Ship building, and the founding of iron cannon, were the sole in which England excelled. They seem, indeed, to have possessed alone the secret of the latter, and great complaints were made, every parliament, against the exportation of English ordnance." "Nine tenths of her commerce consisted of woollen goods. Wool, however, was allowed to be exported, till the 19th of the king. Its exportation was then forbidden by proclamation. Most of the cloth was exported raw, and was dyed and dressed by the Dutch; who gained, it is pretended, £700,000 a year by this manufacture. A proclamation issued by the king against exporting cloth in that condition, had succeeded so ill during one year, by the refusal of the Dutch to buy the dressed cloth, that murmurs arose against it, and this measure was retracted by the king, and complained of by the nation, as if it had been the most impolitic in the world. It seems, indeed, to have been premature.

Here we begin to perceive the collision of rival nations, produced by their mutual systems of protection extended to their own manufactures. England was every day growing wiser; and as her experience gave her new knowledge, she extended her protective system wider and wider, until she engrossed the trade of nearly the whole world!

"In so little credit," says Hume, "was the fine English cloth even at home, that the king was obliged to seek expedients by which he might engage the people of fashion to wear it. The manufacture of fine linen, was totally unknown in the kingdom."-Silkworms were introduced, and mulberry trees first planted in the reign of James I.

The tonnage duty commenced as early as the reign of Henry V.

In the reign of James the Second, the industry of England received a wonderful accession. "One Bremen, leaving the low countries," says Hume, "when they were threatened with a French conquest, brought the art of dyeing woollen cloth, into England, and by that improvement SAVED THE NATION GREAT SUMS OF MONEY.'

The great manufactures of the Italian cities of Florence, Genoa, Venice, and others, all arose from their charters, privileges, and other regulations, that answered the purpose of a tariff.*

The importation of the principal manufactures fabricated by England, were prohibited from France during the reign of James the Second. The French have not been wanting in similar expedients, from the time of Sully to that of Colburg, when Henry the Fourth of France proved his sagacity by the most liberal patronage of manufactures; by cutting canals, and extending the special favour of government to every species of industry, porcelain, tapestry, silks, &c.

We could extend this exposition of the protective policy of all nations to their own manufactures and commerce to a much greater length; but the foregoing is sufficient to establish the fact, and sustain the general principle for which we are contending that when

* Modern Europe, vol. ii. p. 171. Charters and patents to trading companies are unquestionably pernicious in an age of general commercial prosperity and occupation; but in the infancy of trade and manufactures, their utility and productiveness are incontrovertible. The prosperity of the Hanse towns, and the effects of the early English companies, have settled the question. In such an age they operate as a government protection, checking foreign competition, and providing a point of attraction at home for industry and skill. On this point, we refer the curious reader to a perusal of Sully's Memoirs, which will amuse as well as instruct.

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every nation in the world is struggling by a protective policy to extend their manufactures over other countries, we are bound by every feeling of patriotism, and every consideration of self-interest, to adopt the same policy, in order to avert that dependence, impoverishment, and imbecility, which the action of foreign industry upon our capital must necessarily give birth to, unless resisted and counteracted by similar regulations and imposts. What then are we called upon to do, by those who urge the repeal of the tariff, and the abandonment of the protective policy—but to expose ourselves on all sides, to the diminution of our strength, and the exhaustion of internal resources, to the drain of our specie, and the idleness of our citizens and for what purpose, but to pamper foreign artisans, under the delusive belief that the freight and commission on English merchandise is more conducive to our national prosperity, than a stock of home industry, abundance of gold and silver, and a happy population!

It has been alleged as one of the strongest arguments against the tariff, that since its adoption our commerce has languished, decreased, and fallen into frightful decay. Could this be shown as a consequence of the tariff, it might be entitled to some weight; but it is evidently one of the collateral effects of a universal state of peace and of production: every nation manufacturing and carrying for itself, and none engaged in the wanton destruction of the products of industry by wasteful and ruinous warfare. When all commerce is on the decline-languid, creeping, and unprofitable, we cannot expect that ours will alone be prosperous, exempt from the common laws of an era of over production, and entitled to a special good fortune de

nied to all other countries. Nations, like individuals, are too prone to look on the dark side of the picture, to fancy their condition the worst of all others, and to ascribe their misfortunes to every circumstance that appears gilded with the promise of prosperity to others; it is the same with one branch of trade, when another receives a preference, and clamour instantly becomes combined against the favourite.

At the present day, it has ceased to be either singular or meritorious, to express decided sentiments in favour of these two fundamental sources of national independence, wealth, and prosperity, whose foundations have been too deeply laid in the physical world around us, ever to permit the fleeting passions and transitory prejudices of one section of our country, to loosen them by cabal, or rupture them by sedition. The very face of our gigantic and beautiful and fertile continent, bears on it the eternal features that declare it inseparable from canals, rail roads, manufactures, and all those arts that conduce to lift us from naked barbarity to sumptuous abundance, by the operation of the forge, the anvil, the furnace, the loom. Mountains of iron, copper, lead, and anthracite, lay scattered before us in the inexhaustible majesty of wealth and fields teeming with every raw material of the fleece, hemp, flax, cotton, and very soon we shall be enabled to add silk-all inviting us to become our own manufacturers, in a tone which to resist, would bespeak an obtuseness of intellect, and an indolence of purpose, far inferior to the red sons of our western forests. With a felicity and a variety of climate, producing the fruits of Italy, as well as the staples of Russia, equally capable of yielding the wines and olive of France, as well as the wool of Saxony and the sugar cane of Jamaica ;

it would be not less repugnant to reason, than committing violence against nature, to resist enthusiasm in the cause of the American system, especially when we superadd to these natural advantages, that great mass of moral power, ingenuity, skill and industry, which stands waiting to be employed in our workshops, and which, without employment, can only furnish food for the almshouse and penitentiary. But this, it will be said, is the natural, not the legislative argument in favour of home industry. It will be said, that on the natural basis, American manufactures can have no opponents; that it is only when a tariff is imposed upon foreign fabrics, to give an equal advantage to the American producer, that opposition is engendered to the bounty by those who do not share in its benefits. It is a sufficient answer to this sophistry, to observe, that among the community of nations there can exist no trade, or manufacture, on a natural basis. The history of the rise and progress of arts, manufactures and commerce, exhibits the protective system as the pioneer of enterprise, and the shield of industry, from the moment of its infancy to the hour of its consummation. We have no account of any country ever having become opulent from her manufacturing industry, on the mere natural basis, and without the arti ficial aid of a protective tariff. The competition of nations is precisely governed by the same laws as the competition of individuals, and nations will always exercise their sovereign power to enact laws in favour of their own industry, as individuals adopt rules, regulations, and customs, for the same purpose. The policy of a tariff system is a self-evident axiom of national wisdom; it springs from the inherent instinct of selfinterest; and where a nation is one and undivided in