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of comfort, a paradise of delight, the envy of the world. These bright visions and golden hopes, however, have not yet been realized. America has not become "the land of which angels might dream," as John Bright has described it. It is very far from that at present, and likely to be for some time to come.

WHY AND WHEREFORE.

WE have noticed some causes in a preceding chapter as to the above which has produced such an overcast in our American sky, and caused the hurricane storms of God's wrath to sweep across our land and produce scenes of lamentation, mourning, and woe, in the contemplation of which the head turns. sick, and the heart faint. When we come to examine our history as a people, we do not wonder that the hand-writing should appear on the walls against us, or that the voice of God should thunder in the ears of Southerns or Northerns, of each and all, "ye are weighed in the balances, and found wanting."

ABANDONMENT OF THE CHARTERS OF FREEDOM.

THE Constitution and Declaration of Independence, to which the Fathers and Founders of our government had so solemnly pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honour to maintain, and which they had

constituted the palladium or citadel of human rights, were soon abandoned and treated as obsolete, or made the instruments of treachery, trickery, and fraud. What was meant for good has resulted in unmitigated evil. Throwing aside the parchments, the administrators of the government proclaimed themselves to be the law, or rather by a tremendous feat of jugglery used the instruments of justice to foster the theory of protection and the slave-holding interest, that they might oppress each other and multiply the victims of their cruelty instead of diminishing them. Speaking with the voice of a Jacob, they stretched out the hands of an Esau. Proclaiming their belief in the "preternatural philosophy" of the Union for the benefit of the world, like the Davenports, they slipped the constitutional ropes which were to bind them fast, that they might use them for purposes of fraud.

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One of the breaches made in the fundamental law of the Union was created by the adoption of the theory of protection. Franklin was one of the first to plant the noxious weed. In a letter written from England in 1771, he wrote as follows:Every manufacturer encouraged in our country makes part of a market for provisions within ourselves, and saves so much money to the country as must otherwise be exported to pay for the manufactures he supplies. Here in England it is well known and understood that wherever a manufactory is established which employs a number of hands, it

raises the value of lands in the neighbouring country all around it, partly by the greater demand near at hand for the produce of the land, and partly from the plenty of money drawn by the manufacturers to that part of the country. It seems, therefore, the interest of all our farmers and owners of lands, to encourage our young manufactures in preference to foreign ones imported among us from foreign countries."

Franklin's desideratum, therefore, was to bring the manufacturer and agriculturist side by side-to be the entire producers and consumers; a world within themselves, independent of the rest of mankind.

These views were adopted by Washington and Jefferson, and took deep root in all the Northern States. In a series of articles published in the New York Tribune, in 1854, on the "North and South," we find the following paragraph :-" The vast majority of the people north of Mason and Dixon's line have always believed with Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, that protection tended to increase the value of labour and land, and to enrich both labourer and land-owner. Whether right or wrong in this, the votes of their representatives have on all occasions proved that the belief existed, and it does certainly exist to so great an extent, that were a vote now to be taken on the question, whether the question should be maintained or abandoned, apart from all other issues,

an overwhelming majority would be found favourable to its maintenance. Such being their belief, it would seem to be right and proper that they should be enabled to act in accordance with it, and yet, although almost thrice as numerous as the whites of the slave states, they have rarely been allowed to exercise the slightest influence upon the action of government in reference to this most important subject." The reader, therefore, will do well to weigh the following facts.

"The vast majority north of Mason and Dixon's line have always believed in protection." North of the above line they are protectionists. South, freetraders. Their interests, therefore, are as wide as

the poles asunder.

"The votes of Northern representatives on all occasions proved the belief of this."

In 1824 the tariff of that year was passed with

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Northern States for protection, 88 Against it,
Southern do.,

19

For protection, 107

Do.

In 1828 the vote was as follows:

Northern States for protection, 88 Against it,
Southern do.,

19

For, 105

Do.,

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THE INFLUENCE OF HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS PRO AND CON ON THE NORTH.

WHEN the tariff was high it was associated with glorious days in the opinion of the Northerns. "Public debts were paid off, emigration promoted, mills and furnaces built, the prosperity of the country was raised to a higher point than ever before known, whilst Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Canadas were ready to allay themselves in free gift with the North." But when the influence of the Southern belief in free trade was predominant in 1836, '40, '48 and '52, the writer in the articles referred to says:-"bankruptcy and ruin, rarely exceeded in any country, was the consequence; the government became burdened with debt, its agents knocked at the doors of all the banking houses of London and Paris, Hamburg and Amsterdam, for a loan at six per cent in vain; the losses of the people in those awful days we need scarcely state; mills and furnaces were everywhere closed; labourers were reduced to the weakness, ignorance, and stagnation of bondage, and for the first time was heard in the streets of our cities the cry of sober, industrious, orderly men, 'give me work, only give me work; make your own terms--myself and family have nothing to eat."

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Such being their belief it would seem to be right and proper that the Northerns," says the writer

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