ILL-STARRED is that people whose rulers, having won power by ministering to the worst and most dangerous passions, find themselves goaded ever by the fatal necessity of pandering afresh to the evil spirits they have aroused and stimulated. Such a people must find in every decisive manifestation of the power of their authorities new reasons to deplore that criminal ambition which seeks exalted station regardless of principle or public good, and that popular infatuation which leads nations to put their trust in those who thus play upon their weaknesses, at a fearful cost to their morals, their true dignity, their vital and lasting in

terests.

Take the present Oregon Controversy, for example. The Convention which nominated Mr. Polk for President, saw fit, formally, to resolve that "our right to the whole of Oregon is clear and unquestionable," and that "the re-occupation" of that territory, withthe re-annexation of Texas, is a great American question, &c., &c. The query at once suggests itself-If these be great national questions, why belittle them to mere party footballs? Why thrust them into the arena of a Presidential controversy? Nothing had been said regarding Oregon by the antagonist convention, nor by the party therein represented, at any time; it had been left, where it should have been ever left, to the constituted authorities of the land, speaking and acting in the name of the whole people. Yet a party convention seizes upon this "great American question," with the sordid intent of making votes out of it, utterly reckless of the mischiefs thence to flow. The candidate nominated by this convention is elected President by this and kindred devices, and comes into power virtually pledged to give effect to the views formally set forth by the body to which he owed his elevation. He enters upon his official duties with a manifesto in which this subject of national controversy, of protracted and anxious negotiation, is treated as nearly as possible in the spirit of the Baltimore resolution. His language is regarded by the rival claimant of the disputed territory as a bravado, a menace, and is responded to accordingly, giving rise to great and deplorable irrita

tion on both sides. Under these circumstances the negotiation for a settlement of the difference is resumed; but under what serious disadvantages on our part! Our President is embarrassed, hampered by the party resolution aforesaid, in a matter entirely transcending party; and he stands before the world in the attitude of the constrained advocate of a foregone conclusion-maintaining our right to the disputed territory in accordance with a pledge made for him before he came into office, and in order to pave the way for his elevation. Most unfortunate is this position for him, for our country, and for a just appreciation of the strength of our claim by an impartial world.

But when he first comes to act decisively on this subject, he throws his fetters overboard, and offers to compromise by surrendering our claim to nearly half the territory we call Oregon, on condition that the other half is in like manner relinquished to us by our rival claimant. Here, a virtual and important promise, made to secure his election, is plainly repudiated. The voters, whom the Baltimore resolution was adopted to influence, understood it as a pledge to them that, if Mr. Polk would be elected, he would insist on our claim to the whole of Oregon without abatement in any case, and should proceed to enforce that claim to its utmost extent. But here, at the outset, he makes an offer to be satisfied with but little more than half, where he was pledged to exact all. How natural is the inference which will be drawn on the other side, that he had been staggered by the force of the British claim, and compelled in conscience to defer to it. How easy the presumption that, where a President so situated could begin by proffering so much, justice would give still more! Such are the evils resulting to the country from the unworthy juggle performed at Baltimore for the sake of catching votes.

But we were intending to speak more directly of the influences exerted upon the business and industry of the country by the opening of the Executive budget at the commencement of the present session of Congress. How significant are the facts that stocks began to tremble on the approach of the first of December,

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and that the Message and the Treasury Report have sufficed to signalize the month of their appearance as one of panic and appalling depression. "But who cares for stocks?" queries a staunch Bentonian; let them totter and tumble as they will; the country cares nothing for the losses or gains of stock-jobbers. True enough; but who shall say that only or mainly brokers, or even capitalists, are interested in the firmness of public securities? As well say, "Who cares for the rise or fall of the mercury in the barometer? we only want good weather outside of it." It is because the value and convertibility of every man's property. or labor is, to a great extent, governed by the influences which regulate the prices of stocks, that these are of vital conse. quence to all. The day-laborer in his humble cabin, whose immediate concern is with the abundance of work and the relative or absolute rate of compensation it will command, has an interest alike with the merchant, the banker, the capitalist, in the firmness and buoyancy of the stock-market. When the faith of States is scrupulously maintained and implicitly relied on, when shares in railroad and canal companies bear good prices, evince an upward tendency, and generally command fair dividends, then new works of like character and promise are freely undertaken and vigorously prosecuted, giving ample employment to labor, not merely on the lines of public works, but in every foundry, forge, factory and workshop throughout the land. Then the farmer's produce finds a ready and remunerating market; lands, houses, mill-sites, &c., command ready money; the merchant finds a brisk demand for his goods, and pay generally takes the place too commonly usurped by promise. There is no man or woman in the community, who lives by industry, or any useful, laudable business, whose interest is not promoted by the buoyancy of the share market and the firmness of public securities.

What, then, must be the intrinsic character of an ascendancy which is felt by the national industry only as a blight, a canker, a sirocco? What must be the verdict of the impartial and discerning on the merits of those measures at the bare proposition whereof enterprise is arrested, currency is contracted, credit falters, and the vast fabric of business feels, through all its over-spreading, intricate ramifications, the throes of ap

proaching convulsion? "If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be in the dry?" If the naked fact, that a Loco-Foco Congress is about to assemble causes general anxiety and apprehension, and these change to paralysis and calamity when that Congress has assembled and been addressed by the President and his chief constitutional advisers as to the great public interests demanding their attention, what may be rationally expected to result from those measures when carried fully into effect?

And it is worthy of note that, while so many of the elements of national wellbeing are disquieted and endangered by the mere opening of the Executive portfolio, none have received or been induced to hope for any resulting benefit. Neither the cotton nor any other agricultural interest has experienced any elation consequent on the depression of those interests assailed or undermined by the Executive. On the contrary, cotton has fallen from its previous low estate, hangs heavily on the hands of holders, in the face of a general conviction that the Protective features of our Tariff are to be subverted at the present session and Free Trade established as the policy of the country for four years at least. Where stand the advocates of the forty-bale theory in view of these facts? Why do not some of the mercantile disciples of McCulloch and McDuffie rush into the market and secure immense fortunes by the anticipated rise of cotton when Free Trade shall be proclaimed the law of the land? Alas for the planter! the advocacy of this theory is restricted to commercial dictionaries and Congressional speeches; it makes not its way to the transactions of the exchange and the market, where faith is evinced by solid works.

It is not our purpose to criticise in detail the President's Message and the accompanying Treasury Report. Rather would we bestow some brief attention on their spirit and elemental philosophy. Judicious patriots will have already remarked with surprise and sorrow that the President, in asserting our really strong claim to at least the major and better part of Oregon, sees fit to resort to language far better calculated to irritate and repel than to soften and convince the adverse claimant, and to make up an issue, so far as possible, not merely with Great Britain, but with all Europe. There was no necessity for this-there are very great and obvious peril and mischief in

it. When President Monroe gave to the world his memorable declaration against farther European colonization and subjugation of this continent, he did so in practical resistance to a meditated, apprehended coalition of the great despotisms of Europe to subvert the independence of our sister republics of South America. Such a coalition involved principles of deadly and imminent hostility to our own liberties-to our very existence as an independent people. As such, our government very properly regarded and treated it. But very different are the circumstances under which Mr. Polk now resorts to similar declarations, with reference to the Oregon Controversy. The purpose of this fulmination is very well understood here-it is intended to make personal and party capital by a vain show of bearding the power of banded Europe. But abroad this will not be understood. It will there be interpreted as a clear admission that our claim to Oregon cannot be supported on the established principles of international law, but must be bolstered up by the arbitrary interpolation of canons unknown to Grotius or Vattel. This, with the special rebuff dealt to France, is calculated to preclude all arbitration by making the whole world our opponents, and to unite against us the convictions and the sympathies of civilized mankind. Can any one imagine a substantial and statesman-like reason for this wanton provocation of hostility?

With regard to our domestic policy, the inculcations of the President and his Secretary may be characterized in few words. Their fundamental notion-their all-pervading, all-perverting error-is the assumption of an Antagonism of Interests between the different classes composing the American Commonwealth. To their mole-eyed vision, the planter and the manufacturer, the capitalist and the workman, stand to each other in the relation of envious rivals, if not open enemies, and any public policy calculated to promote the prosperity of the one can do it only at the expense of another, or of all others.

Mr. Polk, in his Message, so far as relates to the Tariff, deals as much as possible in windy generalities, in plausible common-places, intended to stab the policy of Protection by inuendo and implication, without any more direct or palpable manifestation of his entire implacable hostility thereto. The following paragraph is a fair sample of what

he says on the subject, and embodies the essence of his doctrine, viz:

"The terms, 'protection to domestic industry' are of popular import; but they should apply under a just system to all the various branches of industry in our country. The farmer or planter who toils yearly in his fields, is engaged in 'domestic industry,' and is as much entitled to have his labor 'protected' as the manufacturer, the man of commerce, the navigator, or the mechanic, who are engaged also in domestic industry' in their different pursuits. The joint labors of all these classes constitute the aggregate of the 'domestic industry' of the nation, and they are equally entitled to the nation's 'protection.' No one of them can justly claim to be the exclusive recipients of protection,' which can only be afforded by increasing burdens on the domestic industry' of the others."

The doctrine here insinuated, which its author had not the moral courage plainly to assert, is this: "Protection to domestic industry,' is a popular claptrap, but an utter delusion-a palpable fallacy. You cannot possibly foster and encourage any branch of industry without thereby burthening and injuring, to at least an equal extent, some or all other branches of Production."-Not a very novel doctrine, certainly, to those who are familiar with the writings of Say, M'Culloch, &c., wherein it is much more honestly stated, and quite as plausibly maintained. The blow aimed at the Protective Policy is vital; it does not threaten some particular form or degree of Protection-it denies the possibility of making a Tariff protective and at the same time beneficial and just. The formidable parade of allegations of defective details, unequal protection, &c., &c., by the President and his Secretary, are but masked batteries intended but to cover the main attack, which is directed against any Protective Tariff.

The

equal protection" approved by Polk in his famous letter to Kane of Pennsylvania, means just exactly no protection to any, as the Whigs predicted before the Election it would be found to mean, should its author be chosen President. Such wholesale assertions as the following, though on their face expressing only hostility to particular features of the Tariff, do, in truth, mean hostility to any Protective Tariff whatever; since none could be framed, to which such objections might not be urged with a show of

"If it be true that, when a duty of forty per cent. is imposed by our Tariff, the foreign producer first deducts the duty from the previous price on the sale to our merchant, it must be equally true with a duty of one hundred per cent., which is exactly equal to the previous price, and, when deducted, would reduce the price to nothing."

The reader is not likely to be impressed with the originality of this sparkle of treasury wit; he has doubtless encountered the same quip in Joe Miller, and, if learned, may very possibly trace it back through the lapse of centuries to Hierocles, if not farther. Its most familiar embodiment is something like this: A phlegmatic, practical, plodding farmer is importuned by some keen dealer to buy a newly-patented stove which, employed in the place of his old-fashioned fireplace, will (he is assured) save half the wood. Grump stops and ponders a minute, and his dull eye at length beams with the kindling of an idea-he has caught the tail of a witticism, and is about to overwhelm with it the spruce commender of stoves. Hark! he opens his mouth and utters with an irrepressible grin of ample breadth at his own waggery: "Then why not buy two stoves and save all the wood?" Sure enough-why not? Secretary Walker endorses the logic, and exalts the fugitive quip to the gravity of an official syllogism. If one stove would save half the wood consumed by a six-foot fire place, two must save the whole, or there is no soundness in Treasury logic. If a fabricator of any article would take off forty per cent. of his old price rather than be crowded out of an extensive and once lucrative market, then it follows that he would furnish it for nothing rather than lose this division of his customers-follows Secretary Walker, you will understand, good reader!-we should not care to father the Secretary's logic, even though tempted by the chance of obtaining therewith the credit of his smart

ness.

Let us pass to a graver exhibition of the Secretary's statesmanship and logic:

"A Protective Tariff is a question regarding the enhancement of the profits of capital. That is its object, and not to augment the wages of labor, which would reduce those profits. It is a question of per centage, and is to decide whether money invested in our manufactures shall, by special legislation, yield a profit of ten, twenty or thirty per cent., or whether it shall remain satis

fied with a dividend equal to that accruing from the same capital, when invested in agriculture, commerce, or navigation."

Hon. Secretary in his first sentence above We think we take the meaning of the quoted, though no meaning at all is grammatically involved in its terms. He aimed to say that protective duties benefit only the capitalists who are induced by them to embark in manufactures, and that to these are secured annual profits of ten to thirty per cent., so long as the protection endures. Now let us suppose there were some glimmering of truth in this, and see how it must work out: A Protective Tariff, we will say, is enacted, which renders morally certain the return of twenty per cent. annually to those who shall invest the requisite capital in manufacturing broadcloths, prints, plain cottons, or something else--no matter what. A few embark in the business and realize such profits. But are these singular in their preferences of twenty per cent. dividends to three or five per cent.? Are there no others who have no objection to bettering their fortunes? Will not the fact that this business is lucrative at once attract to it hundreds in every part of the country? There is and can be no concealment of the factsthere are in every large city men in abundance who will tell you within a fraction the cost of making each particular fabric, and when it is selling at a profit, when at a loss. Immediately hundreds are attracted to this inviting field of enterprise; new mills are erected, giving employment to labor in a hundred different capacities; new machinery is set in motion, new goods are turned out, in large and still increasing quantities. And this will go on, gathering momentum incessantly, until the market is overstocked and prices fall to (or below) the cost of production. Some may thus be driven out of the business, but ultimately prices will settle, by a law resistless as gravitation, at that point where the profits of this will average the same as in other investments. Every business man knows this is so-every reasoning man will see that it must be so. Make hundred or five hundred per cent., and the duty on any article five, fifty, one the price of that article will very soon be regulated by the cost of producing it, and not at all by the amount of the duty. There will be occasional oscillations, but this is the general, enduring law. All the Price Currents ever printed confirm