THE AMERICAN REVIEW. No. LXXXIII. FOR NOVEMBER, 1851. POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITIES. "To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the tract it has passed."-COLERIDGE. A HISTORY of modern political questions, | ration of this stupendous measure for the if faithfully executed,-a true account being given of the opponents and the defenders of the measures, and, if carried, their results whether confirming or refuting their advocates, by the undeniable facts of their operation,—would be the most interesting and important of all political books. Such a book, being written up to this present November, A.D. 1851,would, among its complicated details, contain no instance of a measure so palpably refuting, by the facts of its actual operation, the arguments and predictions of its advocates, as the tariff of 1846. It happened, by the unfortunate contrivance of the Fates, that the powerful party which executed with such heroic resolution this fearful experiment upon a prosperous country, had a leader and spokesman who, lacking the modesty which usually accompanies such greatness, and the discretion which his wisdom and station naturally demanded, proclaimed to the world, in the samne manner that a veritable quack doctor would employ, the inevitable effects of his nostrum upon the body politic; tempting his victims through their imaginations and their hopes, by holding up before them the most dazzling results. The famous reports of Mr. Secretary Walker are known unto all men, and are most lamentable instances of the folly of human predictions. In less than five years from the inaugu VOL. VIII. NO. V. NEW SERIES. extension of our trade and commerce, with no impediment whatever thrown in the way of its operation, but, on the contrary, two most unprecedented, uncalculated, and unlooked for helps to its operation (what "aids" they would have been to Mr. Walker's "reflections," could he also have foreseen them!)—a famine in Europe following an unprecedented crop in these States, and the discovery of an inexhaustible gold field, the following is the result. We were to export, according to Mr. Walker It will be observed that the whole three | turers, merchants or farmers. We have years of actual results do not equal Mr. done this that we may have at least one Walker's estimate for one year by nearly point, the emergency of which will be diseighty-eight millions of dollars! puted by no protectionist, whether he be Whig or "Democrat." Now, whilst the ponderous evil we have been illustrating, and others that we may touch in the pro How utterly absurd in the plain light of the facts does all this appear! With what confusion should it cover the advocates of a system demonstrated to be so palpably fal-gress of this article, traceable directly to lacious! But no; the party that applauded this report to the echo, and acted upon its suggestions, abate not one jot of their pernicious theory; but, in spite of the demonstration, and in spite of the disasters and the embarrassment they have brought upon the country, mean again to fight for the supremacy, in order to maintain the tyranny of so fatal a system. But let us suppress our indignation, and pursue the results of this policy up to the present time. What are they? In brief this: that instead of an excess of exports, we have imports; instead of selling, we have been buying. political causes, are so pressing, there is an unaccountable apathy of political action, organization and discussion, among those upon whom the nation depends for the rectification of those evils-the Whig party, its press and its statesmen. The enemy is looking with satisfaction upon this state of things, for in this apathy is his certain triumph. He depends more upon inaction than action. The nation aroused is always and ever his certain discomfiture. Politics in this country is not in its nature an amateur science for the gratification of the tastes or ambitions of the few, that may be taken up or laid down as those tastes The exports of our own productions for wax or wane, or those ambitions die or the present fiscal year will amount to about receive other directions; but is the practical one hundred and sixty-four millions of dol- duty of every man in this free community. lars, whilst the imports reach about two He that is indifferent and does not take hundred and twenty millions; leaving a pains to form definite opinions upon quesbalance against us of fifty-six millions of tions of public policy, and perform those dollars. Something more than one half of acts necessary to give practical efficiency to this appears to have been paid for in specie, his sentiments, is willing to be the slave of and the rest has yet to be paid in the same other men's opinions, and submit himself way, or by anticipating our future export and his affairs to theories that he may deresources, and so merely postponing the spise, and instruments whom he detests; evening of the evil day. And now, as the and is consequently no good citizen, no natural result, our manufacturers and mer-worthy member of a State, the theory of chants are failing in all directions, our banks which is, the government of all over all. No are embarrassed, and our producers find one can say that he is not responsible for melting, or in danger of melting out of what is done because he takes no part in their hands, the profits so hardly won during politics. His negative action has positive these years of competition with foreign rivals. We are, in short, having enacted over again the frightful results of former experiments of the same kind. Thus nature and facts are too strong for us, and we must ever be retracing our steps if we at-men. These are truths that no one distempt to follow the theories that other nations concoct for us from other circumstances and other principles than our own. effects. If evil measures are perpetrated and evil men put into power, he has been at least half as efficient an agent in the work as any one who by his political action has carried those measures and elected those putes, that there are in fact no arguments against; and yet how many act contrary to until some great emergency compels them to regard them. We have thus endeavored to bring before the minds of our readers, in the most suc- When the treasures of the nation-the cinct, matter-of-fact, and palpable manner, means by which it carries on its beneficent one of the subjects dividing the political objects of blessing and elevating humanity, parties that appeal to the "business," if not that should be regarded as sacred as the to the "bosoms," of all men, politicians or offering in the temple-are found to be not politicians, rich and poor, manufac-in the hands of thieves and robbers; when they are practically being regarded as the spoils of the political victors, then are these principles for which we are appealing acted upon; the vampires, though unsatiated, are flung from their prey. But the evil cannot be undone, and we must go back and heal the mischief that our own falseness to duty has permitted. Again, when the nation is deliberately precipitated into an unjust and unnecessary war, and the armies sacred to freedom and the rights of all men, are used to violate our own 1846 has diminished, and it will continue to diminish, the number of artificers and manufacturers; for the very reason, that, as Mr. Walker states, at lower duties it produces an increased revenue, by supplanting articles made at home with similar importations from abroad. "An appeal to some statistics of past years may not be out of place here, and we shall refer to them with a view to show the results of extraordinary importations beyond the power of the country to pay for. "We commence with 1815, when, according to a table prepared by Mr. Walker accompanying his Report of December 3d, 1845, we consumed of foreign merchandise $106,457,924. In 1816, according to the same table, we consumed of imported goods $129,964,444. "Those who are old enough must remember the disastrous effects of these excessive importations, which were not fully realized till 1819, when, among other evidences of the distressed condition of the country, a committee appointed by the Legislature of Pennsylvania reported as follows: that there were ruinous sacrifices of landed property at sheriffs' sales, whereby in many cases lands and or a fourth part of their former value; thereby houses have been sold at less than a half, a third, depriving of their homes and the fruits of laborious years a vast number of industrious farmers, some of whom have been driven to seek in the uncultivated forests of the West that shelter of which they had been deprived in their native State. An almost entire cessation of the usual circulation of commodities, and a consequent stagnation of business, which is limited to the mere purchase and sale of the necessaries of life, and of such by the season. The overflowing of our prisons articles of consumption as are absolutely required with insolvent debtors, most of whom are confined for small sums, whereby the community loses a portion of its active labor, and is compelled to support families by charity who have thus been deprived of their protectors' first principles by subjugating foreign territories and their people to a sway not of their own choosing, thus sanctioning the principles upon which all tyrannies restthen do the men to whom we would appeal arise in their might, and, conscience stricken by their former supineness, emphasize their indignation and their power by placing in the seat of their recreant Executive the hero who, although laboring under the weight of a disdain for the purpose of his actions, did that only which man could do in the melancholy case, threw the shining mantle of military glory over the national crime. And now again, when the economic theories of a nation whose political yoke we once and for ever threw off, have been permitted to bind us to a commercial supremacy which we have not yet the means of resisting, draining from us the life-blood of our commerce, and the means of developing the immense latent riches of our lands, our mines, and our water-powers,—may we not with confidence again anticipate a rising which shall break those fetters that have more than once before been fastened upon us, until, galled to the quick, we could no longer bear it, but bounding from them in each case entered upon a career that, from its uniform prosperity, should have settled upon an impregnable basis the policy of the nation on this point for ever? Unquestiona-pension of specie payments which resulted, must ble as this truth is, people will in their eagerness for the future, and their absorption in the present, forget the past. That we may not appear to be without ample warrant for what we say, we will quote from our own records and predictions. In the number of this Review for March, 1847, will be found an article by Redwood Fisher, Esq., on a report of Mr. Secretary Walker, in which the following passages occur :— "Now, it is a fact well known that the tariff of 66 By the same table of Mr. Walker, we find the consumption of foreign merchandise, in 1835, was $129,391,247. In 1836, the consumption of the same goods amounted to the enormous sum of in consequence of the inflation of the currency, $168,233,675. These immense importations were consequent upon the removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United States, which prompted the loans made by the pet banks, as they were called. The memorable break-down, and the susbe fresh in the recollection of all who were in anywise conversant with the business affairs of that period. "In 1839, the same table tells us, we consumed $144,597,607, and the results were little less ruinous. In 1841, at the close of what was called the Compromise Act, we consumed $112,447,096. At that time the duties were so much reduced that the net revenue for the year was but $15,516,589, and the whole country groaned under the depression of home industry of every kind. "For the fifteen years previous to 1835, the con sumption of foreign imports had scarcely exceeded $80,000,000. During the periods of the large im portations, which caused the heavy consumption | a policy detrimental to the best material stated above-while the foreign goods were com- interests of the nation, those whose means ing in-the country wore the fallacious appear and enterprise and sagacity would be a blessance of prosperity, until the catastrophe arrived and the bubble burst. ing to the whole, operating in the direction "At each of these periods, as the importations of the true, may, and will, adapt themselves arrived when the amount of the duties were to this false system. Their conformity to it pouring into the treasury, as they did in all except 1841-the respective Secretaries might have con- may be less detrimental to them individually gratulated themselves as Mr. Walker now con- than the time they must waste in the unceasgratulates himself in this Report--with this dif- ing contest they are obliged to wage against ference, that the evil day may be somewhat longer it. And so in regard to the principle of propostponed in consequence of our increased ex-tection or "free-trade," (which we continue to ports, should they continue. But as certainly as such over-consumption of foreign manufactures produced the revulsions then experienced, so certainly, under like circumstances, will the same thing occur again, sooner or later, under the tariff of 1846." ment, which so many seem to rely upon against the permanency of any existing evils. use in illustration of the necessity of increas ing political vigilance on the part of all,) we may have the nation divided into tillers of the soil and merchant princes; the seaboard dotted with cities crowded with external Now would it not appear, under the light commerce; the former of these classes triof such facts as these; and predictions, the butary to the other, there being no compefulfillment of which we are at this present tition with them by miners and manufacturmoment suffering, that the laws of this ers; the wealth under the surface of the question ought to be considered as settled, ground remaining buried, and the giant from the most positive experience and in-powers of our water-courses wasting themduction? Would it not appear to be as selves unused. We have already had pracrational to go back to ancient alchemy, tical intimations of this result, a tremendous when the ignes fatui of theories presided counteracting influence to the pliancy of in the human mind over the laws of mat-circumstances, under our system of governter, now when induction has established principles, as base our policy upon a theory that has not yet one success in its repeated Leaving now our illustration, which we trials to point to in its support? How are have chosen from the pressing necessity of we, then, to account for the constant repeti- immediate action upon the subject of it, and tion of this absurd experiment? How but the space that at the present time it fills in by the pernicious recreancy of those who all men's thoughts, we will turn more defiknow better to their political duties? They nitely to our purpose of arousing, if possible, act as if mere political theorists must be to action those upon whom the nation depermitted to try their experiments; not pends in all emergencies to turn the political realizing, until they are compelled by their scales, or to hold firmly in their posts the deindividual suffering, that their common sense fenders of the right. We firmly believe that and experience are at all times as essential in favor of this principle of the Whig party, a political element in the affairs of this coun- and every other important one, there is and try as any writers of reports or actors on the has been always a majority of the people of political boards. Notwithstanding our pro- these United States. Now it happens that fessions, it is lamentable to think how long the orderly, quiet and thrifty-those who it must take to eradicate the traditional feel- eschew excitement, but allow themselves to ing that measures of Government are some- be too exclusively and selfishly occupied with thing to which we must submit, rather than their own affairs, and who thoughtlessly consomething which belongs to each one of us, tract a disgust to politics from the trickery and which we should direct. Let us here and dishonesty practised by those who make put in a warning to those who think it un-it a trade-are almost universally theoretical necessary to take the trouble of deciding these political questions in their own minds, and acting upon them. The power of adapting themselves to the circumstances which surround them which the people of this country possess is unexampled in the history of any nation. If the political theorists insist upon adherents to the Whig party. It would not be, we are sure, too much to say that of those who neglect to vote at the average of elections, nine in ten will be found to be Whigs enough, probably, to turn the scale in any question that has been fairly discussed between the two parties for the last twenty years. |