The alternate title of this book is “The Crisis”. It was first published in 1855 by G.D. Miller, 168 years ago. The problems it talks about in America continue to this very day, and they are worse than ever!

Unfortunately, I can’t find any information about the author, J. Wayne Laurens. I like to stick with well-known authors, but because the information and insights that Laurens submits are similar to other authors I do know, I felt led to post his book on my website. It is not a mere copy from other websites, it is text converted from a PDF file to an HTML webpage format which is easy to read from any size screen. And you can even have your text-to-voice app read it for you.

There is an amazing statement made about American politics at the beginning of chapter one. If you accept it like I do, you will understand something about politics that most Americans cannot see and do not know. And you will understand why America has become what it has become.

I could expound much more on this point here but it could be interpreted as me merely giving my opinion. Who cares about what I think? Only some of my closest friends do. I’d rather let you, the reader, form your own opinion by sharing with you sources of information that I believe cast light on political realities.

PREFACE.

The most remarkable of all the circumstances, Which distinguish our own country from others, is its rapid growth. In the beginning of the seventeenth century it was a wilderness, inhabited only by savages and wild beasts. In the middle of the nineteenth, it rivals the oldest and proudest nations of the world in population, wealth, intelligence and industry. When the territory of the United States was first trodden by the settlers of Virginia, England, France and Germany could boast centuries upon centuries of cultivation, with some little knowledge of civil and religious freedom. Since that period America has shown the birth, childhood, youth and manhood of a model republic, which Europe has repeatedly but vainly endeavored to copy.

All this implies rapid progress. Our country has been aptly called the “country of progress.” It is also, as a necessary consequence, the theatre of sudden changes. Hence many enactments which were politic and just in the infancy of the republic, are pernicious and unjust at the present time. Among these are the laws, totally different from those of any other civilized nation, which give to foreigners, after a very short residence, the rights of citizenship.

When the country was just redeemed from the Revolution, such laws seemed politic and were comparatively harmless. Now they are portentous and dangerous. They are rapidly filling the country with powerful and unscrupulous enemies to her prosperity and her excellent institutions, on which that prosperity is founded.

These enemies, not content to enjoy peace security and equal rights of citizenship, under our constitution and laws, are boldly conspiring to subvert our most revered institutions, to change our laws, to destroy our liberties and to bring the whole country into a state of civil, as they already have, of financial dependence on foreign countries. These enemies are spread over the whole land, but they abound chiefly in cities.

There they can most conveniently plot mischief and set its elements in motion. There they can more readily communicate with the foreign powers, which they represent. There they can more easily accumulate the military force and the arms which may hereafter he required for their purposes. Hence it is in cities that the new importations of foreign enemies to the republic choose for the most part to reside. What are their real character and their secret designs, we have endeavored in the following pages to show; as well as to indicate the means by which their increase may be prevented; and the unholy designs, which they entertain, defeated.

It will be perceived that the enemies of whose existence and power, we have endeavored in this volume to warn our readers, are not merely those who reside among us. On the contrary the ramifications of the grand conspiracy against American liberty and happiness, are spread over many nations and countries. The money, the agents, the spies, of those who are secretly endeavoring to subvert our institutions are here in our midst. How they pursue their designs and how those designs may be defeated, we have endeavored to show in the following pages.

Of the great importance and interest of the subject of which we have treated there can be but one opinion among Americans. With respect to the manner, in which we have treated it, our readers will judge for themselves.

CHAPTER I. Jesuit influence.

An American gentleman was passenger on board a merchant ship, bound from London to Rio de Janeiro. There were among the passengers Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Portuguese; but the person we refer to was the only American. Between himself and the English gentlemen, there were frequent discussions about politics, to which such of the other passengers, as could speak English, would listen, sometimes taking a part. Of course, our American was a great friend to the institutions of his own country; and defended republican forms of government, freedom of the speech and of the press, the vote by ballot, and all the other elements of popular sovereignty through thick and thin. Assailed on every side, he found his office of champion of freedom no sinecure. Every calm morning and every pleasant evening witnessed a new controversy on the deck or in the cabin; but he manfully held his ground against a host of adversaries; and being fluent in speech, strong in argument, skilled in logic, and full of lively and sarcastic humor, he generally came out of the debate with honor, taking care always to terminate the action at precisely the right moment, and to quit the field with flying colors.

Among the persons who listened with the greatest attention to these debates, was a’ lean bilious looking old Frenchman, who always took care to be present, and who showed by his look and manner, that he was deeply interested in politics, although he never by any chance uttered an opinion or made a remark on political subjects, in the general circle of the passengers.

In point of fact, this man was a Roman Catholic priest, a Jesuit of high standing, who was going to some station in South America, in obedience to an order from his superior. He was a cosmopolite indeed.

Though not much past the middle point of life, he was rather aged in appearance, in consequence of the great variety and extent of the missions which he had performed in all quarters of the world, and in every kind of climate. From Canada to Calcutta; from the breezy heights of the Andes to the unwholesome marshes of Java, by sea and by land, in season and out of season, this man had journeyed on the secret errands of his order. Speaking fluently a dozen different languages, and possessing the most perfect power of dissimulation, as well as the most thorough devotedness to the church, and those carefully trained habits of obedience, which are so essential to the character of an able and faithful Jesuit, he had at length become one of the most accomplished men of his age.

As he listened to the conversation of the American passenger, he could not help noticing, that he was gradually making converts to republican views. Many of these passengers, he observed, sought private interviews with the American; and by careful eavesdropping, he ascertained that their object was to ask questions about his country, and gain information respecting the actual working of the American attempt at self-government. When the passage was nearly over, the Frenchman happening to be alone with the American, in a retired part of the deck, where their conversation could not be overheard, commenced a quiet chat with him. Addressing him in English, which he spoke with ease and precision, he thanked him with apparent cordiality, for the entertainment he had derived from his conversation or rather eloquent haranguing to the other passengers, during the voyage. He professed to have enjoyed their debates very greatly; and gave the American due credit for his wit, his logic, his humour, his address, and his unbounded good nature.

The American was much pleased at his compliments; for he had conceived a great respect for this silent and attentive auditor, and, in fact, had, in his own secret mind, set him down as a hopeful convert to Americanism; he thanked him, therefore, with much feeling, for his good opinion; at the same time disclaiming any merit, for success in defending a truth so self-evident, as that which is expressed in these few words — that a nation ought ‘ to govern itself, and that by the popular vote of its own citizens.

” This,” said the Jesuit, with a quiet smile, “you suppose to be the system of your own country.”

“I do not suppose it,” said the American, “I know it.”

“Now,” said the Jesuit, “listen to me a few moments and I will tell you what I know. Your president is elected by the conclave of cardinals at Rome, the same who elect the pope. Your people nominate the candidates. Our confidential agents select from the number, the one whom they believe to be the most favorable to the interests of the church. His name with those of the other candidates is reported to the cardinals and the pope. When their decision is announced to the confidential friends of the pope and the cardinals, in the United States, they send forth their orders through the priests; and the whole Roman Catholic vote is thrown for the candidate who is favoured by the church. He, of course, is always elected. Your parties are so equally divided on politics, that this Roman Catholic vote, which is cast on purely religious considerations, is always sufficient to turn the scale.”

The American looked rather blank at this announcement. He was quite taken aback. Especially was he staggered by the recollection that the candidate for the presidency, who was sustained by the Irish and German votes, was generally successful. He courteously thanked the Jesuit for the valuable information which he had communicated, and during the short remainder of the voyage, he abstained from talking politics and gave himself up to reflection.

Let us also reflect a little on the Jesuit’s story. Perhaps it was a hoax, or a mere idle brag, intended to annoy and mortify the American.

But is not the main point of his declaration true? Is it not true that in many very essential points this country is governed by foreign influence? Is it not even highly probable that Roman Catholic prelates have a voice in the selection of candidates for very high as well as low offices, even for that of the president himself. Was not Mr. Polk, a man of no mark as a statesman and comparatively unknown to the country, elected in opposition to Henry Clay, immeasurably the most able and popular man in the United States; and was not this accomplished by the Roman Catholics voting against him en masse, because he was suspected, and only suspected of favouring the native American movement?

Was not the present postmaster general, a man without ability or antecedents, appointed to his important office in consequence of pledges given to Roman Catholic leaders; and has he not appointed thousands upon thousands of Roman Catholic deputy post masters, and required the appointment of Roman Catholic clerks? .

With such facts as these stirring us in the face, what reflecting American can fail to perceive that in this direction at least the machinery of our government is to a certain extent directed by the agents of a foreign power, the liege subjects of the Pope of Rome?

The movers of this foreign political machinery in this country are the members of two secret societies. One is composed of the regular Roman Catholic priests, always and every where a secret society. The other is the Society of Jesus, as it is profanely called — in other words the Society of Jesuits. All history, past and present, gives assurance, that these precious gentlemen are not too scrupulously pious to take a hand in the game of politics.

We will give the character of the Order of Jesuits in the words of one of the ablest and best-informed historians of the present day.

“In the sixteenth century, the pontificate, exposed to new dangers more formidable than had ever before threatened it, was saved by a new religious order, which was animated by intense enthusiasm and organized with exquisite skill. When the Jesuits came to the rescue of the papacy, they found it in extreme peril; but from that moment the tide of battle turned. Protestantism, which had, during the whole generation, carried all before it, was stopped in its progress, and rapidly beaten back from the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before the order had existed a hundred years, it had filled the whole world with memorials of great things done and suffered for the faith.

“No religious community could produce a list of men so variously distinguished; none had extended its operations over so vast a space; yet in none had there ever been such perfect unity of feeling and action. There was no region of the globe, no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits were not to be found. They guided the councils of kings. They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter’s satellites. They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history, treatises on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals, catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost entirely into their hands, and was conducted by them with great ability. They seemed to have discovered the precise point in which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation;- Enmity itself- was compelled to own that, in the art of managing and forming the tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile they assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still greater success they applied themselves to the ministry of the confessional. Throughout Catholic Europe the secrets of every government and almost every family of note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of Mandarins, superintending the Observatory at Peking. They were to be found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay. Yet, whatever might be their residence, whatever might be their employment, their spirit was the same, entire devotion to the common cause, implicit obedience to the central authority.

“None of them had chosen his dwelling-place, or his avocation for himself. Whether the Jesuit should live under the Arctic circle or the equator, whether he should pass his life in arranging gems and collating manuscripts at the Vatican, or in persuading naked barbarians in the southern hemisphere not to eat each other, were matters which he left with profound submission to the decision of others. If he was wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted at Baghdad, he was toiling through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was needed in some country where his life was more insecure than that of a wolf where it was a crime to harbor him, where the heads and quarters of his brethren, fixed in the public places, showed him what he had to expect, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom.

“But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness, and self-devotion which were characteristics of the society, great vices were mingled. It was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit which made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his liberty, and of his life, made him also regardless of truth and of mercy; that no means which could promote the interest of his religion seemed to him unlawful, and that by the interest of his religion he too often meant the interest of his society. It was alleged that in the most atrocious plots recorded in history, his agency could be distinctly traced; that, constant only in attachment to the fraternity to which he belonged, he was in some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in others the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty victories which he boasted that he had achieved in the cause of the Church were, in the judgment of many illustrious members of that Church, rather apparent than real. He had, indeed, labored with a wonderful show of success to reduce the world under her laws, but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered the standard till it was beneath the average level of human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote regions of the East; but it was reported that from some of these converts the facts on which the whole of the theology of the gospel depends had been cunningly concealed, and that others were permitted to avoid persecution by bowing down before the images of false gods, while internally repeating Paters and Aves. Nor was it only in heathen countries that such arts were said to be practised. It was not strange that people of all ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples, for from those confessionals none went discontented away. There the priest was all things to all men. He showed just so much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at his spiritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan Church.

“If he had to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the saintly tone of the primitive fathers; but with that very large part of mankind who have religion enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different system. Since he could not reclaim them from guilt, it was his business to save them from remorse. He had at his command an immense dispensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of casuistry which had been written by his brethren, and printed with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found doctrines consolatory to transgressors of every class. There the bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught how he might, without sin, run off with his master’s plate. The pander was assured that a Christian man might easily earn his living by carrying letters and messages between married women and their gallants. The high-spirited and punctilious gentlemen of France were gratified by a decision in favour of dueling. The Italians, accustomed to darker and baser modes of vengeance, were glad to learn that they might, without any crime, shoot at their enemies from behind hedges. To deceit was given a license sufficient to destroy the whole value of human contracts and of human testimony. In truth, if society continued to hold together, if life and property enjoyed any security, it was because common sense and common humanity restrained men from doing what the Society of Jesus assured them that they might with a safe conscience do. So strangely were good and evil intermixed in the character of the celebrated brethren; and the inter-mixture was the secret of their gigantic power.”

Such is the character of the Jesuits drawn by an impartial hand. Such is the secret society organized and in full activity in these United States. Such is the force of foreign trained bands engaged in the work of establishing Jesuit ascendancy in this country, as firmly as it is already established in many countries in Europe.

How shall their designs be resisted and defeated? We answer, by Hawk Eye’s method of stopping a conflagration on the prairie — namely— by ” making fire fight fire.” We must oppose to them, an order of free Americans, well organized, numerous; extending through the whole country, acting under one impulse, and fixed in one resolve — that Americans shall rule America.

It is in vain that we oppose to the machinations of of a secret and widely diffused order, the proceedings of open political assemblies, who publish all their proceedings and all their intentions in the newspapers. Politics may well be compared to war in the matter of strategy. If your enemy knows your intentions, you are in perpetual danger of defeat. If you abandon the power of secret action, you abandon, at the same moment, all chance of success. If you would save the institutions of your country from the sacrilegious hands of Jesuit priests, you must “make fire fight fire.” You must retain the power of sometimes taking your deadly enemy by surprise.

What some of. the designs of the Jesuits are with respect to this country is fortunately known by their acts and the declarations of the journals under their control. To eradicate the whole system of public instruction as at present organized; to control the elections, by using the Roman Catholic votes ” to turn the scale;” and to make the whole country a Roman Catholic country, in which free thought, and free speech are crimes, punishable with imprisonment and death, may seem to some very bold designs to entertain with respect to this country. But these designs are by no means too daring for Jesuit priests, as their public declarations show. To defeat them we must begin now, before they have advanced further; and we must oppose them vigorously, sincerely, and, above all, systematically.

As a commentary on the readiness with which the Jesuits change their professions to suit emergencies, now, as well as formerly, we quote the following curious transaction of the year 1854.

THE KING OP NAPLES AND THE JESUITS.

Turin, Dec. 6. — A curious quarrel has lately broken out between the Neapolitan government and the Jesuits of that kingdom. It appears that the latter had been in the habit of teaching that the Pope was superior to all the other sovereigns of the earth, and the former has, for some unexplained reason, quite recently thought proper to regard this not very novel doctrine among Eoman Catholics,, as highly revolutionary. The consequence was, that M. Mazza, the Director of Police, sent for Padre Giuseppe, the chief of the Jesuits, the other day, and told him they must discontinue this practice, and should recollect that in 1848 they were sent out of the country in carriages;; “but if these things continue,” said the worthy minister, “the government will kick you out of the kingdom.” ” Noi vi caeceremo a calci,” were the precise words. The reverend father, much distressed at the result of this interview, hastened back to his convent; and lost no time in compiling the following protest, which was published at Naples a day or two after —

To his Royal Majesty Ferdinand II, of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Sacred Royal Majesty-

Sire — With much surprise we have heard our sentiments doubted regarding absolute monarchy; we, therefore, think it necessary humbly to submit our views in the present page.

Majesty, we not only in olden time, but also recently, on our re-establishment in 1821, until the present day, have always inculcated respect, love, and ‘devotion for the King our Lord, for his Government, for the form of the same — that is, absolute monarchy.

This we have done, not only from conviction, but also because the doctors of the company, who are Francesco Suarez, the Cardinal Ballarmine, and many other theologians and publicists of the same, have publicly taught absolute monarchy to be the best form of government.

This we have done, because the internal economy of the company is monarchical, and therefore we are by maxim and by education devoted to absolute monarchy, in which Catholicism, by the wisdom and zeal of a pious King, can alone have secure defence and prosperity.

Majesty, that we both think, and believe, and sustain that absolute monarchy is the best of governments, is demonstrated by the damage, we sustained in the year 1848. We were the victims of Liberalism, because all Liberals were and are well persuaded also, that the Jesuits are the supporters of absolute monarchy.

These things, oh, Majesty! are well known, and Liberals would more easily believe that the sun would not rise tomorrow, than admit that the Jesuits could favor them; and therefore every time they attempt a revolution, their first object is to despoil the Jesuits.

For this reason the Liberals, by an inviolable canon of their law, will not admit a Jesuit, or one who is affiliated to the order, among them.

In fact, the Jesuits in the Kingdom of Naples have always taught it to be unpardonable to make revolutions for the purpose of changing the absolute monarchy, which the reigning dynasty has always maintained.

If this should not be sufficient not to be thought Liberals, we humbly pray your Majesty to point out what further we ought to do to be believed decided absolutists.

Certainly the Jesuits have never been, at any time, or in any place, accused of Liberalism; and what motive should they have for not loving and defending the absolute government of the august monarch Ferdinand II., who has covered them with benefits?

Finally, Majesty, of this sovereign beneficence we have made no other use than for the good of Christian morality and Catholicity, and the reigning dynasty, to profess immutable fidelity to the absolute monarchy, to which we declare ourselves always devoted, and we hope your Majesty will graciously permit us to confirm this sentiment at your Majesty’s feet by word of mouth.

The present page is signed by me, by my “Fathers councillors” (Padri Consultori,) and all others present, in the short time there has been for collecting their signatures; and if your majesty desires the signatures of all the Jesuits of this province of Naples, they can be speedily obtained. In so much, we who sign this are a full guarantee for their devotion by all proof to the absolute monarchy.

Giuseppe Maria Paladini,
della Compagnia di Gesu Provinciale,
(and 23 others:)

Collegio del Qesu Nuovo Wapoli, Nov. 21.

It would be curious and instructive, says a contemporary, to discover what are the convictions, the doctrines, and the teachings of the numerous Jesuit schools in our own country; to what extent they instill poison into the minds of American youth; and whether they contradict the profession of faith of their European and Neapolitan brethren. What say the Roman Catholic clergy in the United States to the above truly Jesuitical petition? Can we hope that they will contradict or condemn these principles, so expressed? Do they agree with the Fathers, or have they been favored with some new and contradictory light?

CHAPTER II. Foreign influence in politics.

Mr. Scroggs, who is staying .at one of our crack hotels, brought letters to us from our correspondent in Manchester. He is a very nice person in his way. He has an air of well fed respectability about him, which betokens thrift in trade and good quarters. His face is rosy, rubicund,(inclined to a healthy rosiness; ruddy) and well filled out. His figure is rotund and dignified. He gives you good port and champagne when you dine with him, and does it with an air of authoritative patronage, which, to an American citizen is very edifying. It is true he speaks of “am and heggs” for breakfast; but that is the fault of his education and profession; for Scroggs, although his English guineas, and a large stock of assurance have gained him admission into what is called good society, as a gentleman, in this country, he is nothing but a bagman, when he is at home.

Scroggs’s thorough ignorance of all liberal knowledge, his John Bull prejudices, and his admirable self-conceit render him an entertaining subject. So we sometimes amuse ourself by putting questions to him and receiving very profound answers.

Yesterday, at the dinner table, he was advocating the claims of one of his countrymen to some petty office in the custom-house.

“Pray, Scroggs,” said we, “what American citizen was ever permitted to hold office in England?”

“I ave eard say,” said Scroggs, “that Lord Lyndhurst, the chancellor, was born in Boston.”

“True,” we replied, “but he was not an American citizen. He was born a British subject; and his father, an old Tory, took him over to England before the Revolution. What other American holds office in England?”

“I never eard of hany hother,” said Scroggs.

“Well, in what other country of Europe are Americans permitted to hold office and exercise political power? Where can they vote in an election of any kind? Not in France, where even your Lord Brougham found it impossible to become a citizen. Not in Austria, -where Americans are imprisoned on suspicion of entertaining heretical opinions in politics. Not in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, or Spain. – In Russia and Turkey, some ingenious and talented persons from this country have received situations of a semi-official character, on account of some special knowledge, and in cases where their services could not well be dispensed with. But in despotic countries, like Russia and Turkey, all under the sovereign are necessarily slaves, in the political ,sense of the word. No offices exist in those countries which are of so,independent a character, even, as that which your friend solicits in our custom- house. The fact- is, Scroggs, that in this instance, as well as in all others, where we Americans deal with Europe and European interests, the reciprocity is “all on one side.”

“I thought,” said Scroggs, “that it was a game of give and take.”

“Precisely so,” we replied, “only the giving is all On our side, and the taking all on yours. When Englishmen, Irishmen, Dutchmen, Germans, and Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians ask for offices here, we give them. But if an American could by any possibility make such an ass of himself as to ask for an office any where in Europe, and especially in England, Scotland, or Ireland, he would be laughed at, and scouted for his unparalleled impudence and presumption. ‘Give office to a foreigner, and above all to an American,’ a turtle-fed alderman of London would exclaim,’ the thing is preposterous.’ And yet the persons holding office in the United States, at this moment, who were born in Great Britain or Ireland, are counted by thousands. I tell you, Scroggs, the reciprocity is all on one side.”

“But then they become citizens,” pleaded Scroggs.

“But that don’t make them Americans, by a long shot,” we answered; “there ought to be equal privileges on both sides. While an American is utterly shut out and debarred from holding office in Europe, Europeans should be dealt with in the same manner here. It is not fair to play at give and take, with the giving all on our side and the taking all on yours.”

Here Scrogg’s attention was called off by some one who wished to look at his pattern-books of British calicoes made in imitation of American ones, and intended to cut out the fabrics of Lowell, in the American market; and so our conference ended.

But, leaving Scroggs to his pattern-books and his customers, let us consider for a few momenta the propriety of defending ourselves from the immense foreign influence which is aiming to control, and even to a certain extent is at this moment actually controlling the destinies of the country.

Is it not a fact that, for the last twenty five years, candidates for office have been constantly and openly bidding for the foreign vote? Even at the last election, did we not have to witness the humiliating spectacle of a man rendered illustrious by his public services, stumping about the country and currying favor with Irishmen and Germans, and endeavoring to gain the suffrage’s, which had already been sold by the Jesuits to his opponent, to be subsequently paid for by post office appointments? Do not foreign ruffians bully and attack with force and arms American born citizens at the polls, at every election? Are not these services to political aspirants paid for by appointments in custom houses and post offices? What would be thought of an American opening his mouth to speak, much less doubling his fist to strike, at an election in England, Scotland, or Ireland? He would be immolated on the spot; and the coroner’s verdict would be “sarved him right.” The truth is that nations ought to govern themselves, without foreign influence being permitted for one moment to interfere.

Many of our leading statesmen have recently declared that no foreigner should be naturalized till he has resided in this country twenty one years. We might cite some very high political authorities on this point. But we care for no man’s authority in so plain a case. The thing is self-evident. Americans should rule America; and the voters are really the rulers. None but a native born American would ever have been allowed to vote, if justice had been done, from the beginning. The franchise should have been held sacred. But the laws of the land should be respected. Let those vote, whose vote is already legalized. But when we come to revise the naturalization laws, a piece of public service which will soon have to be performed, let us make thorough work of it, and in future grant the privilege of voting to no man who was not born on the American soil. We have bad enough of artificial naturalizing. In all future time, let nature do the naturalizing herself. Then there will be no mistake, and no false swearing. Foreigners will cease to perjure themselves in order to acquire the privilege of fighting at the polls, and the interests of peace and good morals will be promoted.

But we have a great deal of work to perform in the mean time. It is necessary to put an end at once and for ever to the degrading practice of candidates for office bidding for the foreign vote. Let every native born American do his duty to his country and himself; and the foreign vote will no longer be worth bidding for. Let no American born citizen vote for a foreigner or for a man who will appoint foreigners to office, and the thing is done. We shall thus rid ourselves of the greatest evil with which this country was ever cursed.

There has been a great deal of talk about liberality towards foreign nations. But what foreign nation has ever shown any liberality towards us? Why should we import voters, when we are permitted to export none? They want a free trade in voters corresponding with their free trade in other things, giving to them all the advantage and to us none whatever. That is the European theory of free trade with the United States.

We are often reminded of the great military services of foreigners in our. armies in former times, and we are charged with ingratitude in wishing to withhold the franchise from those who have defended the soil. But, with some brilliant exceptions, such as La Fayette, for example, these were mercenary soldiers, who, if they received their pay, received all which they bargained for, and have no right to demand any more. Will the foreign legion whom the British government are now about to hire to fight against the Russians, ever become British subjects and voters? The British understand their duty and their interests too well to permit any such exercise of gratitude. It is only Americans who are expected to reward foreign hired soldiers, by making them citizens and voters.

To become an American citizen and a voter, a man should have been born and educated among us. He should be an American indeed. He will then have some chance of understanding the nature of our institutions, and the working of our system. He will have no foreign prejudices to get rid of. He will have no foreign preferences to forget. He will have no foreign ignorance to be enlightened.

Our present system of making American citizens is a perpetual source of.difficulty, vexation, and expense. A worthless fellow, named Koszta, comes to this country, and declares his intention to become an American citizen. This he does in order to protect himself against molestation while carrying on political intrigues abroad. Returning, to carry out his original intention, he is seized by the Austrians, who choose to govern themselves in their own way, without the intervention of pseudo-American citizens. An American officer reclaims him. The two governments are embroiled. The American secretary of state is made to waste much of his valuable time in writing a long defence. The American congress wastes more time and squanders many thousand dollars of the people’s money in debating about this trumpery affair — and all this because our naturalization laws require reforming. If these laws were such as they ought to be, another “Koszta affair” would be impossible. But as the law now stands, the success of this adventurer will probably be the prelude to many more of the same sort. The present naturalization laws place our government entirely at the mercy of any foreign adventurer who chooses to make them the instrument for r embroiling the country with foreign powers. They should be forthwith reformed.

The following able summary of the baneful effects of foreign influence is extracted from a recent inaugural address of Governor Casey, of Delaware.

“The issue which has been so harshly forced from abroad upon our people, has no features in common with our past political controversies, the mere domestic contests which have recognized a generous and fraternal difference of opinion among those who agree in a united devotion to our native land. The present is a resistance to invaders who unite foreign minds and hearts in allegiance to a foreign Prince and Pontiff, and standing between the American parties, have dictated their own terms, and asserted their own superiority. Under these influences, the ballot-box has been corrupted by their frauds, or subjected to their violence; American politics have been stained with vices foreign to the American character; and a large portion of our most virtuous citizens have revolted, in disgust, from the exercise of privileges so shared and so degraded; and the highest places of the Republic have been abandoned to foreigners or their flatterers, some of whom have dared to assert the alleged prerogative of a foreign Pontiff to free American citizens from their allegiance to the government of their country. In our foreign policy the settled principles of American statesmanship are well nigh lost sight of; foreigners have been selected to represent the country at the principal courts of Europe; and in the gratification of feelings, unshared by our people, they have made the American name a reproach throughout a large part of the civilized world. American principles and policy, feeling and interests, have been merged in their alien opposites; and in the press and on the platform, foreign influences have overswayed the control and directed the action of parties and the selection of candidates. The result of this conspiracy against the original and native American liberty, substantially, though not nominally, is devoted to foreign interests and preferring persons of foreign birth. If its recognized advocates have as yet failed to proclaim allegiance to a foreign monarch, they have made in most of the States efforts to overthrow the American system of public instruction; and have sought to exclude the Bible from the American schools; and have freely denounced, the most cherished principles of American religious liberty; and all this, it should be remembered, has sprung from’ those to whom all that our fathers have won and that is dear to us, was freely offered; all this was foreign in its origin, authors and acts — all this was unprovoked, wanton, long patiently endured; endured till foreign demagogues claimed our country as their own, and made our rights and our safety the counters with which they played the game of foreign politics.”

After noticing the noble resistance of Delaware to this foreign influence, as evinced in the late election, Governor Casey thus enumerates the duties imposed on American citizens in relation to foreign influence:

“That triumph, should it prove to be national, will impose many and majestic duties. The first will be to surround, as with a wall of fire, which no pollution can invade, that Holy of Holies, the ballot-box; and closely succeeding will rise the duty of regulating immigration; of closing the avenues which have communicated with the prisons and lazar-houses of Europe; of defeating the ungenerous policy by which foreign princes force us to receive the moral abominations which their over-cloyed country vomits forth, constraining us to support their paupers, and to expose the property and lives of our people to the ruffian skill and desperation of their transported felons. As a tax and a peril the heaviest and worst; as a wanton wrong and outrage, it should be redressed in the first hours of realized national American victory.

“But the more pervading and vital triumph of the second American revolution, will be those which will establish, as the settled policy foreign and domestic of the nation, the saving principle of American Independence, as applied, not only to the right of suffrage, but to the privileges, sacred and inestimable, of our honest and hard-handed home labor. The policy by which our country has been, in its trade, its currency, its varied industrial pursuits, agricultural, mechanical, and otherwise, and in its social habits of expenditure and luxury, thrust into and made a part of Europe, is a treason against American honor and American interests. It is a repudiation of all the peculiar advantages bestowed, by Providence, in requital of the virtues of our fathers, upon our young and then unburdened country. We have, to gratify the schemes of politicians, and to glut the greediness of money Changers, invited and drawn upon our country a common and almost an equal share of the evils which attend, as their parasite and clinging curses, the wasting vices and crimes of Europe. Our true hearted independence, real happiness, and secure policy are to be realized only by fostering our own American homes — their industry, mutual relations and mutual self-reliance. In regard to every political virtue and hope, to all of pride and confidence associated with that American liberty which — as the earthquake shakes and the tempest overshadows all else of the civilized world — grows brighter and dearer to us, it is apparent that the time has arrived when our own country must separate her policy from the intrigues and machinations of Europe, from the strategy and corruption by which European councils and interests boastfully betrayed the independence of American industry and made our land tributary, as it now unhappily is, to England and France; forced upon us, with their luxuries, their vices: and added to their usurpation the heavy imposition of a monstrous and perpetual debt — a debt shared by every American; a debt which drains our country of its specie, and which subjects it, throughout every fibre of its giant frame, to the agony of such a financial convulsion as that which afflicts us. Vain will be the patriotic throbbings of the great American heart, and vain the vigor of the American arm to re-achieve American Independence, until our land shall have been made independent in that from which all power has its source — her industry.

“Then and not till then, will she cease to be a European colony; then will she be the America of our fathers — truly independent — rich in her own resources — secure in her own strength, and happy in her own freedom. The crimes and oppressions, the wrongs and wars of Europe may terrify and torture their own world, but not a ripple of the storm will break upon our shores. Till that consummation shall have been effected, our duty will be unfulfilled, and our triumph — however glorious — incomplete, the oracles of our American patriarchs and prophets will remain empty, and the real mission, holy, calm, and beneficent of our American destiny unachieved.

CHAPTER III. Foreign influence in municipal, affairs — design of the monarchs of Europe.

A contemporary writer (In the Philadelphia Daily Sun) presents the following startling facts in relation to foreign influence in municipal affairs, and also in relation to the designs of European sovereigns with respect to the United States.

“We have already adverted to the startling fact that of the Police force of New York, seven hundred and eighteen are natives of the United States, four hundred and seventeen born in foreign countries, and that thirty-nine of them had been in the State Prison. The American Organ, commenting upon this, remarks, ‘ Does any one believe that more than one- third of the police force of New York would have been composed of foreigners, if the demagogues who control that city had not relied upon the foreign vote to sustain them in their, corrupt practices? It is customary, in this country, to regard with horror the corruptions of European governments. But in what court of Europe, let us ask, does corruption walk more unblushingly in noonday, than for years she has stalked with brazen face through the City Hall, of New York? Were it not for her large foreign population, New York would be as well governed as Boston, or Charleston, or Philadelphia. Why not? Her American citizens are as honest, as virtuous, and as law- abiding as those of any other city. It is the foreign element, forming so large a portion of her population, which renders her a disgraceful exception to all the other citizens of the United States. Two years ago, three of her Aldermen were indicted by the grand jury; and, as we write, one of her Common Council, an Irishman, is an inmate of the Tombs, for aiding the escape of the murderer of Poole — that murderer himself a policeman and a foreigner!

“The danger of making this country a receptacle for the bad and disaffected population of Europe, and investing them with the rights of citizens has long ago, and often been pointed out. The Duke of Richmond, formerly the celebrated Colonel Lennox, was Governor of Canada in 1815 — 16. The late Horatio Gates, a native of Massachusetts, was at that time an eminent merchant in Montreal, and was known and respected by thousands in Canada and his native country. Mr. Gates reports the following remarks as having been made in his presence by the Duke of Richmond:

“The Duke, a short time before his death, in speaking of the government of the United States, said, ‘It was weak, inconsistent, and bad, and could not long exist.’ ‘It will be destroyed; it ought not, and will not be permitted to. exist, for many and great are the evils which originated from the existence of that government. The cause of the French revolution, and subsequent wars and commotions in Europe are to be attributed to its example; and so long as it exists, no prince will be safe upon his throne; and the sovereigns of Europe are aware of it, and they have determined upon its destruction, and come to an understanding upon this subject, and have decided on the means to accomplish it; and they will eventually succeed by subversion rather than conquest.’ ‘As the low and surplus population of the different nations of Europe will be carried into that country; it is and will be a receptacle for the bad and disaffected population of Europe, when they are not wanted for soldiers, or to supply the navies, and the European governments will favor such a course.’ ‘This will create a surplus and majority of low population, who are so very easily, excited; and they will bring with them their principles, and in nine cases out of ten, adhere to their ancient and former governments, laws, manners, and religion, and will transmit them to their posterity, and in many cases propagate them among the natives.’

“‘These men will become citizens and by the constitution and laws, will be invested with the right of suffrage. The different grades of society will then be created by the elevation of a few and by degrading many, and thus a heterogeneous population will then be formed, speaking different languages, and of different religions and sentiments, and to make them act, think, and feel alike, in political affairs, will be like mixing oil and water; hence discord, dissension, anarchy, and civil war will ensue, and some popular individual will assume the government and restore order, and the sovereigns of Europe, the immigrants, and many of the natives will sustain him.

“‘The Church of Rome has a design upon that country, and it will, in time, be the established religion, and will aid in the destruction of that republic. I have conversed with many of the sovereigns and princes of Europe, and they have unanimously expressed these opinions, relative to the government of the United States, and their determination to subvert it!'”

“Have not these prophetic words been verified! The question then arises, in the language of our Washington contemporary — shall this state of things continue? Shall the United States remain for ever a receptacle for the ignorant, vicious, and disaffected population of Europe? Shall Europe be permitted for the future to vomit forth upon our shores annually, five hundred thousand paupers, criminals, and vagabonds, of every grade and hue, to become, after the lapse of five years, American citizens, American law-makers, and American office-holders? This is the question which the American people are now required to answer. We say now. Because, if the settlement of this great question be postponed for five or ten years longer, it will be too late to answer it, as it should be answered. If postponed for a. few years, the foreign party will become so strong that it will be impossible to effect the reformation in our naturalization laws, so imperatively required for the conservation and well-being of our republican institutions. No! Delays are not only dangerous, they are fatal! Now or never is the time for action.

CHAPTER IV. Foreign influence in military affairs. — Foreign legions among us.

It appears that the foreign residents in the United States are quietly and steadily preparing a military force, composed entirely of themselves, to be ready for action when foreigners are sufficiently numerous in the country to bring certain political questions to the final arbitrament of the sword.

How this thing is managed in New York city, where foreigners are more numerous than any where else in the country, is apparent from the following communication addressed by ” A Citizen” to the editor of the New York Tribune, and inserted in that paper under the head, “Abuses in the First Division of Militia — City of New York.”

“There are frequent applications made, and some have been granted, for the organization of New Companies and Regiments, and even Brigades, in the First Division, apparently for no other object than to create an additional number of officers, or to bring together, into separate organization, the natives of. a particular country, when it is well known that most of the existing corps do not possess the requisite number of men required by law, which declares that ‘no uniformed company shall consist of less than fifty non-commissioned officers and privates, nor more than one hundred.’ This would admit in each regiment one thousand men, exclusive of commissioned officers, the non-commissioned staff and musicians. It is notorious, at least to the respective corps, that no regiment in the City has ever paraded over five hundred men, and the largest rarely over four hundred, while at least two- thirds of the regiments do not parade over two hundred men. There is not a company in the City that has one hundred effective men on the roll, and it is deemed a remarkably prosperous one that has fifty, while the most of them parade from twenty to thirty each. Why, then, organize new regiments and companies, when the existing ones are deficient in numbers, and especially why organize bodies of Irish, Germans, French, Swiss, &c, separately. If the natives of those countries, being adopted citizens, desire to enroll themselves in good faith as American citizen-soldiers, they could find plenty of vacancies in the already organized companies of the several Regiments of the Division. If they are aliens, they have no right to be members, and all such now attached should at once be required to leave the companies in which they are enrolled. It may not be generally known, but such is the fact, that the officers in most of the foreign organizations issue their military orders in a foreign language, as well as are compelled to explain the military exercise in a foreign tongue. The by-laws of most of these companies, now recognized by law, are printed in a foreign language, and an American officer, who has to adjudicate upon their provisions, if he is not familiar with the language, has to require a translated copy. Should this be permitted? Should it be necessary to the members themselves? If they are American citizens, and desire to be good ones, fit to be enrolled, ‘ for the security of a free State,’ they should at least acquire a knowledge of the language of the country of their adoption. If they were enrolled in companies not exclusively composed of their own countrymen, they would more readily acquire this knowledge, so important for a faithful discharge of their duty. It isknown that intelligent officers who have been in command of corps composed chiefly of adopted citizens have expressed great doubt of the propriety of placing these corps in prominent positions, in case of a riot or popular tumult. Native American citizens, while they would be inclined to submit to the arms of their own countrymen, would not willingly yield to a force composed almost exclusively of foreigners, even though adopted citizens, especially if they should hear orders given to such a force in a language to them unknown. This is another reason why .these separate foreign organizations should not be permitted, especially when on the banners of some is borne the device of their nationality, and who clothe themselves in the uniform of another country, in preference to an American uniform. But this evil is even deeper than is stated. In these organizations, there are many, aye hundreds, who are not citizens even by adoption, that is, they have not been in the country long enough to become citizens. Should this violation of law exist? What reliance have we upon the boasted bulwark of American freedom — its citizen soldiery — when it is organized of those who are not citizens? These aliens are not responsible for these organizations. They originate in some demagogue who wishes the party for some other than the ostensible object. The General, or superior officers, are anxious to have a longer tail to their show, regardless of the quality, if they have quantity. As an evidence of this, it is scarcely more than two years since, when a body of Irishmen, (whether citizens or not is uncertain, but it is believed the most of them are aliens,) desired to be organized into a regiment, and attached to one of the brigades of the First Division, and applied to several of the commanding officers of brigades for their approbation. Most of them declined. One of them, however, was about to yield, when the several Colonels of this officer’s brigade, under their proper signatures, remonstrated against its admission, urging some of the reasons herein suggested. The remonstrance had. its effect, and the consent was withheld. The commanding officer of this brigade retired, and one of the remonstrating Colonels became his successor; and soon thereafter himself became an applicant for the admission of this very body of Irishmen he was so strenuous in opposing when the tail would not be of any particular advantage to the regiment he then commanded. And, strange to say, the Major-General- himself, who at a Division Board, composed of officers representing several brigades and regiments of the City, sanctioned by his own vote certain principles laid down by the unanimous vote of the Board against the admission of any new corps in the division until the existing ones should be filled according to law, joined in the application; and this regiment is now attached to the Second Brigade in this City. It is right, therefore, to attribute the evil complained of to the anxiety of some of the General officers to make a great show without regard to law or propriety. In regard to the admission of these corps into the service of the State, it is evident but little pains is taken to ascertain whether the persons making the applications under the laws are eligible to be members. By the laws of the Federal as well as State Government, the persons subject to military duty are all able-bodied white male citizens, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years.”

The Commander-in-chief may organize a company “whenever fifty persons, subject to military duty, shall associate together for the purpose.” What evidence does the Commander-in-chief require that the fifty persona thus applying are subject to military duty, i. e., are citizens? After the companies are organized, what restraint is there on Captains and Colonels to prevent the admission of aliens in their corps? It becomes a matter of serious inquiry, when it is believed that more than two-thirds of the members of the First Division are of foreign birth, and a large proportion of that number are not even citizens. It is known, too, that many of our native citizens are deterred from joining uniform companies while the privileges are thus abused. This subject needs the careful consideration of the Legislature, and an inquiry into all the facts, that a remedy may be supplied. This could be accomplished by the appointment of a Commission, of say three citizens, with power to conduct such an investigation as would lead, to a full and faithful report.”

The facts here disclosed by the ” Citizen,” with a view to the correction of abuses, suggest very grave reflections to all who love their country. Comment seems quite unnecessary.

Perhaps it may be as well, however, to notice, in this connection, the fearful rate at which foreign immigration into this country is increasing.

“When five years were fixed for the probationary period before naturalization, immigration was counted by units, now it comes on us by hundreds of thousands — from seven thousand a year it has increased to nearly five hundred thousand. Estimating our foreign population now at about four millions, it is increasing in the ratio of twelve and a half percent., while the entire population of the United States between 1840 and 1850 only increased about six hundred thousand a year. From 1800 to 1810 only seventy thousand foreigners arrived here, and from 1840 to 1850 there came two million one hundred and sixteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven; while in 1810 our entire population was seven million two hundred and thirty nine thousand eight hundred and fourteen, and in 1850 it was twenty three million one hundred and ninety one thousand eight hundred and seventy six — the increased immigration being as thirty to one, and the increased population being a little more than three to one. Is it not a proper regard for our national safety, rather than a proscriptive policy, which should induce a change in our naturalization laws?

“Are not the elective franchise and the ballot box in danger of losing their purity and fore? Is it proper that foreigners should hang an American Senator in effigy, even though it be Stephen A Douglas? Can we look unconcernedly and see the efforts of the German Progressive Republican Party among us to abolish the Sabbath, and spread infidel doctrines in our midst? Look at the different character of the immigrants now arriving from those who formerly came here; once they might possess the elements of good citizens, now they are the outpourings of poor houses, penitentiaries, jails, and penal colonies. They cannot, even with twenty-one years’ probation, know as much of our institutions as our young natives when they come of age, and assume the legal duties of citizens. They cannot eradicate their cradle born sentiments of serfdom, or understand our beautiful governmental system, which works with the harmonious regularity of astronomical calculation.

” Viewing all these dangers, who can wonder that many Americans advocate the total repeal of the Naturalization Laws, unless some plan can he devised to prevent frauds. Still we would, if it were impossible to do any better, be very willing to try the plan proposed by Senator Adams, [viz; to extend the residence of aliens in our country before they can be Naturalized, to twenty one years,] ‘with the express understanding that if future immigrants attempt to evade it, or any perjury is practised, then total exclusion shall be adopted as the only means of safety. But we have no idea that any bill touching this question will find favor with the present Congress, or that the next will be able to frame its action so as to avoid the veto of President Pierce; but the whole field of controversy should be opened up and argued — the stubble removed, and the harvest garnered for 1857, when an American Congress and an American President will enact and approve such laws as will protect our Nationality and restore to us the purity of sentiment and action which distinguished our country before it was visited by the ingushing streams of foreign crime and ignorance. The American Nation, we are convinced, desire the total and conditional repeal of the Naturalization Laws, and nothing short of this will content them.

“If our readers are desirous to know what political principles are held by our foreign residents, we give the following public announcement as a specimen.

The Richmond Whig, of Virginia, says that a party has been organized, in that State, under the title of the ” German Democratic Association,” which proclaims the following as among its Radical principles:

“1. Universal suffrage.
2. The election of all officers by the people.
3. The abolition of the Presidency.
4. The abolition of Senates, so that the Legislatures shall consist of only one branch.
5. The right of the people to call their Representatives (cashier them) at their pleasure.
6. The right of the people to change the Constitution when they like.
7. All law suits to be conducted without expense.
8. A department of the Government to be set up for the purpose of protecting immigration.
9. A reduced term for acquiring citizenship.

REFORM IN THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OP THE GOVERNMENT.

“1. Abolition of all neutrality.
2. Intervention in favor of every people struggling for liberty.

REFORM IN WHAT RELATES TO RELIGION.

” 1. A more perfect development of the principle of personal freedom and liberty of conscience; consequently
a. Abolition of laws for the observance of the Sabbath;
b. Abolition of prayers in Congress;
c. Abolition of oath upon the Bible;
d. Repeal of all laws enacting a religious test before taking an office.

2. Taxation of church property.

3. A “prohibition of incorporations of all church property in the name of ecclesiastics.”

This is indeed madness or worse.

CHAPTER V. Foreign influence in financial affairs.

The most potent influences in the world are those which are secret, or at least unobserved. Caloric, magnetism, and electricity, pervade the whole physical creation, and that perpetually and actively, without attracting the attention of the common observer. In the moral and political. world, it is the same. Fraud, bribery, and corruption are for ever at their dirty work, in high places as well as low,’ while the mass of mankind pursue their daily toil, without noticing the secret agencies which are working out misery and distress for the industrial classes.

In our own country, notwithstanding the interest which every man takes in politics, this is peculiarly the case. It is the study of political leaders to divert the attention of the people from the interests of industry, or to lead them in the wrong direction by fraud and imposture. It is true that in this country every man, who can read at all, reads the newspapers; but every man does not inquire whose, pay the newspaper is in. We are often reminded that one of the greatest blessings a country can enjoy is a free press. But it is not the business of the newspapers to inform us that the greatest curse a country can suffer is a venal press. We are occasionally told that this or that newspaper has been bought up; and consequently transferred its allegiance from one political party to another. But we are never informed that a great leading press in a great commercial city has been bought by British gold, to advocate the cause of British industry against American industry. That is one of the secret influences at work in our system — one among many. It is one of those hidden causes, whose effects. are apparent enough; but those are always charged to the folly and extravagance of the American people, not to the secret foreign influences which really produce them.

Why are our mechanics and traders now paying three, four, and five per cent, a month for the use of money?

“Because you let your wives and daughters wear silk gowns,” says Scroggs.

Not so, Scroggs, it is because we suffer England to rule our financial affairs when, if we were the true Americans we ought to be, we might rule them ourselves. Foreign influence, and not. American extravagance is the cause of our present distress. Those who suffer most do not permit their wives and daughters to wear silk gowns, but they bring the distress on themselves much more certainly and effectually by voting for those who are under foreign influence.

In the middle ages, the aristocracy of Europe ruled the people by main force. The masses were unarmed serfs; the barons wore iron armor and owned all the land, except what was owned by the Roman Catholic church, which church was in close alliance with the aristocracy. In the present age, the people are too intelligent to be ruled in this coarse fashion; and the aristocracy of Europe, especially that of England, rules by money. Fraud and corruption have taken the place of force.

As Americans we would not interfere with this system, if it were only applied to Europe, but most unfortunately for us, it is also applied to this country.

London boasts herself — and truly too — the great commercial and financial center of the world. To reach this point foreign countries have been conquered, cheated, bribed and corrupted to an extent which has no parallel in history. To make London the commercial and financial center of the world, the British aristocracy have conquered, oppressed, and nearly ruined India, attacked and ravaged a portion of China, cheated and ruined Portugal and Turkey, and by force and fraud annexed and colonized other countries to such an extent that the sun never sets upon her empire. This country, England has twice attempted without success to conquer and reduce to slavery, as she has India. She can never accomplish this. The age of force is past with her. Imbecility directs her armies and navies, as we see by the events of the present war against Russia. England has ceased to be a great military power, because her inveterate system of corruption has utterly demoralized her military force, by giving all the leading offices to stupid aristocrats, and refusing promotion to merit in the rank and file. Lord Raglan is their Napoleon.

But England does not wish to conquer us. She only wishes to rule us by the secret influence of money.

“To rule you,” says Scroggs, “what nonsense! we have nothing to do with your politics.”

You are mistaken, Scroggs. You have a great deal to do with our politics, and have always meddled with our political affairs, as you do with those of all other nations. But your ultimate object is not so much to direct our political career, as to cheat us out of our money, and this you are doing every day. You wish London to be always, as it is unfortunately for us, at present, our financial ruler. If we were true to ourselves we could emancipate ourselves from this thraldom at once. But hitherto foreign influence has been too strong for us, because it was secret. We propose to unmask it before the people, and then it will end. The American people can do any thing which they think it worth while to attempt. When they were only three millions strong, they beat you in an eight years’ war, rather than submit to a trumpery two penny tax on tea. Much more easily will they beat you now, when they come to understand the true nature of the contest. As soon as it becomes apparent to the native born American people, that the true cause of the present distress of the country and the utter prostration of its industrial interests, is foreign influence, they will set the matter right. When it is understood that the American workmen cannot get work, because the interests of British workmen, or rather the interests of the aristocracy, who make British workmen their slaves, are chiefly consulted by the law makers of this country, then new laws will be made, a new system — the American system — will prevail. You, Scroggs, will have to pack up your trumpery pattern- books and go back to Manchester; we shall manufacture our own cloth, hardware, and iron rails; business will revive; London will cease to be our financial ruler; and money will cease to be three per cent, a month. We shall then have beaten England for the third time and it is to be hoped we shall get rid of her infernal influence for ever.

All this you say, Scroggs, is mere declamation.

Granted. So it is — mere declamation. We like to declaim sometimes. All Americans do, ever since Patrick Henry bearded the king’s minions in the Virginia legislature, in old colony times. But we are prepared to back up our declamation with a few facts.

CHAPTER VI. Foreign imposture in commerce.

The facts to which we have alluded relate to the methods resorted to, by the oligarchy which governs Great Britain, in order to render London the commercial and financial center of the world, and to render all other nations tributaries to the British.

Great Britain is an island of moderate extent, raising corn enough to support the inhabitants. Her enormous wealth has been accumulated by manufactures of cloth and iron, the sale of which she has made it the object of her policy to thrust upon other nations to the ruin and destruction of their own manufacturing industry.

If a nation is possessed of natural advantages equal or superior to those of Great Britain, it is her duty to protect her mechanics against foreign influence, and thus enable them to manufacture for themselves. If a nation has iron ore, and a climate and soil fit for the raising of wool and cotton, she ought never to import a yard of cloth, a rod of rail for her iron roads, or a single article of hardware from Great Britain, at the risk of preserving the financial ascendancy of London and enslaving or starving her own mechanics.

In order to blind foreign nations to the nature of the imposture, by which she cheats and robs foreign nations, she calls her policy free trade. People love the very name of freedom, and they are gulled by this specious name into their own ruin. In order to make it more palatable to foreign nations, she hires writers and buys up newspapers to cry down the opposite policy of protection to national industry as a narrow minded and illiberal system, opposed to freedom.

Where Great Britain applies her system to a country under despotic rulers, she buys up the government or cheats it by a commercial treaty, with all the real advantages on her own side, as in the case of Portugal and Turkey. Where the country is barbarous or half civilized, she conquers and enslaves it, annexing it as a colony of her own, and forcing her free trade system on the people at the point of the bayonet, as in India. Where her immediate object is to poison and demoralize the people of a foreign nation with a view to their future subjugation and annexation, she first employs her commercial marine in smuggling the poison into the country, and when the government resists this measure, she declares war, burns their seaports, murders a few thousands of their people, and compels them to permit the free trade in poison to go on, as in the case of China, forced into submission by what is called the “opium war.” When the nation to be cheated and enslaved is powerful and free, she works by secret influence on the government, bribes executive officers and legislators, buys up newspapers and pays needy scribblers for decrying the policy of protection to the national industry, as in the case of the United States at the present time.

To show that we are not without ample support from history in the assertions we make, we will now cite a few pages from a writer of our own country, whose works are treated with, marked respect in every country of Europe not under British influence, and whose name is detested in England on account of the tremendous array of facts by which he has assailed the British system of free trade. We mean, of course, Henry C. Carey. In a recent work, he thus sets forth the operations of British free-trade in Portugal and Turkey. Let Americans consider and read the facta, and compare them with what has been going on in this country recently, and what is the state of facts at the present time.

“In point of natural advantages. Portugal is equal to any country in Western Europe. The soil is capable of yielding largely of every description of grain, and her climate enables her to cultivate the grape and the olive. Mineral riches abound, and her rivers give to a large portion of the country every facility for cheap intercourse, and yet her people are among the most enslaved, while her government is the weakest and most contemptible of Europe.

“It is now a century and a half since England granted her what were deemed highly important advantages in regard to wine; on condition that she should discard the artisans who had been brought to the side of the farmers, and permit the people of England to supply her people with certain descriptions of of manufactures. What were the duties then agreed on are not given in any of the books now at hand, but by the provisions of a treaty made in 1810, cloths of all descriptions were to be admitted at merely a revenue duty, varying from ten to fifteen per cent. A natural consequence of this system has been that the manufactures which up to the date of the Methuen treaty had risen in that country, perished under foreign competition, and the people found themselves by degrees limited exclusively to agricultural employment.

“Mechanics found there no place for the exercise of their talents, towns could not grow, schools could not arise, and the result is seen in the following paragraph.

“It is surprising how ignorant, or superficially acquainted, the Portuguese are with every kind of handicraft; a carpenter, awkward and clumsy, spoiling every work he attempts, and the way in which the doors and wood work even of good houses are finished, would have suited the rudest ages. Their carriages of all kinds from the fidalgo’s family coach to the peasant’s market cart, their agriculturist implements, locks and keys, etc., are ludicrously bad. They seem to disdain improvements, and are so infinitely below par, so strikingly inferior to the rest of Europe, as to form a sort of disgraceful wonder in the middle of the nineteenth century.” — Baillie.

The population, which, half a century since, was three million six hundred and eighty three thousand, ig now reduced to a little more than three millions, and we need no better evidence of the enslaving and exhausting tendency of a policy that limits a whole people, men, women, and children, to the labors of the field. At the close of almost a century and a half of this system, the following is given, in a work of high reputation, as a correct picture of the state of the country and the strength of the government.

“The finances of Portugal are in the most deplorable condition, the treasury is dry, and all branches of the public service suffer. A carelessness and a mutual apathy reign not only throughout the government, but also throughout the nation. While improvement is sought every where else throughout Europe, Portugal remains stationary. The postal service of the country offers a curious example of this, nineteen to twenty-one days being still required for a letter to go and come between Lisbon and Braganza, a distance of four hundred and twenty-three and a half kilometres, (or a little over three hundred miles) all the resources of the state are exhausted, and it is probable that the receipts will not give one-third of the amount for which they figure in the budget.” Annuaire de I’ Egonomie Politique 1849, p. 322.

Some years since an effort was made to bring the artisan to the side of the farmer and wine grower, but a century and a half of exclusive devotion to agriculture had placed the people so far in the rear of those of other nations, that the attempt was hopeless, the country having long since become a mere colony of Great Britain.

If we turn to Madeira, we find there further evidence of the exhausting consequences of the separation of the farmer and the artisan. From 1836, to 1842, the only period for which returns are before me, there was a steady decline in the amount of agricultural production, until the diminution had reached about thirty per cent, as follows.

	WINE	WHEAT	BARLEY
1836	27.270 pipes.	8.472 qrs.	3.510.
1842	16.131 “	6.863 “	2.777.

At this moment (1853) the public papers furnish an “Appeal to America,” commencing as follows:

“A calamity has fallen on Madeira unparalleled in its history. The vintage, the revenue of which furnished the chief means of providing subsistence for its inhabitants, has been a total failure, and the potato crop, formerly another important article for their food, is still extensively diseased. All classes, therefore, are suffering, and as there are few. sources in the island to which they can look for food, clothing, and other necessaries of life, their distress must increase during the winter, and the future is contemplated with painful anxiety and apprehension. Under such appalling prospects, the zealous and excellent civil governor, Senor Jose Silvectre Ribeiro, addressed a circular letter to the merchants of Madeira, on the 24th of August last, for the purpose of bringing the unfortunate and and critical position of the population under his government to the notice of the benevolent and charitable classes in foreign countries, and in the hope of exciting their sympathy with, and assistance to, so many of their fellow creatures threatened with famine.”

Such are the necessary consequences of a system which looks to compelling the whole population of a country to employ themselves in a single pursuit — all cultivating the land, and all producing the same commodity; and which thus effectually prevents the growth of that natural association so much admired by Adam Smith. It is one that can end only in the exhaustion of the land and its owner. When population increases and men come together, even the poor land is made rich, and thus it is, says M. de Jonnes, that “the power of manure causes the poor lands of the Seine to yield thrice as much, as those of the Loire.”*

*Statistique de 1′ Agriculture de la France, p. 129.

When population diminishes, and men are thus forced to live at greater distances from each other, even the rich lands become impoverished; and of this no better evidence need be. sought than that furnished by Portugal. In the one case, each day brings men nearer to perfect freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade; in the other, they become from day. to day more barbarized and enslaved, and the women are more and more driven to the field, there to become the slaves of fathers, husbands, brothers, and even of sons.

Such, according to our authority, is the condition of Portugal and her once flourishing colony of Madeira, after enjoying, in the fullest manner, for a century and a half, the advantages of free trade with her beloved ally Great .Britain. It is true Great Britain buys her Port wine and makes it the principal article of consumption in the way of wine; but this is done to make a show of reciprocity. The result of the free trade system has brought to Portugal ruin and prostration in all her material interests. The natural consequence that the country which conquered and held one third of India, in the time of Albuquerque, when England had not a colony in the world, has now sunk to such political insignificance that the presence of a British frigate, more or less in the harbor of Lisbon, is sufficient to determine a change of dynasty for that wretched country.

CHAPTER VII. Foreign imposture in commerce. (continued.)

England is fond of calling Turkey her “ancient ally;” but that did not prevent her from aiding Russia in annihilating the Turkish fleet, at Navarino, an error which she is now expiating at Sabastopol. Neither has it prevented her from ruining Turkey by the same system of British free trade, which has ruined Portugal. Let us see what the authority already quoted says in this connection:

“Of all the countries of Europe, there is none possessed of natural advantages to enable it to compare with those constituting the Turkish Empire in Europe and Asia. Wool, silk, corn, oil, and tobacco, might, with proper cultivation, be produced in almost unlimited quantity, while Thessaly and Macedonia, long celebrated for the production of cotton, abound in lands uncultivated, from which it might be obtained in sufficient quantity to clothe a large portion of Europe. Iron ore also abounds, and in quality equal to any in the world, while in another part of the empire, ‘the hills seem a mass of carbonate of copper.’* Nature has done every thing for the people of that country, and yet of all those of Europe, the Turkish rayah approaches in condition nearest to a slave; and of all the governments of Europe, that of Portugal not even excepted, that of Turkey is the most a slave to the dictation, not only of nations, but even of bankers and traders. Why it is so, we may now inquire.

By the terms of the treaty with England, in 1675, the Turkish government bound itself, to charge no more than three per cent duty on imports, and as this could contribute little to the revenue, that required to be sought elsewhere. A poll-tax, house-tax, land-tax, and many other direct taxes, furnished a part of it, and the balance was obtained by an indirect tax in the form of export duties; and as the corn, tobacco, cotton, of its people were obliged to compete in the general markets of the world with the produce of other lands, it is clear that these duties constituted a further contribution from the cultivators of the empire, in aid of the various direct taxes that have been mentioned. So far as foreigners were interested, the system was one of perfect trade and direct taxation.

* Urquhart’s Resources of Turkey, p. 199.
Equivalent to light port charges, the anchorage being only sixteen cents per ship.

“For many years Turkey manufactured much of her cotton, and she exported cotton yarn. Such was the case as recently as 1798, as will be seen by the following very interesting account of one of the seats of manufacture.

“Ambelakia, by its activity, appears rather a borough of Holland, than a village of Turkey. This vil- lage spreads, by its industry, movement, and life, over the surrounding country, and gives birth to an immense commerce, which unites Germany to Greece by a thousand threads. Its population has trebled in fifteen years, and amounts at present (1798) to four thousand, who live in their manufactories, like swarms of bees in their hives. In this village are unknown vices and cares engendered by idleness; the hearts of the Ambelakiots are pure and their faces serene; the slavery which . blasts the plains watered by the Peneus, and stretching at their feet, has never ascended the sides of Pelion (Ossa;) and they govern themselves like their ancestors, by their protoyeros, (primates, elders,) and their own magistrates. Twice the Mussulmen of Lanissa attempted to scale their rocks, and twice they were repulsed by hands that dropped the shuttle to seize the musket.

“Every arm, even those of the children, is employed in the factories; while the men dye the cotton, the women prepare and spin it. There are twenty- four factories, in which yearly two thousand five hundred bales of cotton yarn, of one hundred cotton okes each, were dyed. This yarn found its way into Germany, and was disposed of at Buda, Vienna, Leipsic, Dresden, Anspach, and Bareuth. The Ambelakiot merchants had houses of their own in all these places. These houses belonged to distinct associations at Ambelakia. The competition thus established reduced very considerably the common profits; they proposed therefore to unite themselves under one central commercial administration. Twenty-five years ago this plan was suggested, and a year afterwards it was car- ried into execution. The lowest shares in this joint stock company were five thousand piasters, (between six and seven hundred pounds sterling,) and the highest were restricted to twenty thousand, that the capitalists might not swallow up all the profits. The workmen subscribed their little profits, and uniting in societies, purchased single shares, and besides their capital, their labor was reckoned in the general amount, they received their share of the. profits accordingly; and abundance was soon spread throughout the whole community. The dividends were at first restricted to ten per cent, and .the surplus profit was applied to the augmenting of the capital; which in two years was raised from six hundred thousand to one million piasters, (twenty thousand pounds.)

‘It supplied industrious Germany, not by the perfection of its jennies but by the industry of its spindle and distaff. It taught Montpellier the art of dyeing, not from experimental chairs, but because dying was with it a domestic and culinary operation, subject to daily observation in every kitchen; and by the simplicity and honesty, not the science of its system, it reads a lesson to commercial associations, and holds up an example unparalleled. In the commercial history of Europe, of a joint stock and labor company, ably and economically and successfully administered, in which the interests of industry and capital were long equally represented. Yet the system of administration, with which all this is connected, is common to the thousand hamlets of Thessaly, that have not emerged from their insignificance; but Ambelakia for twenty years was left alone.’*

*Beaujour’s Tableau de Commerce de la Greece, quoted by Urqu- hart. p. 47.

“At that time, however, England had invented machinery for spinning cotton, and, by prohibiting its export, had provided that all the cotton of the world should be brought to Manchester before it could be cheaply converted into cloth.

“The cotton manufactures at Ambelakia had their difficulties to encounter, but all those might have been overcome, had they not, says, Mr. Urquhart, been out- stripped by Manchester.’

” They were outstripped and twenty years afterward, not only had that place been deserted, but others in its neighborhood were reduced to complete desolation. Native manufactories for the production of cotton goods had, indeed, almost ceased to work. Of six hundred looms at Scutari in 1812, but forty remained in 1821, and of the two thousand weaving establishments at Tournovo in 1812 but two hundred remained in 1830.*

*Urquhart, p. 150.

“For a time, cotton went abroad to be returned in the form of a twist, thus making a voyage of thousands of miles in search of a spindle; but even this trade has in a great degree passed away. As a consequence of these things there has been a ruinous fall of wages, affecting all classes of laborers. ‘The profits’ says, Mr. Urquhart, “have been reduced to one half, and sometimes one third, by the introduction of English cottons, which, though, they have reduced the home price, and arrested the export of cotton-yarn from Turkey, have not yet supplanted the home manufacture in any visible degree; for until tranquility has allowed agriculture to revive, the people must go on working merely for bread, and reducing their price, in a struggle of hopeless competition. The industry, however, of the women and children is m6st remarkable; in every interval of labor, tending the cattle, carrying water, the spindle and distaff as in the days of Xerxes, is never out of their hands. The children are assiduously at work, from the moment their little fingers can turn the spindle. About Ambelakia, the former focus of the cotton-yarn trade, the peasantry has suffered dreadfully from this, though formerly the women could earn as much in doors, as their husbands in the field; at present (1831) their daily profit, does not exceed twenty paras, if realized for often they cannot dispose of their yarn when spun.

“Here a woman’s labor makes but two pence per day; while field labor, according to the season of the year, ranges from four to six pence, and at this rate, the pound of coarse cotton-yarn costs in spinning five pence, p 147.

“The labor of a woman is estimated at less than four cents per day, and ‘ the unremitting labor of a week, will command but twenty-five cents. The wages of men employed in gathering leaves and attending silk worms are stated at one piastre (five cents) per day, At Salonica, the shipping port of Thessaly they were ten cents. — Urquhart, 268.

“As a necessary consequence of this, population diminishes, and everywhere are seen the ruins of once prosperous villages. Agriculture declines from day to day. The once productive cotton-fields of Thessaly lie untilled, and even around Constantinople itself there are no cultivated lands to speak of within twenty miles, in some directions within fifty miles. The commonest necessaries of life come from distant parts; the corn for daily bread from Odessa; the cattle and sheep from beyond Adrianople, or from Asia Minor; the rice, of which vast consumption is made, from the neighborhood of Phillipopolis; the poultry chiefly from Bulgaria; the fruit and vegetables from Nicomedia and Macedonia. Thus a constant drain of money is occasioned without any visible return except to the treasury or from the property of Ulema: — Slack’s Travels in Turkey, Vol ii. p. 143.

“The silk that is made is badly prepared, because the distance of the artisan prevents the poor people from obtaining good machinery and as a consequence of this, the former direct trade with Persia has been superseded by an indirect one through England, to which the raw silk has now to be, sent. In every department of industry we see the same result. Birmingham has superseded Damascus, where blades are now no longer made.

“Not only is the foreigner free to introduce iis wares, but he may, on payment of a trifling duty of two per cent., carry them throughout the empire until finally disposed of. He travels by caravans and is lodged without expense. He brings his goods to be exchanged for money, or what else he needs, and the exchange effected, he disappears as suddenly as he came.

“‘It is impossible,’ says Mr. Urquhart ‘to witness the many tongued caravan in its resting place for the night, and see, unladen and piled up together, the bales from such distant places to glance over the very wrappers, and the strange marks and characters which they bear without being amazed at so eloquent a contradiction of our preconceived notions of indiscriminate despotism and universal insecurity of the East. But while we observe the avidity with which our goods are sought, the preference now transferred from Indian to Birmingham, Muslins from Golconda to Glasgow chintzes, from Damascus to Sheffield steel, from Cashmere shawls to English broadcloth; and while at the same time, the energies of the commercial spirit are brought thus substantially before us; it is indeed impossible not to regret that a gulf of separation should have so long divided” the East and West, and equally impossible not to indulge in’ the hope and anticipation of a vastly extended traffic with the East, and of all the blessings which follow fast and revelling in the wake of commerce.’ — p. 133.

” Among the ‘blessings’ of the system is the fact that local places of exchange no longer exist. The storekeeper who pays rent and taxes has found himself unable to compete with the pedlar who pays neither; and the consequence is that the poor cultivator finds it impossible to exchange his products small as they are, for the commodities he needs, except on the arrival of a caravan, and that has generally proved far more likely to absorb the little money in circulation, than any of the more bulky and less valuable products of the earth.’

“As usual in purely agricultural countries, the whole body of cultivators is hopelessly in debt, and the money lender fleeces all. If he aids the peasant before harvest, he must have an enormous interest, and be paid in produce, at a large discount, from the market price. The village committees are almost universally in debt, but to them, as the security is good, the banker charges only twenty per cent, per annum. Turkey is the very -paradise of middle men, a consequence of the absence of any mode of employment except in cultivation or in trade, and the moral effect of this may be seen in the following passage:— ”

“‘If you see,’says Urquhart ‘a Turk meditating in a corner, it is on some speculation, the purchase of a revenue farm, or the propriety of a loan at sixty per cent.; if you see pen or paper in his hand, it is making or checking an account; if there is a disturbance in the street, it is a disputed barter; whether in the streets or in-doors, whether in a coffee house, a seria, or a bazaar, whatever the rank, nation, language of the persons around you, traffic, barter, gain, are the prevailing impulses; grusch, para, florin, hia, asper, amid the Babel of tongues, are the universally intelligible sounds.”— p. 138.

“We have thus a whole people divided into two classes, the plunderers and the plundered; and the cause of this may be found in the fact that the owners and occupants of land have never been permitted to strengthen themselves by the formation of that natural alliance between the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow, so much admired by Adam Smith. The government is as weak as the people, for it is so entirely dependent on the bankers, that they may be regarded as the real owners of the land and the people, taxing them at discretion; and to them certainly inure all the profits of cultivation. As a consequence of this, the land is almost valueless. A recent traveller states that good land may be purchased, in the immediate vicinity of Smyrna, at six cents an acre, and at a little distance vast quantities may be had for nothing. Throughout the world the freedom of men has grown in the ratio of the increase in the value of land, and that has always grown in the ratio of the tendency to have the artisan take his place by the cultivator of the earth. Whatever tends to prevent this natural association, tends, therefore, to the debasement and enslavement of man.

The weakness of Turkey as regards foreign nations is great, and it increases every day. Not only ambassadors, but consuls, beard it in its own cities; and it is even now denied that she has any right to adopt a system of trade different from that under which she has become thus weakened.* Perfect freedom of commerce is declared to be ‘one of those immunities which we can resign on no account or pretext whatever, it is a golden privilege which we can never abandon. Internal trade scarcely exists, and, as a natural consequence, the foreign one is insignificant, the whole value of the exports being but about thirty-three millions of dollars, or less that two dollars per head.

* The recent proceedings in regard to the Turkish loan, are strikingly illustrative of the exhausting efforts of a system that looks wholly to tho exports of the raw produce of the earth, and thus tends to the ruin of the soil and its owner. Urquhart, p. 257

The total exports from Great Britain in the last year amounted to but two millions two hundred and twenty-one thousand pounds, or eleven million dollars, much of which was simply en route for Persia; and this constitutes the great trade which has been built up at so much cost to the people of Turkey, and that is to be maintained as ‘ a golden privilege,’ not to be abandoned! Not discouraged by the result of past efforts, the same author looks forward anxiously for the time when there shall be in Turkey no employment in manufactures of any kind, and when the people stall be exclusively employed in agriculture; and the time cannot, he thinks, be far distant, as ‘a few pence more or less in the price of a commodity will make the difference of purchasing or manufacturing at home.’*

“Throughout the book, he shows that the rudeness of the machinery of cultivation is in direct ratio of the distance of the cultivator from the market; and yet he would desire that all the produce of the country should go to a distant market to be exchanged, although the whole import of iron at the present moment for the supply of a population of almost twenty millions of people, possessing iron ore, fuel, and unemployed labor in unlimited quantity, is but twenty-five hundred pounds sterling per annum, or about a penny’s worth for every thirty persons! Need we wonder at the character of the machinery, the poverty and slavery of the people, the trivial amount of commerce, or at the weakness of the government whose whole system looks at the exhaustion of the land, and to the exclu sion of that great middle class of working men, to whom the agriculturalist has every where been indebted for his freedom?

* Urquhart, p. 202.

“The facts thus far given, have been taken, as the reader will have observed, from Mr. Urquhart’s work; and as that gentleman is a warm admirer of the system denounced by Adam Smith, he cannot be suspected of any exaggeration when presenting any of its unfavorable results. Later travellers exhibit the nation as passing steadily on towards ruin, and the people towards a state of slavery the most complete — the necessary consequence of a policy that excludes the mechanic, and prevents the formation of a town population. Among the latest of these travellers is Mr. Mac Farlane.* At the date of whose visit, the silk manufacture had entirely disappeared, and even the filatures for preparing the raw silk were closed, weavers having become ploughmen, and women, and children having been totally deprived of employment. The cultivator of silk had become entirely dependent on foreign markets, in which there existed no demand for the products of their land and labor. England was then passing through one of her periodical crises, and it had been deemed necessary to put down the prices of all agricultural’ products, with a view to stop importation. On one occasion, during Mr. Mao Farlane’s travels, there was a report that silk had risen in England, and it produced a momentary stir and animation, that he says, ‘flattered his national vanity to think that an electric touch parting from London, the mighty heart of commerce, should be felt in a few days at a place like Biljek.’ Such is commercial centralization! It renders the agriculturalists of the world mere slaves, dependent for food and clothing upon the will of a few people, proprietors of a small amount of machinery, at ‘ the mighty heart of commerce.’ At one moment speculation is rife, and silk goes up in price, and then every effort is made to induce large shipments of the raw produce of the world. At the next, money is said to be scarce, and the shippers are ruined, as was, to a great extent, experienced by those who exported corn from this country in 1847.

* ” Turkey and its Destiny,” by C. Mao Farlane, Esq., 1850.

“At the date of the traveller’s first visit to Broussa, the villages were numerous, and the silk manufacture was prosperous. At the second, the silk works were stopped, and their owners bankrupt, the villages even gradually disappearing, and in the town itself scarcely a chimney was left, while the country around presented to view nothing but poverty and wretchedness. Every where, throughout the empire, the roads are bad, and becoming worse, and the condition of the cultivator deteriorates; for if he has a surplus to sell, most of its value at market is absorbed by the cost of transportation, and if his crop is short, prices rise so high, that he cannot purchase. Famines are therefore frequent, and child-murder prevails throughout all classes of society. Population, therefore, diminishes, and the best lands are abandoned, ‘nine-tenths’ of them remaining untilled;* the natural consequence of which is, that malaria prevails in many of those parts of the country that once were most productive, and pestilence comes in aid of famine for the extermination of the unfortunate people. Native mechanics are nowhere to be found, there being no demand for them, and the plough, the wine-press, and the oil-mill are equally rude and barbarous. The product of labor is, consequently, most diminutive, and its wages two-pence a day, with a little food. The interest of money varies from twenty-five to fifty per cent, per annum, and this rate is frequently paid for in the loan of bad seed that yields but little to land or labor.

* Mac Farlane, Vol. i. p. 46.

“With the decline of population, and the disappearance of all the local places of exchange, the pressure of the conscription becomes from year to year more severe, and droves of men may be seen ‘chained like wild beasts — free Osmanlees driven along the road like slaves to a market’ — free men, separated from wives and children, who are left to perish of starvation amid the richest lands, that remain untilled because of the separation of the artisan, from the producer of food, silk, and cotton. Internal commerce is trifling in amount, and the power to pay for foreign merchandise has almost passed away. Land is nearly valueless; and in this we find the most convincing proof of the daily increasing tendency towards slavery, man having always become enslaved as land has lost its value. ” In the great valley of Buyuk-dere, once known as the fair land, a property of twenty miles in circumference had, shortly before his visit, been purchased for less than one thousand pounds, or four thousand eight hundred dollars,.* In another part of the country, one of twelve miles in circumference had been purchased for a considerably smaller sum. The slave trade, black and white, had never been more active; and this was a necessary consequence of the value of labor and land.

* Mac Farlane, p. 296
Ibid. Vol. i. p. 37.

“In this country, negro men are well fed, clothed, and are gradually advancing towards freedom. Population, therefore increases, although more slowly than would be the case were they enabled to combine their efforts for the improvement of their condition. In the West Indies, Portugal, and Turkey, being neither well-fed, clothed, nor lodged, their condition declines; and as they can neither be bought nor sold, they are allowed to die off, and the population diminishes as the tendency towards the subjugation of the laborer becomes more and more complete. Which of these conditions tends most to favor advance in civilization the reader may decide.”

Such is Mr. Carey’s account of what British free trade has done for Turkey. It was written before the present war with Russia on the one hand, and Turkey and her allies on the other, had commenced., It throws some light ou the motives of England in engaging in the war. She was unwilling to have Turkey freed from British free trade. The czar called Turkey a ” sick man,” and wished to take charge of the invalid; but England wished to retain the privilege of doctoring him with a little more free trade. In endeavoring to accomplish this object, England has incurred the deepest and most indelible disgrace. Never was there exhibited such imbecility and folly, as that which the aristocratic officers of the English army at Sebastopol have shown. The rank and file, by their bull-dog courage alone, saved the English army thus far from utter annihilation. Whether that alone will ultimately save it remains to be seen.

The hypocritical pretences under which England has entered upon the war, have been exposed by a member of parliament in his place. In a British paper, just received, we find the following article:

“Mr. Cobden has been asking some questions in the British parliament, which are found rather hard to answer. He said, ‘Before considering other questions in relation to the war, it was necessary to ask what was its object, respecting which he could never get any intelligible notion. Some suppose it was to open the Black Sea, or the Danube, to merchant vessels, whereas both were open. Others imagined that we had a treaty with the Sultan binding us to defend him and his dominions. But Lord Aberdeen has declared that no such treaty existed before the war. There was, indeed, a strong feeling out of doors that Russia had oppressed certain nationalities, and he assumed that the statesman’s ground of war was to defend the Turkish empire against the encroachments of Russia, and to keep the states of Europe within their present limits. But were not the other nations of Europe as much interested as we in this object, and in withstanding a deluge of barbarism? And had we not accomplished the object when Russia renounced all intention of invading Turkey, and as acknowledged by Lord J. Russell, made proposals of peace on the basis of the four points? Austria and Prussia, it was said, had agreed to these terms, and they were more interested in the quarrel than we; why, then, should we not entertain them? We were not to be Don Quixottes, to fight the battles of the world. The destruction of Sebastopol would not prevent its re-construction or the fortification of some other port in the Black Sea. Nor would it secure Turkey, which could be safe only when its internal condition was improved, and its administration reformed, and its resources developed; whereas war demoralized the Turks — whom, since our arrival, we had humiliated and degraded. The country had been misled into a belief that the Mahommedan population of Turkey, which was perishing, was incapable of regeneration, which was a delusion. Instead, then, of continuing war, — having accomplished its original object, as declared in the Qneen’s speech — why not take even chance of the result of accepting the proposals of peace, especially if, as Mr. Layard had predicted, the war was only beginning?”

In these remarks of Mr. Cobden, the real cause of the war leaks out, probably without any intention on his part. He says that ” Turkey could be safe only when its internal condition was improved, its administration reformed, and its resources developed!’ — in other words, when it should rid itself of the incubus of British free trade. If England had not destroyed the manufactures of Turkey, Turkey would not have become a sick man, Russia would not have invaded her territory, western diplomacy would not have paralyzed her means of resistance, and England and France would not have engaged in a war under false pretenses, disgraceful alike in its motives and its conduct.

We now pass to another exhibition of the blessings of British free trade.

CHAPTER VIII. What foreign imposture in commerce has done for India.

Before the conquest of India, by the British, the people of that country were comparatively free and happy. This we learn from the testimony of British writers. “The natives of Hindostan,” says Mr. Greig, “seem to have lived from the earliest, down, comparatively speaking, to late times — if not free from the troubles and annoyances to which men in all condition of society are more or less subject, still in the full enjoyment, each individual, of , his own property, and of a very considerable share of personal liberty.”

The Mahommedan conqueror respected the local institutions of the country, and permitted the people to accumulate property without interfering with the pursuits of industry. They thus protected the manufacturers of the country effectually from the pernicious system called free trade, which has since reduced them to beggary and slavery. Manufactures were widely spread, and thus made a demand for the labor not required in agriculture. ” On the coast of Coromandel” says Orme, “and in the province of Bengal, it is difficult to find a village in which every man, woman, and child, is not employed in making a piece of cloth. At present,” he continues, ” much the greatest part of the whole provinces are employed in this single manufacture. Its progress,” as he says, “includes no less than a description of the lives of half the inhabitants of Hindostan.” “While employment,” says Carey, “was thus locally subdivided, tending to enable neighbor to exchange with neighbor, the exchanges between the producers of food, or of salt, in one part of the country; and the producers of cotton and manufacturers of cloth in another, tending to the production of commerce with more distant men, and this tendency was much increased by the subdivision of the cotton manufacture itself. Bengal was celebrated for the finest muslins, the consumption of which at Delhi, and in Northern India generally was large, while the Coromandel coast was equally celebrated for the best chintzes and calicoes, leaving to Western India the manufacture of strong and inferior goods of every kind. Under these circumstances, it is no matter of surprise that the country was rich, and that its people, although often over-taxed, and sometimes plundered by invading armies, were prosperous in a high degree.”

“Nearly a century has now elapsed,” says Mr. Carey, “since, by the battle of Plassy, British power was established in India, and from that day local action has tended to disappear, and centralization to take its place. From its date to the close of the century, there was a rapidly increasing tendency towards having all the affairs of the princes and the people settled by the representatives of the company established in Calcutta, and as usual in such cases, the country was filled with adventurers, very many of whom were wholly without principles, men whose sole object was that of the accumulation of fortune by any means, however foul, as is well known by all who are familiar with the indignant denunciations of Burke. England was thus enriched as India was impoverished, and as centralization was more and more established.”

We might give the details of the oppressive system of taxation and exaction by which the British have brought the people of India into a state of complete and literal slavery. Their system of taxation has reached a point unparalleled in history. One half of the gross produce of the land is the average annual rent, although in many cases it greatly exceeds that amount. The Madras Revenue Board, May 17, 1817, stated that the conversion of the government share of of the produce of lands is in some districts as high as sixty or seventy per cent, of the whole. , This statement sufficiently illustrates the effects of the British domination in India, as applied to that part of the population of India which is engaged in agricultural pursuits; but our present object is to show the operation of British free trade in destroying the manufactures of that country.

By a quotation above, cited from Orme, we have shown the former existence of a flourishing manufacture of cotton cloth. Much of this cloth was exported, and it will be in the recollection of many of our readers, that previous to the war of 1812, an article of muslin, commonly called India cotton, was extensively used in this country. The following extract from Mr. Carey’s work, will show how this branch of manufacture has been destroyed by British free trade.

“India is abundantly supplied with fuel and iron ore, and if she has not good machinery, the deficiency is not chargeable to nature. At the close of the last century, cotton abounded, and to so great an extent was the labor of men, women, and children applied to its conversion into cloth, that, even with their imperfect machinery, they not only supplied the home demand for the beautiful tissues of Dacca and the coarse products of “Western India; but they exported to other parts of the world no less than two hundred millions of pieces per annum.* Exchanges with every part of the world were so greatly in their favor, that a rupee which would now sell for but one shilling and sixpence, or forty-four cents, was then worth two smillings and eightpence, or sixty-four cents.

* Speech of Mr. G. Thompson, in the House of Commons.

The Company had a monopoly of collecting taxes in India, but in return it preserved the control of their domestic market, by aid of which they were enabled to convert their rice, their salt, and their cotton, into cloth that could be cheaply carried to the most remote parts of the world. Such protection was needed, because while England prohibited the export of even a single collier who might instruct the people of India in the mode of mining coal — of a steam engine to pump water, or raise coal, or a mechanic who could make one — of a worker in iron who might smelt the ore — of a spinning-jenny or a power-loom, or of an artisan who could give instruction in the use of such machines — and thus systematically prevented them from keeping pace with improvements in the rest of the world, — she at the same time imposed very heavy duties on the produce of Indian looms received in England. The day was at hand, however, when that protection was to disappear. The Company did not, it was said, export sufficiently largely of the produce of British industry, and in 1813, the trade to India was thrown open — but the restriction on the export of machinery and artisans was maintained in full force; and thus were the poor and ignorant people of that country exposed to ‘unlimited competition’ with a people possessed of machinery ten times more effective than their own, while not only by law deprived of the power to purchase machinery, but also of the power of competing in the British market with the product of British looms. Further than this, every loom in India, and every machine calculated to aid the laborer, was subject to a tax that increased with every increase in the industry of its owner, and in many cases absorbed the whole profit derived from its use.* Such were the circumstances under which the poor Hindoo was called to encounter unprotected, the ‘ unlimited competition’ of , foreigners in his own market. It was freedom of trade all on one side. Four years after, the export of cottons from Bengal skill amounted to one million six hundred and fifty- nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-four pounds sterling; but ten years later it had declined to two hundred and eighty-five thousand one hundred and twenty-one pounds sterling and at the end of twenty years, we find a whole year pass by without the export of a single piece of cotton cloth from Calcutta, the whole of the immense trade that existed, but half a century since, having disappeared. What were the measures used for the accomplishment of the work of destroying a manufacture that gave employment and food to so many millions of the poor people of the country, will be seen on a perusal of the following memorial, which shows that while India was denied machinery, and also denied access to the British market, she was forced to receive British cottons free of all duty.

*” The Slave-Trade: Foreign and Domestic.” By H.C.Carey, p. 113.
Chapman’s Commerce and Cotton of India, p. 74.

PETITION OF THE NATIVES OF BENGAL, RELATIVE TO THE DUTIES ON COTTON AND SILK.

Calcutta, Sept. 1, 1831.
To the Right Honorable the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy Council for Trade, etc., The humble petition of the undersigned, Manufacturers and Dealers in Cotton and Silk Piece Goods, the fabrics of Bengal:

“Showeth — That of late years your Petitioners have found their business nearly superseded by the introduction of the fabrics of Great Britain into Bengal, the importation of which augments every year, to the great prejudice of the native manufacturers.

“That the fabrics of Great Britain are consumed m Bengal, without any duties being levied thereon to protect the native fabrics.

“That the fabrics of Bengal are charged with the following duties when they are used in Great Britain.

“On manufactured cottons, ten per cent.

” On manufactured silks, twenty-four per cent.

“Your Petitioners most humbly implore your Lordships’ consideration of these circumstances, and they feel confident that no disposition exists in England to shut the door against the industry of any part of the inhabitants of this great empire.

“They therefore pray to be admitted to the privilege of British subjects, and humbly entreat your Lordships to allow the cotton and silk fabrics of Bengal to be used in Great Britain ‘ free of duty,’ or at the same rate which may be charged on British fabrics consumed in Bengal.

“Your Lordships must be aware of the immense advantages the British manufacturers derive from their skill in constructing and using machinery, which enables them to undersell the unscientific manufacturers of Bengal in their own country; and, although your Petitioners are not sanguine in expecting to derive any great advantage in having their prayers granted, their minds would feel gratified by such a manifestation of your Lordships’ good will towards them; and such an instance of justice to the natives of India will not fail to endear the British government to them.

“They therefore confidently trust that your Lordships’ righteous consideration will be extended to them as British subjects, without exception of sect, color, or country.

“And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.”

(Signed by one hundred and seventeen natives of great respectability.)

“The object sought to be accomplished would not have, however, been attained by granting the prayer of this most reasonable and humble petition. When the export of cotton, woolen, and steam machinery was prohibited, it was done with a view of compelling all the wool of the world to come to England to be spun and woven, thence to be returned to be worn by those who raised it — thus depriving the people of the world of all power to apply their labor otherwise than in taking from the earth, cotton, sugar, indigo, and other commodities for the supply of the great ‘ workshop of the world.’ How effectually that object has been accomplished in India, will be seen from the following facts. From the date of the opening of the trade in 1813, the domestic manufacture and the export of cloth have gradually declined until the latter has finally ceased, and the export of raw cotton to England has gradually risen until it has attained a height of about sixty millions of pounds,* while the import of twist from England has risen to twenty-five millions of pounds, and of cloth, to two hundred and sixty millions of yards, weighing probably fifty millions of pounds, which, added to the twist, make seventy-five millions, requiring for their production something more than eighty millions of raw cotton. We see thus that every pound of raw material sent to England is returned. The cultivator receives for it one penny, and when it returns to him in the form of cloth, he pays for it from one to two shillings, the whole difference being absorbed in the payment of the numerous brokers, transporters, manufacturers, and operatives, men, women, and children, that have thus been interposed between the producer and the consumer. The necessary consequence of this has been that every where manufactures have disappeared. Dacca, one of the principal seats of the cotton manufacture, contained ninety thousand houses, but its trade had already greatly fallen off, even at the date of the memorial above given, and its splendid buildings, factories, and churches are now a mass of ruins and overgrown with jungle. The cotton of the district found itself compelled to go to England that it might be twisted and sent back again, thus performing a voyage of twenty thousand miles in search of the little spindles, because it was a part of the British policy not to permit the spindle any where to take its place by the side of the cultivator of cotton.

* Chapman’s Commerce and Cotton of India, p. 28.

“The change thus effected has been stated in a recent official report to have been attended with ruin and distress, to which ‘ no parallel can be found in the annals of commerce.’ What were the means by which it was effected is shown in the fact that, at this period Sir. Robert Peel stated that in Lancashire, children were employed fifteen and seventeen hours per day, during the week, and on Sunday morning, from six until twelve, cleaning the machinery. In Coventry, ninety-six hours in the week, was the time usually required; and of those employed many received but two shillings and nine pence or sixty-six cents for a week’s wages. The object to be accomplished was that of under-working the poor Hindoo, and driving him from the market of the world, after which he was to be driven from his own. The mode of accomplishment was that of cheapening labor and enslaving the laborer at home and abroad.

” With the decline of manufacturers there has ceased to be a demand for the services of woman or children in the work of conversion, and they are forced either to remain idle, or seek employment in the field; and here we have one of the distinguishing marks of a state of slavery. The men, too, who were accustomed to fill up the intervals of other employments in pursuits connected with the cotton manufacture, were also driven to the field, and all demand for labor, physical or intellectual, was at an end, except so far as was needed for raising rice, indigo, sugar, or cotton. The rice itself they were not permitted to clean, being debarred therefrom, by a duty double that which was paid on paddy, or rough rice, on its import into England. The poor grower of cotton often paying to the government seventy-eight per cent, of the produce of his labor, found himself deprived of the power to trade directly with the man of the loom, and forced into ‘ unlimited competition’ with the better machinery, and almost untaxed labor of our Southern States; and thereby subjected to ‘ the mysterious variations of foreign markets’ in which the fever of speculation was followed by the chill of revulsion with a rapidity and frequency that set at naught all calculation. If our crops were small, his English customers would take his cotton; but when he sent over more next year, there had, perhaps, been a good season here, and the Indian article became an absolute drug in the market. It was stated some time since, in the House of Commons, that one gentleman, Mr. Turner, had thrown seven thousand pounds sterling worth of Indian cotton upon a dunghill, because he could find no market for it.

“It will now readily be seen that the direct effect of thus compelling the export of cotton from India was to increase the quantity pressing on the market of England, and thus to lower the price of all the cotton in the world, including that required for domestic consumption. The price of the whole Indian crop being thus rendered dependent on that which could be realized for a small surplus that would have no existence but for the fact that the domestic manufacture had been destroyed, it will readily be seen how enormous has been the extent of injury inflicted upon the poor cultivator by the forcible separation of the plough and loom, and the destruction of the power of association.

Again, while the price of cotton is fixed in England, there, too, is fixed the price of cloth, and such is the case with sugar and indigo, to the production of which these poor people are forced to devote themselves; and thus are they rendered the mere slaves of distant men, who determine what they shall receive for all they have to sell, and what they shall pay for all they require to purchase. Centralization and slavery go thus hand and hand with each other.”

One more extract, from Mr. Carey’s work, we introduce to show an incidental effect of British free trade in India, on the moral condition and happiness of another country — an effect at which humanity shudders:

“Calcutta grows, the city of palaces, but poverty and wretchedness grows as the people of India find themselves more and more compelled to resort to that city to make their exchanges. Under the native rule, the people of each little district could exchange with each other food for cotton or cotton cloth,* paying nobody for the privilege. Now every man must send his cotton to Calcutta, thence to go to England with the rice and indigo of his neighbors, before he and they can exchange food for cloth or cotton, the larger the quantity they send the greater is the tendency to decline in price. . With every extension of the system there is increasing inability to pay the taxes, and increasing necessity for seeking new markets in which to sell cloth, and collect what are called rents, and the more wide the extension of the system the greater is the difficulty of collecting revenue sufficient for keeping the machine of government in motion. This difficulty it was that drove the representatives of British power and civilization into becoming traders in that pernicious drug, opium.

“The very best parts of India,” as we are told,* “were selected for the cultivation of the poppy. The people were told they must either, cultivate this plant, make opium, or give up their land. If they refused, they were peremptorily told they must yield or quit. The same Company that forced them to grow opium said, ‘You must sell the opium to us;’ and to them it was sold, and they gave the price they pleased to put upon the opium thus manufactured; and they then sold it to leading speculators at Calcutta, who caused it to be smuggled up the Canton river, to an island called Sintin, and tea was received in exchange.

*”Thompson, Lecture on India, p. 25.

At last, however, the emperor of China, after repeated threats, proceeded to execute summary justice; he seized every particle of opium; put under bond every European engaged in the merchandise of it; and the papers of today (1839) inform us that he has cut off the China trade, root and branch.”

“Unhappily, however, the British nation deemed it expedient to make war upon the poor Chinese, and compel them to pay for the opium that had been destroyed; and now the profits of the Indian government from poisoning a whole people have risen from one million five hundred thousand pounds, sterling at the date of the above extract, to the enormous sum of three millions five hundred thousand pounds, or sixteen million eight hundred thousand dollars, and $§ market is, as we are informed, still extending itself that the reader may see and understand how directly the government is concerned in this effort at demoralizing and enslaving the Chinese, the following will show.

“For the supply and manufacture of government opium there is a separate establishment. There are two great opium agencies at Ghazeepore and Patna, for the Benares and Bakar provinces. Each opium agent has several deputies in different districts, and a native establishment. They enter into contracts with the cultivators for the supply of opium at a rate fixed to suit the market. The land revenue authorities do not interfere, except to prevent cultivation without permission. Government merely bargains with the cultivators as cultivators, in the same way as a private merchant would, and makes advances to them for the cultivation. The only difficulty found is to prevent their cultivating too much, as the rates are favorable, government a sure purchaser, and the cultivation liked. The land cultivated is measured, and precaution is taken that the produce is all sold to government. The raw opium thus received is sent to the head agency, where it is manufactured, packed in chests and sealed with the company’s seal.”*

* Campbell, p. 300.

It would seem to the author of this paragraph almost a matter of rejoicing that the Chinese are bound to continue large consumers of the drug. “The failure of one attempt has shown,” as he thinks —

“That they are not likely to effect that object; and if we do not supply them, some one else will; but the worst of it is, according to some people, that if the Chinese only legalized the cultivation in their own country, they could produce it much cheaper, and our market would be ruined. But for their sakes and ours we must hope that it is not so, or that they will not find ‘it out.”*

“Need we wonder, when gentlemen find pleasure in the idea of an increasing revenue from forcing this trade in despite of all the efforts of the more civilized Chinese government, that ‘intemperance increases,’ where the British ‘rule and system has been long established?’ Assuredly not. Poor governments are, as we everywhere see, driven to encourage gambling, drunkenness, and other immoralities, as a means of extracting revenues from their unfortunate tax-payers; and the greater the revenue thus obtained, the poorer become the people and the weaker the government. Need we be surprised that that of India should be reduced to become manufacturer and smuggler of opium, when the people are forced to exhaust the land by sending away its raw products, and when the restraints upon mere collection of domestic salt are so great that English salt finds a market in India? The following passage on this subject is worthy of the perusal of of those who desire fully to understand how it is that the people of that country are restrained in the appli- cation of their labor, and why it is that labor is so badly paid: —

* Ibid, p. 393.

“‘But those who cry out in England against the monopoly, and their unjust exclusion from the salt trade, are egregriously mistaken. As concerns them, there is positively no monopoly, hut the most absolute free trade. And, more than this, the only effect of the present mode of manufacture in Bengal is to give them a market which they would never otherwise have. A government manufacture of salt is doubtless more expensive than a private manufacture; but the result of this, and of the equality of bad and good salt, is, that fine English salt now more or less finds a market in India, whereas, were the salt duty and all the government interference discontinued to-morrow, the cheap Bengal salt would be sold at such a rate that not a pound of English or any other foreign salt could be brought into the market.* Nevertheless the system is regarded as one of perfect free trade!

“Notwithstanding all these efforts at maintaining the revenue, the debt has increased the last twelve years no less than fifteen millions of pounds sterling or seventy-two million of dollars; and yet the government is absolute proprietor of all of India, and enjoys so large a portion of the beneficial interest in it, that private property therein is reduced to a sum absolutely insignificant, as will now be shown.

* Campbell, p. 384.

“The gross land revenue obtained from a country with an area of four hundred and ninety-one thousand four hundred and forty-eight square miles, or above three hundred millions of acres, is one hundred and fifty-one millions seven hundred and eighty- six thousand seven hundred and forty-three rupees, equal to fifteen millions of pounds sterling, or seventy- two millions of dollars.* What is the value of private rights of property, subject to the payment of this tax, or rent, may be judged from the following factB: In 1848-49, there were sold for taxes, in that portion of the country subject to the permanent settlement, eleven hundred and sixty-nine estates, at something less than four years’ purchase of the tax. Further south, in the Madras government, where the ryot-war settlement is in full operation, the land ‘would be sold’ for balances of rent; but ‘ generally it is not,’ as we are told, ‘ and for a very good reason, viz. that nobody will buy it.’ Private right in land being there of no value whatsoever — ‘the collector of Salem’ as Mr. Campbell informs us —

* Campbell, p. 377.

Naively mentions various unauthorized modes of stimulating the tardy rarely resorted to by heads of villages, such as placing him in the sun, obliging him to stand on one leg, or sit with his head confined between his knees.*

In the north-west provinces, the settlement, as our author states, has certainly been successful in giving a good market value to good landed property;’ that is, it sells at about ‘ four years’ purchase on the revenue. Still further north, in the newly acquired provinces, we find great industry, ‘ every thing turned to account,’ the assessment, to which the company succeeded on the deposition of the successors of Runjeet Singh, more easy, and land more valuable. The value of land, like that of labor, therefore increases as we pass from the old to the new settlements, being precisely the reverse of what would be the case if the system tended to the enfranchisement and elevation of the people, and precisely what should be looked for in a country whose inhabitants were passing from freedom towards slavery.”

* Campbell, p. 350. Ibid, p. 332. Ibid, p. 345.

With this extract we conclude the notices of the effects of British free trade in foreign countries. We might show its application to Ireland, whose manufactures were deliberately and systematically destroyed by the application of the system of British free trade to that country. The effects which followed are familiar to all intelligent people. The Irish people were ruined by it, and the country depopulated to such an extent that Great Britain can no longer obtain recruits for her armies in the “sister island;” but has recourse to German mercenaries.

We now proceed to consider the ruinous effects of British free trade on our own country.

CHAPTER IX. What foreign imposture in commerce has done for this country.

With respect to this country, the object of Great Britain has been to make us tributary to British wealth and greatness; to enslave us, by confining us to agriculture alone and to prevent our establishing manufactures or to destroy them when established. This policy commenced in the colonial period, and has continued to the present day, as we will now prove. A British author, Joshua Gee, writing in 1750, thus sets forth the policy, Manufactures in American colonies should be discouraged, prohibited.

Great Britain with its dependencies is doubtless as well able to subsist within itself as any nation in Europe. We have an enterprising people, fit for all the arts of peace or war. We have provisions in abundance, and those of the best sort, and we are able to raise sufficient for double the number of inhabitants. We have the very best materials for clothing, and want nothing either for use or luxury, but what we have at home, or might have from our colonies; so that we might make such an intercourse of trade among ourselves, or between us and them, as would maintain a vast navigation. But we ought always to keep a watchful eye over our colonies, to keep them from setting up any of the manufactures which are carried on in Cheat Britain; and any such attempt should be crushed in the beginning, for if they are suffered to grow up to maturity it will be difficult to suppress them.”

Our colonies are much in the same state as Ireland was in when they began the woollen manufacture, and as their numbers increase, will fall upon manufactures for clothing themselves, if due care be not taken to find employment for them in raising such productions as may enable them to furnish themselves with all the necessaries from us.

This is the British doctrine of free trade, set forth in its native deformity by a British writer. It was very faithfully carried out during the colonial period. During the revolutionary war, the people were too fully occupied to establish manufactures effectually. After the peace, Great Britain had still a strong party in this country, and her free trade policy was so effectually imposed upon us, that, up to the breaking out of the war of 1812, we still imported nearly all our manufactures of iron and cloth from that country. The greatest service which the war of 1812 effected for the United States was to compel its people to establish manufactories for themselves.

A contemporary* whom we shall take the liberty of quoting at some length, thus follows the course of events, from that time forward.

* North American, January, 1855.

The war of 1812 found the country so nearly destitute of the means of clothing itself, that the government was unable to procure blankets or woollen cloth for its soldiers, or for the Indians to whom such commodities were due. How great was the difficulty experienced by reason of the colonial condition in which the nation had so long been kept, may be judged from the fact that the Administration was obliged to take possession of Amelia Island, then held by Spain, for the purpose of enabling certain cargoes of cotton and woollen goods owned by Mr. Girard and others, and then at that island, to get within the Union, in defiance of the non-importation laws. Such were the straits to which we had been reduced by the constant maintenance of a policy that looked to having among us none but farmers, planters, and traders, almost entirely excluding the manufacturers.

The war gave efficient protection to manufacturers; and four years later, as we learn from a recent report of a Committee of the House of Representatives, the quantity of cotton consumed within the Union, amounted to no less than ninety thousand bales, or one-third as much as was exported to foreign ports. The woollen manufacturers, too had largely grown, and employed a capital of twelve millions of dollars; while iron and other branches of manufacture had made great progress; and so completely had the domestic market for food, that had been thus created, made amends for our total exclusion from the market of Europe, that the prices of flour in this market in the years 1813 and 1814 ranged from six to ten dollars, and of pork from thirteen and a half to seventeen dollars.

The peace came, and our farmers found opened to them the markets of the world, by which they were to be enriched, and by way of preparation therefore the domestic market was sacrificed. Until 1818, certain branches of manufacture continued to enjoy protection; in that year it was resolved that the duties of Congress were limited to securing a sufficient amount of revenue, and cotton and iron were condemned to suffer the fate to which had already been subjected the manufacturers of woollen cloths and hardware. The revenue, as the people were then told, was superabundant, the years 1816 and 1817 having yielded no less than eighty millions, and having enabled the treasury to make payments on account of the public debt, amounting to little short of fifty millions. It was a free trade millennium, and protection was then, as now, to be regarded as ‘ a blight.’ If the artisans of the country could not live without protection let them die, and die they did. Manufactures of all kinds, of cotton, woollen and iron, almost entirely disappeared.

As a consequence, there existed throughout the towns and cities of the Union the most intense distress. In Philadelphia alone, with its then small population, it was found, on examination, that nearly eight thousand workmen were wholly without employment. In Pittsburgh there were found two thousand; and as all these people were deprived of the means of purchasing food, the prices of food of all kinds rapidly declined as the necessity for dependence on foreign markets became more fully established. Flour that, in this city, had in 1817 and 1818 commanded ten dollars, fell in 1819 to six dollars and a half, and in 1820 to four dollars and thirty cents; and cotton and tobacco participated in the fall. In many parts of the country, wheat was sold at twenty-five, thirty and thirty-seven cents per bushel, and at a later period prices declined to a still lower point, and, as a natural consequence, the farmers were every where nearly, when even not quite, ruined; and yet they were then almost entirely free from the ‘ blight’ of protection, and in the almost perfect enjoyment of that which is regarded by the Union among the first of blessings, free trade!

As a natural consequence, the power to pay for foreign merchandize passed away, and the consumption which, in 1817 and 1818, had averaged ninety millions, fell in the five years from 1720 to 1824 both inclusive, to an average of fifty millions; and yet, small as was this amount, a constant drain of the little specie that was in the country was required to pay for it, as is shown by the following figures:

We have here an excess export of nearly ten millions, and if to this be added, for wear and tear, for loss, and for consumption in the arts, only a million and a half a year, we have, in the short period of four years, a diminution of the precious metals in the country amounting to no less than sixteen millions, and yet the whole quantity had been estimated in 1818 at about thirty millions. Under such circumstances, we need feel no surprise that sheriff’s sales were numerous — that the rich were made richer and the poor poorer — nor that the latter, in the effort to avoid ruin, should in many of the States, have invoked the intervention of the Legislature for the passage of stay-laws, by which the sales of property were prohibited except under such circumstances as placed the creditor almost entirely at the mercy of the debtor. Such laws, as we shall have occasion to show, have always, thus far followed in the wake of free trade.

As a consequence of all this, the revenue fell off greatly, and new loans were required for the expenses of government. The amount of debt contracted in this free trade period was no less than thirteen millions, and this for a support of government in a time of profound peace, when the total expenditure, excluding that on account of the public debt, was, in some of the years under ten millions, and averaged only twelve millions.

Protection had delivered over to free trade a country in a state of high prosperity, with an overflowing revenue, and diminishing national debt. Six years of free trade, however, were sufficient to change the scene, and to present to the world a ruined people; a declining commerce, requiring a steady export of specie to pay the balance of trade; an exhausted treasury, and an increased national debt.”

Chapter X What foreign imposture in commerce has done for this country. (Continued)

We have shown that the war of 1812, by excluding British manufactures from this country, acted in the same way as a protective tariff, teaching the people the value of their own resources, and compelling them to establish manufactures of their own. To use the language of the authority last quoted,

We have shown that soon after the war of 1812, protection had handed the country over to the guardianship of free trade, in a state of high prosperity, and that it had required but six years of this latter government to produce the almost total destruction of the manufactures of the country. We have also shown that this had been accompanied by so great a diminution of the power to pay for foreign merchan- dize as to compel the Treasury to have resorted to loans to enable it to meet the current demands upon it, and that, too, in a period of profound peace! This state of things it was that caused the passage of the act of 1824, the first tariff act framed especially with reference to protection. It was very imperfect, and it required, of course, time to make itself felt; and the drain of specie continued throughout the fiscal year of its passage, the exports in that year having exceeded the imports by more than two and a half millions of dollars. In the following year, however, a change was produced, and the imports of the four succeeding years exceeded the exports by about four millions of dollars. It was small in amount, but considerable in its effect, for in place of an excess export of two millions a year, there was obtained an excess import of one, making a difference of three millions a year. The people be- came again able to pay for foreign merchandize, and the revenue, which for five years had averaged only eighteen millions, rose to an average of twenty-four millions. The Treasury ceased to have occasion to resort to loans, and the payments on account of the public debt in the three years ending in 1828, averaged eleven millions a year, with large diminution in the amount of principal.

Such were the results of the very imperfect measure of 1824, and by them its friends were encouraged to the far more perfect act of 1828, the first really and thoroughly protective tariff ever given to the country. Under it there was a rapid increase in the supply of gold and silver, the imports of the five years that fol- lowed its passage, having exceeded the exports by eleven millions of dollars, or about as much as the ex- ports had exceeded the imports in the free trade period. The value of domestic exports now grew rapidly, and presented a striking contrast with the facts of that period in which the community had enjoyed the bless- ings of free trade; as is shows by the following figures.

As a consequence of the increased ability to pay for foreign merchandize, the revenue grew rapidly, each year in succession greater than its predecessor, thus proving how steadily the people were improving in their condition, though subjected to what the Union is pleased to style ‘ the blight’ of protection. The year 1828-29 gave twenty-five millions, and so did the following one, but 1830-31 gave twenty-nine millions, and 1831—32 no less than thirty-two millions, or as much as had, under the free trade system, been obtained from the two years ending in September, 1821. The payments on account of the public debt rose to seventeen millions in 1832, and left at the close of that year so small an amount unpaid, that it became necessary to establish entire freedom of trade in reference to coffee, teas, wines, silks, and other articles that could not be, or, at least, were not, produced at home. The revenue, however, still increased, and the receipts of the Treasury for 1833-34 reached the then enormous amount of thirty-four millions, and thus provided for the total extinction of the public debt, by the payment of the three per cents, all of which were held abroad, as had been a large portion of the other stocks that had been paid since the passage of the act of 1824. That year had terminated the borrowings of the Treasury, and it had required but nine years of protection to bring about the final payment of the debts of the Revolution, of the war of 1812, and of the free trade period from 1818 to 1824.

Under free trade, as our readers have seen, the debt was increased, and, as much of it probably went abroad, our foreign debt grew, while we were at the same time exporting more gold and silver than we imported, to the extent of two and a half millions a year. In the ten years that followed the passage of the act of 1824, no debt was contracted, while the payments on account of principal and interest amounted to a hundred millions of dollars, by which our indebtedness to foreigners was diminished probably thirty millions, while the excess import of gold and silver exceeded thirty millions. Such was the ‘blight’ of protection.

As a consequence, there existed throughout the country a degree of prosperity that had never before been known, and such was the preparation that had been made by protection for delivering the people over to the enjoyment of the blessings of free trade, promised them by the Compromise Act that came into existence at the close of 1833. By the provisions of that Act, one-tenth of the excess duty over twenty per cent., was to be reduced at that date — another tenth at the close of 1835 — another in each of the years 1837 and 1839— and the balance in 1841 and 1842. The reduction was, as our readers perceive, very gradual, and scarcely to be felt before 1835, except in so far as it tended to prevent the extension of manufactures, that had gone on so rapidly from 1829 to 1833. This, however, was almost unfelt, for the rapid increase in the domestic market had greatly diminished the necessity for going abroad to sell either food or cotton, and had tended much towards raising the prices to be obtained for what was sent; and thus the amount of exports, which had risen from fifty millions in 1828 to seventy in 1833, grew in 1834, ’35 and ’36 to eighty-one, one hundred and one, and one hundred and six millions. Thus was free trade enabled to profit by the protection that had been granted from 1824 to ’34. Never before had the country presented such a reality of prosperity as existed in 1834, when the ‘ blight’ of protection was in part removed, and when the farmers and the planters of the country were handed over to the ‘tender mercies’ of the free traders. Upon that prosperity the latter traded for several years. The credit of the country was high, for we had done what had never before been done by any other nation, having paid off the national debt, and having to a great extent accomplished that object in the brief period that had elapsed since the passage of the protective tariff of 1824 — and having in the same period rapidly and greatly increased our stock of the precious metals. Never before had free trade had so fair an opportunity for displaying its powers — for never before had any people enjoyed the same advantages that were then enjoyed by our own — and yet, at the close of another period of seven years, we find it leaving a people hopelessly indebted abroad and broken down under demands for payment that could not be complied with, and a government deeply indebted, and without the means of supporting itself without the creation of further debt.

From 1829 to 1834, under protection, we had imported twenty-seven millions more gold and silver than we had exported, and had paid a vast amount of foreign debt. From 1839 to 1842, under free trade, we exported eight millions more than we imported, and contracted, a hundred millions of private foreign debt, and the amount of public debt contracted, most of which must have gone abroad, exceeded thirty-six millions. The power to pay for merchandize that had, in 1832— 33, enabled us to consume to the extent of eighty-eight millions, and that continued to grow so long as the tariff continued to afford protection, until in 1834-35 it reached one hundred and twenty-nine millions, declined, thereafter so much, that in three years ending in 1842 it averaged only ninety-six millions. In the last of these years it was only eighty-eight millions, with steady tendency to still farther decline, as the increasing demands for specie to pay the balance between exports and imports tended steadily to destroy all confidence between man and man, and confidence in the present or future value of property. Banks were every where in a state of suspension, and governments in a state of repudiation. The Federal government was driven to the use of an irredeemable paper currency, and even with that, found itself so totally unable to meet the demands upon it, that the President himself was unable to obtain his salary at the Treasury, and forced to seek accommodation from the neighboring brokers.

The domestic market for food and cotton had been destroyed, and, with the increasing necessity for dependence on foreign markers, there had been a decline of prices so great that it required almost twice the quantity that would hare sufficed six years before to pay the same amount of debt. Cotton fell to fire and nine cents: pork and beef to eight dollars a barrel; wheat to one dollar and a quarter a bushel, and hams, lard and butter to from six to seven and a half a pound. The farmers and planters were unable to pay their debts, and now, as before in free trade times, stay- laws were required to protect the debtor against his creditor. Sheriffs sales were universal, where such protection was not afforded. Merchants and manufactures were every where ruined, and laborers and artisans of every kind, by hundreds of thousands, were unable to sell their labor, and consequently unable to procure food for their families or themselves.

Free trade had delivered the country up to protection in 1824, with a commerce requiring a steady export of specie, and producing a steady decline of credit within and without its limits — and protection had accepted the gift. Ten years after, the latter was called upon to resign her charge, and that which she did resign was a country in the highest prosperity. Only eight years afterwards free trade had dissipated her great inheritance, and had nothing to transfer but a country overwhelmed with debt — a treasury bankrupt, and seeking everywhere for loans at the highest rate of interest — a commerce ruined — and a people disgraced and beggared.”

This was the termination of the second period during which the opposite efforts of protection in enriching the country, and British free trade in impoverishing it were respectively exhibited. One would naturally suppose that two such lessons might have sufficed for us; and that we might have learned wisdom from experience. But foreign influence is strong in this country, because it works under ground, in secret. British influence in particular is cunning and unscrupulous. The British aristocracy are veterans in diplomatic craft. Their diplomatists are trained to their business, while ours are all green hands; those we have abroad now, particularly green. The British overreach us in all treaties, especially reciprocity treaties.

Besides this, the British manufacturers understand their own interest, and are willing to spend money for the purpose of forcing their system of free trade on foreign nations. They raised a fund of half a million of dollars ostensibly to diffuse information in the United States on the advantages of free trade, — really to bribe presses and Legislatures. How successfully it was employed, will appear in what is now to be said respecting the third and last period of British free trade as applied to this country.

(Due to a bad PDF file I am working from, I regret to say I cannot finish this book.)