost from which they would be relieved by that secession which, according to the Charleston Mercury, would constitute "the real triumph of the South." Once restored to the exercise of the right to govern themselves, their vast treasures of fuel, and of copper, lead, zinc, iron, and other ores would be developed, and the men employed in the work would then furnish a permanent market for food thrice greater than that furnished by all the manufacturing countries in Europe. Mark Lane would then cease to fix the prices of our farmers, while Wales and Staf

That shows the nature of protection-it protects not labor but capital; not the millions of consumers but the hundreds of producers. In other words it builds up an aristocracy. J. R.

fordshire would cease to fix the price of iron, and we should cease to issue bonds for twenty-five millions a year to pay for iron to be laid over the great coal and ore regions of the West. The products of the farm would then increase in both quantity and price, while cloth and iron would be far cheaper than they are now. Labor would then be more productive of all the commodities required by the laborer, who would then enjoy advantages to which he now can make no claim, because the whole policy of the country is, and long has been, controlled by men who wish to purchase labor, and desire that bone, muscle, and sinew may be cheaply sold.

Let our readers now estimate for themselves the annual loss to which our farmers are subjected by reason of the distance of the markets to which they are forced to carry their products, because of the difficulty, under Southern policy, of bringing into activity the coal, the various ores, and the vast water powers of the Union, and see if it will be covered by ten, or even twenty dollars a head. To this let them add the annual loss from taxation for extending the area of Slavery by the purchase of territory, for the projected purchase of the Mesilla Valley and Cuba, for the maintenance of fleets and armies required by these new possessions, and the further loss from the fact that the construction of harbors and the improvement of rivers are, by the advocates of Slavery, deemed to be unconstitutional and let them then determine if the estimate that has been submitted to them of the cost of the Union is not below the truth.

NORTH AND SOUTH.

We beg our readers, now, to compare with us the relative position of Northern and Southern States and cities. Sixty years since, Virginia stood at the head of the Union, with ten representatives in Congress, while New York had only six. Where stand they now? New York has thirtythree and Virginia thirteen. Sixty years since, South Carolina had five representatives, while Ohio had scarcely a white inhabitant. Now, the former has still her old number of fire, while the latter has twenty-one. In that time, Massachusetts has grown from eight to eleven; Pennsylvania from eight to twenty-five, and even little New Jersey, which then had only four, now balances the State which furnishes the great aristocracy of the land in its Pinckneys, Rutledges, Cheveses, and Gadsdens. At that time, New York, Norfolk, and Charleston, might fairly have disputed the chances of commercial greatness that hung upon the future; but where stand they now? At the last census, Charleston had 42,806 inhabitants, having increased in ten years precisely 1,669. Norfolk had 14,320, or 3,400 more than she had in 1840, while New York and Brooklyn had risen to more than 600,000.

We are told, however, that this is all due to the action of the Federal Government; that "the immense commercial resources of the South are amongst the most startling and certain resources in all emergencies; " that "if there was no tariff of any kind, and absolute free trade, the Southern seaports would in a quarter of a century surpass the Northern

ones not only in imports and exports, but also in population and the arts," -and that the way to bring about this reign of free-trade and prosperity is to tax all merchandise imported from Northern ports, or in Northern ships, while admitting free all those imported from Europe, or in Southern vessels. Incredible as it may seem to our readers, such is the mode we find advocated in the Richmond Enquirer as the one required for the establishment of perfect free-trade.

If, however, the prosperity of New York, Massachusetts, or Pennsylvania, which arc manufacturing States, has really been due to the tariff, and if protection is injurious to agricultural communities, how, we would ask, can we account for the growth of Indiana and Illinois, which are not manufacturing States? Agreeably to the Slavery theory,* they should suffer equally with South Carolina and Virginia, and yet we find them growing to almost a million each of population; while Arkansas, almost as old, has less than 200,000. Their railroads count by thousands of miles, while Arkansas has yet, we believe, the first mile of road yet to make. Southern men can scarcely charge the new State of Wisconsin with protection, and yet she bids fair to have a thousand miles of railroad before Texas shall have completed the first hundred miles of her first road. Telegraphs abound through the West and North-western States, and Ohio presents a perfect network of them; while Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia present to view little more than a single line, and that maintained almost exclusively by the transmission of intelligence across them from Northern cities to New Orleans. Look where we may, we find the same result; throughout the North there is the activity of Freedom and life, while throughout the South there is the palsy of Slavery and death.

The prosperity of the North-west is, however, as we are told, also due to the partiality of the Federal Government, the almost exclusive management of which has been so generally in Southern hands. What Massachusetts and this State gain from the tariff is made up to the newer States by donations out of the common treasury of lands. On this head we quote from the Richmond Whig:

"Illinois is indebted for these two thousand miles of railroad to the bounty of the Federal Government, a bounty indulged at the expense of the Southern States, whose feebleness and decay are sneered at. Every foot of these roads has been made by appropriations of public lands. Not a cent has come out of the pockets of the people. And railroads are not the only favors bestowed upon the hireling Slater. Immense contributions have been made to them all, for schools and colleges. We dare say, it the same liberal measure had been dealt out to the Slaveholding States; if their territory had been permeated by canals and railroads, and schools established in every neighborhood, at the expense of the Northern States, we, too, might boast of our prosperity. It would not be going too far to say, that Illinois herself, if, in addition to the millions she has received from the Federal Treasury, had had the benefit of Slave labor, might have been still more prosperous."

In reply to this, a contemporary furnishes the following abstract of a report from the Department of the Interior, made a few weeks since, showing the donations of land to six Western Free States, and six Slave States, to which we beg the attention of our readers:

* Which, be it noted, is not the free-trade theory.

J. R.