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Show Conversations of .Our Club 9SSSu3L. This week the discussion of trade conditions and the probable effect of i protective tariff is continued. Particular Particu-lar attention is paid to the effect of slavery on the well-being of 'the country, coun-try, and the probable outcome of the threats of secession being made by the south at the time this was written. CONVERSATION VII. Continued. "The grand- error of the political economists," said Winslow, "is in laying lay-ing down free trade as the true policy of all nations and at all times. Free trade is undoubtedly the true policy of England at present, for her territory ; is small and her greatness depends on j trade and industry. She does not and cannot produce from her own land the j materials which are needed to supp'.y her manufactures and her foreign trade. The chief value of her exports consists in the labor applied to raw materials imported from abroad. Her exports are chiefly products of her industry, not of her agriculture. She imports the raw material and exports the manufactured article, and her trade adds more to her land than it takes from it: that is, by it more of tli products of the soil, which by return-I return-I ing enriches it, are consumed at home, than she exports. Ireland, however, by the same system, is relatively impoverished, im-poverished, for her manufacture's are comparatively few, her trade is -limited and the mass of her population are employed in' agriculture, a 'large portion of the products of which is consumed, not at home, but export -l and consumed out of the kingdom. Hence the stern necessity which forces so large a proportion of her' sons and daughters to emigrate, although sie could, under a different rystem e-.ip'ly support a population twice as large as the highest number to which her population has as yet ever risen. Tht? emigration weakens Irelind, regarded as a separate kingdom, nut it enrich?? the empire, because the labor of those who emigrate is employed, directly or ii. directly, in cultivating the yet unexhausted un-exhausted lands of the Union or of the Biit;sh colonies, and more advantage-ou:-.ly to British trade thin :t would or i.ould be in Ireland." "But in a country like yours," resumed re-sumed De Bonneville, "free trade is the worst policy possible, especially since you have reached that state in which you can, with . a little effort, make your industry suffice for yourselves. your-selves. It keeps you dependent on foreign for-eign nations for the products of skilled labor, exhausts your capital to pay for foreign 'luxuries, which do and can yield no return of capital, and deprives yo1 of the profits of industrial labor. You have little occasion to import the raw material, for you produce or may produce it for yourselves, and, therefore, there-fore, may save yourselves the profits of both industry and agriculture. Under free trade you apply your labor to agriculture, ag-riculture, not to obtain the means of sustaining a larger population, but to obtain the means of carrying on a larger trade. The products of your agriculture ag-riculture go not to feed your people, and to increase your capital, but to support your commerce and to purchase pur-chase the products of foreign industry, which add nothing to your national wealth or strength, but really lessen both. "Trade enriches a nation," concluded De Bonneville, "when its exports derive de-rive their chief value from labor and skill; it impoverishes a nation when they derive their chief value from the land, for then it exhausts the land, enhances en-hances the price of living, and the country is able to sustain relatively only a smaller population. The gold taken from the mines of California and exported to England or France to pay for luxuries consumed is simply so much extracted from the capital of the nation, and, under the economical point Qf view, thrown.. away. The exchange of the produce of the land for foreign luxuries necessarily diminishes instead of adding to the national capital... You should, therefore, aim to supply your own markets With the manufactured article, and to restrict your foreign trade to the products of your industry, indus-try, and the importation of such articles ar-ticles needed for your industry, as you do not or cannot produce at home. That is, you should study to support your foreign exchanges with the products prod-ucts of industry, not, as now, with the products the chief value of which is derived from ; the land, for then, in relation to foreign nations, you will live within your income and hot draw-on, draw-on, your capital. In this, way you will make your own industry profitable, add to your national capital and have the means of sustaining a population of millions, where now you can sustain only thousands, as may be seen, even under the disadvantages of the present system of trade, by contrasting your free states with your slavehqlding states. You do not seem as yet to have really escaped from your colonial dependence de-pendence on the mother country; you I follow her as a flock of sheep follow I the bell-wether. When she adopted the protective policy, you adopted the pro tective policy; when she adopts free trade, you adopt free trade, and in either case without stopping a moment to inquire whether the same policy operates op-erates alike in the two countries, or whether the policy beneficial to the one may not be ruinous to the other. The mercantile interest and that of the owners of slave labor are no doubt identical with the interest of England and demand free trade, but they are at war with the true interest and glory of the American people as. an independent inde-pendent -nation and a first-class civilized civil-ized power. The mercantile interest depends more on the slaveholding in-I in-I terest than on any other one interest in the country, and the slaveholding interest is dependent almost entirely on free trade, especially with Great Britain. Here is your grand difficulty. The antagonism between these interests inter-ests on the one hand and those of the American nationv regarded as a whole, on the other, is so deep, so radical, that I see not how you caa easily reconcile it. It seems to me the United States must either fail to take their proper rank in the scale of nations, and gradually grad-ually lapse into a semi-barbaric state, or else the slave interest must be gradually grad-ually suppressed and finally extinguished. extin-guished. I see no other alternative, unless the slaveholding states secede or be driven from the Union, and form a slaveholding and planting republic by themselves, and such is the conclusion conclu-sion to which your ablest and : most sharp sighted statesmen, especially of the south, are rapidly coming. This much is evident, the slave interest, as long as it exists, must dictate the policy of the Union or be ruined. It I must govern, or be not at all, and the ! non-slaveholding states will not submit sub-mit much longer to its government. feel that they are strong enough to have their own way." "The fact of antagonism between the two sections of the Union," said O'FIan-agan, O'FIan-agan, "cannot be denied, and if it continues, con-tinues, and grows as it has done for the last few years, it must, of course, cause a dissolution of the Union. But it is rather an antagonism of sentiment than of interest, and with reasonable concessions on each side to the prejudices preju-dices of the other would cease to exist. Even on M. de Bonneville's own principles, prin-ciples, there is no reason why the slave-holding slave-holding interest should be singled out as an especial object of attack. The farming interest seeks a foreign market mar-ket as well as the planting interest. Wheat, Indian corn, beef, pork, wool, butter and cheese are produced with a view to foreign trade, no less than cotton, cot-ton, rice and tobacco. Ohio. Illinois and Wisconsin are as dependent on free trade as South Carolina. Alabama I cr Mississippi. The agriculture inter-! inter-! est of free labor is then identical with i the agriculture interest of slave labor." i "The antagonism of sentiment. Mr. ! O'Flanagan admits," remarked Diefen-fach, Diefen-fach, "originates in the real and rad-i rad-i ical antagonism of interest between the i north and the south. You have adopt- ed two mutually hostile systems, nei-; nei-; titer of which can develop itself with-j with-j out displacing the other. The free j labor system will not tolerate the slave system, and the slave labor system . cannot tolerate the free labor system. I :i'hey can co-exist in a state only by ' the subjection of the one to the other. This, I take it, is the simple naked fact. Either the one system or the other must be in the ascendency, and dictate the policy of the government, or your Union is no real union, and you are, whatever your pretenses, two distinct and hostile peoples. You are now in the crisis of the struggle between these two antagonistic systems. Hitherto you have proceeded in comparative harmony, har-mony, for ever since the election of Mr. Jefferson the slave system has for the most part of the time been suffered to govern the country. It has done so. as Mr. Hammond, the senator from South Carolina, boasted in his place in the senate, for the last sixty years. But the interest of free labor, so depressed de-pressed in all the slave states, whera it dares not even complain, seeems now resolved on asserting its independence and its supremacy.. Mr. Seward ha?t well said that it makes ho difference whether you regard the action of congress con-gress on the Kansas imbroglio as the last defeat or as the first victory of the free state party: no new slave state can be admitted into the Union. Free labor, la-bor, it seems to me, is destined to no more defeats. What, then, will the slave interest do? Submit it cannot, for it must rule the government or be ruined. Slavery is so interwoven with the habits and manners, the whole sd-ciaTand sd-ciaTand private life of the south, that emancipation is out of the question, and, moreover, is not at present desirable desira-ble for the mass of the slaves themselves; them-selves; and under a government that consults the interests of free labor alone, slavery becomes ruinous to the masters. The contest for ascendency has ccme. and the battle cannot any longer be evaded by declamations, either against the abolitionists of the north, or the so-called 'fire-eaters' of the south. These extremists, as you call them, are extremists only because they better represent the real tendencies tenden-cies of their respective parties than the moderate, via-media, or so-called Union men. I see no alternative but a secession seces-sion of the slave states from the Union. They are separated already from the Union in feeling, in interest, and in policy, and a union against these cannot can-not much longer be maintained even in appearance." "The dissolution of the Union is" an event," remarked Father John, "that I have never allowed myself to contem- Olatf pven a ro::i hi a T Irnntv Tin right that a state has in or out of the constitution to secede, for it cannot secede without a breach of faith certainly cer-tainly not, unless it has the formal consent con-sent of the other states, parties to the Union. That consent will never be obtained. ob-tained. Only the weaker and defeated party win ever dream of seceding, and being the weaker, it will not be suffered suf-fered by the stronger to secede. Threats of secession may be thrown out to stay the encroachments, or assumed encroachments, en-croachments, of the ruling interest, but I do not think there is a state in the Union that would not shrink from the , difficulties of carrying them into ef- . feet. There are only about three hun- , died and fifty thousand owners of slave property in the Union; at least such , is the statement made: and it is certain cer-tain that but a small minority of the ' inhabitants of the slave states are really owners of slaves. The non- ' slaveholding population of the slave- '( holding states have even less Interest than the free population of the north in Sustaining slavery. The slaveholders slavehold-ers constitute an aristocracy, a very respectable aristocracy, if you will: high spirited, generous( hospitable, and who are loved the more the better they are known, but still an aristocracy, which crushes the hopes and aspirations aspira-tions of the poor laboring white population popu-lation of the slave states. This free white population has really no sympathy sym-pathy with slavery, for it reduces them to a condition, below that of the free peasantry in any of the states of Europe. Eu-rope. These, when assured of the support sup-port and sympathy- of the free states, will hardly vote or fight for secession, when secession has for its object the I maintenance oi slavery, wnicn crusnes them; and it is possible that every seceding se-ceding state would find a powerful enemy in its own bosom. Secession cannot be effected peaceably, and I do not believe it can be by force, or against the force that would inevitably be brought to bear against it, espec- I ially as the army and navy would re- g main under the command of the federal fed-eral government. I regret that threats I of secession should be thrown out, or hopes of it indulged, but as yet I do not regard it as probable, hardly as pos- sible. "Then, "-proceeded Father John, "I do ; not agree with my friends as to the relative weakness of the slave system. The slave states furnish not only the best market for a portion of our importations, im-portations, but also the best market for our domestic manufactures, and thus greatly soften the hostility even I of northern industry. Their productions produc-tions supply the larger portion of the exchange for imported luxuries con- , sumed to a far greater extent in the free than in the slave states. The free trade policy of the government has, as Mr. O'Flanagan has suggested, turned ' the attention of the great farming states of the center and the west to producing for a foreign market, and identified their interests, for the present at least, with the interests of the slave-holding slave-holding states. All your railroads, canals, ca-nals, or artificial means of communication communi-cation are constructed with a view to foreign as well as home trade, and are designed to connect the seaboard with the interior. Slavery is directly or in- directly interwoven with the interests J of the whole country, and its abolition i would derange the business and social K relations of the free states hardly less S; than of the slave states themselves. S Boston. New York and Philadelphia are hardly, if any, less interested in : sustaining slavery than Charleston, Savannah, Mobile or New Orleans. The ruling classes in the free states, however much they may for political reasons favor free-soilism, as it is m called, are really interested in sustain- j: ing slavery and will support no legis- f. lative measure seriously hostile to it. j I .think, . therefore, that the slave sys- ii tern is in no immediate danger, that it ; is quite able to protect itself, and that the free labor system is very far as yet from its first victory, or its last : defeat." f (To be Continued.) ' |
