Every man in the country now knows that the "proposed plan" alluded to by Mr. Lawrence did go into operation simultaneously with the commencement of an expensive war and the enactment of the action of the specie clause of the Independent Treasury. First in its effects upon imports and exports, the results are as follows, showing the amount of foreign goods consumed in the United States, and of United States products exported, distinguishing the specie:

Now the results of these figures are, that under three years of the tariff of 1842, the excess of goods imported over the value exported was $12,333,802, and the excess of specie exported was $4,287,573. Under the two years of the present tariff, the excess of produce exported over goods imported has been $37,030,231, and the excess of specie imported has been $12,631,787. A more complete stultification of Mr. Lawrence's prophecies in relation to import and export could not well be imagined.

There has been no excess of importation, no derangement of the currenrency, no breaking of banks or failing of merchants, and the customs revenue averaged for two years of the present tariff $,27,752,467, against an average of $26,541,450 for the three years of the old tariff. As Mr. Lawrence chose to particularize breadstuffs, beef, and pork, we will take a table of the exports of those articles.

Mr. Lawrence was singularly unhappy in selecting the exact articles in which the trade has increased the most. Now, the difficulty was, that Mr. Lawrence prophesied from a false principle, one that under no circumstances could work correctly, and his motive in doing so was to disprove the positions taken by the Secretary of the Treasury, in the annual report, December, 1845. The result is, as we have seen, a complete stultification of the assertion of Mr. Lawrence, and a complete and most accurate fulfilment of the estimates of Mr. Walker, based on a sound principle. Those facts are gone abroad among the people, and the true principle will now be adhered to. We might reflect what would have been the state of the nation now, if, instead of Mr. Walker's just views, the sophistries of the Lawrence school had predominated. Instead of the successful termination of a foreign war without commercial disasters, leaving those United States stocks in active foreign demand at 1091⁄2, which Mr. Lawrence states could not be sold on favourable terms, we apprehend that we should have been involved in the vortex of commercial ruin which carried down so many "Merchant

Princes" of London. Mr. Barhydt elucidates the principle which we have here endeavoured to explain as follows:

"This balance of trade alarm is in truth mere fallacy. It adjusts itself between nations. Each can take no more than it can pay for, and each will send no more than it receives payment for. Then there is no such thing as balance between the amount of a nation's exports and its imports, save the literal balance that makes both equal.

Does the balance lie then between the amount of our productions and the amount of our consumption? No; the amount of these productions, whatever they may be, are consumed immediately at home, or mediately through what we received in exchange from other nations; and this is likewise made the literal equal balance. Then there is no such thing as a balance of trade-it is a chimera.

"But there is one thing that is tangible, and will satisfy our inquisitive search, if we do not neglect it. In seeking for the non est "balance of trade," we were brought to a stand at the point of consumption. We find every problem terminate upon that point. The consumption was found to be just equal to the production. To enrich a country, then, is to facilitate the greatest amount of production in proportion to its labor. We have already seen how well free trade is entitled to be considered a facility.

"If protectionists must need still insist upon having a "balance" of specie, they will learn by reference to the statistical facts, that for the last year of the high tariff of 1842. the balance was $8,203.281 against us; and for the year 1847, the first year of the reduced tariff, it was $12,103,984 in our favor. But transient must be the balance, as it should be. In the year 1848, a large exportation of specie reduced the excess.

"There is nothing more ridiculous than the oft repeated objection to free trade that low tariffs encourage importations to excess until we become largely indebted to foreign countries, and have to pay in specie, followed by over trading, derangement of currency, and all the stereotyped bugbears that furnish excuses for the loud calls made for restriction, wherewith to confine trade within the limits of good behavior. To "restrict importations by special acts of Congress!!" As if trade was a madman, that must be put into a straight jacket to force submission to certain conventional rules and regulations. Supposing that for a long term of years no such thing as a tariff existed, no person can possibly believe that trade would not regulate itself by the law of supply and demand; and that, because a tax did not exist to enhance the values of certain commodities, therefore, heedless of the limit of demand, individuals would be found so insane as periodically to ruin themselves, by furnishing to the community uncalled for supplies. On the contrary, it must be evident that the values and prices being less, more would be consumed; and that, as when prices were higher, the supply would be furnished to meet the demands of consumption, and no further.

"It has been, during the year 1848, alleged, that the low rate of duty permitted too much importation, causing a drain of specie, and that the exceedingly low prices at which goods were invoiced were breaking down our manufactures. Much that is here assumed of large imports as attributable to the low tariff, was caused by the unsettled state of Europe, destroying confidence there, and inducing people to hury their commodities out of the country, thrusting them upon the American market, in order to realize something from what, if retained at home, they were apprehensive would be totally wrecked. Under a much higher tariff, the same cause would have produced the same effect, though to a less extent. But the effect, caused, as it has been, principally by the low tariff, and partially by the disturbances abroad, has not been injurious to the interests of this country, inasmuch as the facts go to prove the truth of the position assumed herein, that the amount of imports must call forth an equivalent amount of exports in exchange; and if we have got a large supply of foreign products at low prices, we have paid for them in the products of home industry, and simply made what we should rejoice at a good trade. We learn, by reference to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1848, that during the fiscal year, excluding specie, foreign imports were consumed to the value of $127,490,012, and that the domestic exports,

exclusive of specie, exceeded that sum by $2.713.697. With reference to the charge of breaking down our manufactures, their flourishing condition belies the assertion. Under the actual circumstances, we see that no ruin" has been wrought, no injurious drain of specie has occurred. Evidence of the truth of this proposition exists in the fact, that on the first of January, 1848, the price of United States Treasury Notes in the New-York market was 99, and at this present writing, on the first of December, of the same year, they are selling for 108. Balances have simply been adjusted, and a profitable trade has flourished under the auspices of an approximation to free exchange."

It has been charged against free traders that they are opposed to manufactures. This is an invention of the enemy." The free traders are the only real friends of general independent industry. They advocate that development of skill and self-reliance on industry which makes every man master of his own labor, and no man the slave of another. The operation of free exchange upon manufactures is thus well expressed by Mr. Barhydt:

"In order to build up their manufacture at home, formerly the importation of silks was prohibited by England. In 1825 Huskisson got the prohibition taken off from foreign fabrics. In 1832 the manufacturers demanded an increase of duty on French silks; other parties called for a diminution. The latter prevailed. The cry of ruin was raised by manufacturers, that they could not compete with the superior and cheaper French article. They were told to study, to revise their designs, to strive in all ways to improve the quality of their fabrics. They did so. What is the result? England takes, it is true, twenty or thirty millions value in francs of silks from France, but she also exports about twenty millions, and France herself takes of English silks.

"The truth is, that in the various countries and the several sections of countries, diverse aptitudes and circumstances of the people, soil, climate, &c., fit them each for the production of some of the many kinds, quantities, and styles of wares that are adapted to the varied necessities, tastes, and abilities of the various consuming sections of society. This great diversity in the industrial population will always exist; some being more skilful, and attaining greater perfection in one branch than another, and so around the circle of the arts. And the varieties in climate, and soil, and facilities for production, will in like manner favor the prosecution of one branch of industry in one, and of another branch in some other country.

"The superiority of the woven fabrics of Southern Europe over those of England, in the richness and clearness of many of their colors,' says an English economist, is ascribed to the superior quality of the atmosphere, for which neither the knowledge of chemists, nor the skill of dyers, has been able to provide, in our hazy and damp climate, a complete equivalent.' And so it is around the circle of production, throughout the globe. In some regions, men require less aliment than in others, and production is thereby sustained at less cost. Under the incitement of the markets supplied by free exchange, each will be active in finding its own peculiar aptitudes, and will excel in those.

"Providence has thus created the various facilities of time, place, aptitude, &c.. in production, to match the same variety in consumption. If left to their own natural sagacity, each will find his vis a vis, to their own mutual advantage. These aptitudes, adaptations, and facilities, are all equally valuable gifts of Providence, with the improvements in the useful arts. The citizens of New-York would not now scorn the use of the steamer that floats them up to Albany in 9 hours, and revert to the Dutch s'oop that, under favorable circumstances, formerly made the voyage . in 9 days. In 1824 or '25, it was proposed to construct the Liverpool and Manchester railway, that should convey passengers at the rate of eight miles an hour. A tempest of opposition was aroused, got up on all sides by canal owners, towns that supposed their existence depended on the patronage of stage coaching, innkeepers, coach owners, carriers, and fox hunters. It was declared that the country would be deserted by all but radicals, engineers, and manufacturers. The road was completed in 1830, and instead of eight miles, the speed was twenty.

But no destruction followed. Money was plentiful, interest low; and before 1835, nearly a dozen other lines of railways had sprung into existence. Some 20 years since, when it was proposed to establish a printing press in Madrid, for multiplying, at a cheapened rate, copies of music, the copyists, whose business it was to write the sheets, raised so great an uproar, that the government abandoned the project. Even Spain would not hearken to that. complaint of a contracted monopoly at this day; and at some future day she will mount another step on the ladder of improvement, and adopt free trade.

"Perhaps certain of those English silk manufacturers were ruined; also, those North River sloop owners, captains, and sailors; yes, even before this, those Spanish copyists may have been crushed beneath the tread of Progressive Improvement; but if so, each and all of them have since risen from the earth, with new strength, sown with the blow that momentarily prostrated them, wherewith they have wrought with fourfold power and effect, for their own and the general gain. They have not suffered irretrievably, for the improvements in machinery are gradual in their introduction, and effect the changes of increased production, and the casting out of employment, in a gradation of ratio, that brings about, through increased cheapness augmenting consumption, the end of increased demand for labor, without the serious injury being felt by those copyists, &c., of being entirely and suddenly thrown out of employment. The increased productions soon swell into a sum beyond the amount of fixed capital invested in the machinery, and create a circulating capital. that employs a progressively increasing amount of labor in production. The machinery is then seen to be operating in increasing capital to induce production, as we have seen free importations do it."

It would far exceed our limits, to follow Mr. Barhydt through all the branches of the science, with which he shows himself so well acquainted; and we cannot but hope that his book will have a wide circulation, and promote the cause of that "free exchange," which is so eminently calculated to ensure to every man the object for which he labors. No man labors without an object. All desire some comforts and means for which they give their labor and skill, and to attain those objects or the largest portion of them for the smallest amount of labor, it is necessary that all should enjoy the most perfect freedom in exchange. We hear much of the "right to labor," which appears to be an unmeaning catch-word of demagogueism. No man ever endeavored to hinder any labor; the whole effort has been through class-legislation, to make the many work for the few; but the opposition has always been to giving labor its just reward. Those corporate factories, owned by millionaires, lolling on down cushions, are said to." employ" labor; they do so, as long as they monopolise the larger portion of the results of that labor. When it is proposed that agricultural labor should exchange its products in any market that will yield the greatest returns, a voice from down cushions and silken curtains goes up to congress, urging that labor should buy only at the corporate factories, which will yield only half the return. Congress complies, and new Wilton carpets deck the saloons, while fewer comforts manifest themselves in the cottage. The only way to ensure to labor its just reward, is to remove from it all the charges that are laid on its own productions, whether imposed as well upon what it receives in exchange for the support of government, or for sustaining any description of state policy, no matter by what plausible theory that policy may be vindicated. The expense of transporting produce to market, and of its proceeds in return, will always be regulated by the unerring law of trade, when left to unrestrained individual enterprise. Those arbitrary impositions that are governed by no law but the cupidity of the recipients, are they which must be abolished.

THE FRENCH TARIFF AND THE DUKE OF HARCOURT.

In the first of a series of articles I addressed to you in August last, Mr. Editor, I predicted, with great confidence, that the Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte would arrive at the sovereignty of France. There was at that moment so little probability of that event, that the good-natured smiled at my partizanship, and the rest ridiculed my credulity. But there are many in this country and abroad who distinctly remember, that in the summer of 1845 I stated my convictions, that on the death of Louis Philippe the Prince Louis was the only inevitable man to fill the gap, and save the state from anarchy.

There are two persons I may incidentally allude to-one, unhappily, no longer living-to whom I expressed myself on this point, with great emphasis. The one, the celebrated Emile de Girardin; the other, our lamented late chargé d'affaires at Paris, Dr. Martin. I am glad of this occasion to pay a passing tribute to the worth of this excellent person. His mind was of a high order, active, sagacious, and singularly retentive. His information was consequently large, various, and solid. Guided by strong democratic convictions, he was gradually acquiring knowledge, through the various and valuable channels that his position abroad threw open to his observation, that would have been of inestimable value to his country at a future epoch. Trained early to habits of business, he was assiduous and indefatigable in the discharge of his duties and engagements. His disposition was amiable, his manners unassuming, and his character upright and constant.— His sudden and premature death is a grief to his friends, and a loss his Countrymen may justly deplore. To return. My interviews with him were frequent in the summer of 1845, in Paris; and in our discussions of French politics, I pointed out to him the contingencies that promised the restoration of a Bonaparte to the government of France. I often succeeded in impressing his clear American mind, divested of transmitted prejudices, of the plausibility of my views, but they were invariably dispelled by the opinions of the numerous distinguished individuals, French and European, with whom he was in daily contact. With great fairness he used often to say, "You may be right, and were I to adopt your present views of France, it is possible we might come nearer to agreement; but those better informed than either of us, laugh aloud at the chances of Louis Napoleon."

In the case of Emile de Girardin, his rare sagacity was for a moment troubled. I remember distinctly my conversation with him on this topic. M. F. Gaillardet, so well known in this country, and then editor of the Courier des Etats Unis, whose fortunes he so rapidly raised by his unrivalled talents, was present at our interview. On hearing of my visit to the prisoner of Ham, M. Girardin plied me with questions touching my impres sions of his character. I gave them honestly and somewhat fully, and I don't know why I should conceal my motives in doing so. I was really anxious to rescue the mind of so intelligent a man, exercising a wide influence over public opinion, from the effects of the injurious calumnies that had been actively propagated against the Prince. M. Girardin was gravely surprised at my statements, and I endeavored earnestly to conciliate his prejudices; and for this further reason, that I saw with astonishment and despair