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EXPORTS PORK FROM THE UNITED STATES.

Pork. Ham and Bacon. Lard.
bbls.

1845, high tariff......161,609.

lbs. .2,719,360..

lbs. .20,060,993.. .37,611,611..

Hogs. Total value of No. animal products. ..5,796,958

.6,384
.3,274

10,806,615

1847, famine.........206,190.... 17,927,471.. 1850, good harvests....188,841.... 41,014,528.. ..54,925,546.... 881.... 10,371,358

.....

The main farming interests of Ohio will find it difficult to understand what Mr. Corwin means by "dwarfing down," when the sales of the products of animals abroad are double this year what they were under the full operation of the tariff of 1842. The prices of these provisions are now, in New-York, as compared with 1845, as follows:

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There certainly is some appearance of improvement in these large sales at better prices, more particularly when so much less of the prices is absorbed in transport, and notwithstanding that Mr. Corwin asserts the contrary. That gentleman also, in the extract quoted above, asserts the excess, $26,247,898, of imports over exports, is a debt to be paid. A Secretary of the department which has charge of the commerce of the country, ought to know that the official export value is the cost of the articles here in the hands of the shippers, but that the real amount of exports is what those goods sell for abroad, so as to pay freight, insurance, and profits. The sum of these sales it is which is to come back to the country, in the shape of imports. The value of domestic produce exported was $134,000,000; the freight on this, in American ships, was, at least, $12,000,000, the insurance and profits at least $15,000,000 more, which would make $27,000,000, and would require $161,000,000 of imports to pay the amount. But besides this, there is our whaling interest, employing 20,000 seamen, and our China trade with other nations; and our carrying trade from East and West Indies to Europe; all of which earn money, and which is deposited in London and drawn against, thus swelling the amount of imports. An export of 134,000,000 would not, therefore, be reimbursed under an import of $170,000,000, and the net amount is but $165,027,821.

The Secretary follows the theory of Mr. Meredith, in relation to the exports of raw material:

"The exports of cotton from the United States exceed in importance those of any raw material exported from any other country, and at the present time, it is our only export that is essential to any other nation; but it is believed to be a mistaken policy for any nation to send its raw material to distant countries, to be manufactured into fabrics for its own use."

It is difficult to imagine what meaning can be attached to assertions like this. Neither the production nor the manufacturing of a material is in any sense a matter of national policy. Every man in the community engages in that business which will yield to his means and skill the greatest return. In a young country like this, land is the capital, individual labor the means of employing it, and raw produce is the result. To manufacture that raw produce requires skill and money capital. When this. country

was first settled, it was entirely destitute of the two latter; but it has rapidly acquired them through the sales of raw produce, and they are now being extensively applied to manufactures, not as a matter of national policy, but of individual profit. It is very doubtful whether the country will grow rich as fast by manufactures as by the sale of produce. As surplus capital increases, it is applied to manufactures per force, and the rapidity with which this is done, is manifest in the following table of the manufactures of Massachusetts, according to the official census of that State :

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The number of spindles for textile fabrics doubled in ten years. A most sufficient reason why mutual competition produced distress, without tempting further competition by additional duties. All other manufac tures increased in the same ratio; iron furnaces from 115 to 208, &c., &c. The result is, that the manufacturing industry of Massachusetts has doubled in ten years. Then, of course, reasons the advocate of a "home market," the agriculture of Massachusetts in the immediate vicinity of this property must be very flourishing. Mr. Corwin holds this view, as follows:

"When it is remembered that a very large proportion of the citizens of this country are engaged in the business of farming, and how much of the permanent wealth and true glory of the republic depends on their well-being and prosperity, it would seem to be the dictate of an enlightened selfishness, as a duty of patriotism, so to mould, if possible, the laws regulating trade and revenue, as to furnish for them, at home, a permanent market with remunerating prices. As no such market can be found abroad, it may well suggest the inquiry whether legislation, in providing, of necessity, for revenue, shall not, by encouraging a diversity of employment in our own country, secure the only safe and sure market for our farming productions which can be obtained."

Alas! for the theory, the Massachusetts agricultural returns are as follows:

MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

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Here a retrograde movement is perceptible. The farmers have emigrated to a more promising land, where natural facilities will counteract the oppression of protection.

LAW REFORM IN ENGLAND.

WITH NOTICES OF BENTHAM, ROMILLY, MACINTOSH, DUMONT, MILL, BROUGHAM, BUXTON AND BOWRING.

THE Common Law of England has undergone greater changes, during the last thirty years, in the country of its origin, than had been witnessed in the previous hundred years. In the remedial department, it has well nigh been revolutionized. The persons who have been most distinguished in effecting these results, are Bentham, Romilly, MacIntosh and Brougham. To these names should be added two others, Dumont and Mill, who, though laboring in less conspicuous stations than the four first mentioned, have rendered important aid to the cause of legal reform. Nor should the names of Buxton and Peel be omitted from the catalogue. The former, always ready to co-operate in any enterprise which aimed to disenthrall the depressed classes of his countrymen, did much through his speeches in Parliament to expose the inhumanity of the penal code, while the official station of the latter enabled him to effect many ameliorations in the criminal law, which, but for his aid, must have been postponed for years.

The most remarkable person in this group of rare men, is JEREMY BENTHAM. Indeed, he is one of the most extraordinary persons of our times. Even in childhood he was so distinguished for the originality and acuteness of his mind, that he was called "the little philosopher." At three he read Rapin's History of England; at seven, he read Télémaque in the original; at eight, he played well on the violin; at fourteen, he entered Oxford, where he immediately took the first rank as a disputant in the Common Hall of the University, exciting the surprise of his fellow students and the admiration of his teachers at the keenness of his logic, the scope of his comprehension, and the variety of his information. He received the degree of A. B. at sixteen, and of A. M. at twenty, being the youngest person that had at that time been graduated either at Oxford or Cambridge.

Mr. Bentham, having studied law at Lincoln's Inn, was admitted to the bar in 1772, being then 25 years of age. He had entered upon the prac tice of his profession with flattering prospects, when an event occurred that changed the whole purpose and course of his life. We describe it in his own words. "Not long after I was admitted to the bar, having drawn a bill in equity, I had to defend it against exceptions before a Master in Chancery. We shall have to attend on such a day,' said the Solicitor to me, naming a day a week or two distant; 'warrants for our attendance will be taken out for two intervening days; but it is not customary to at tend before the third.' What I learnt afterwards was, that though there was only one actual attendance, three were on every occasion regularly charged for; for each of the two falsely pretended attendances, the client being by the Solicitor charged with a fee for himself, and also a fee for the Master; and that, even if inclined, no Solicitor durst omit taking out the 3

VOL. XXVIII.-NO. I.

three warrants instead of one, for fear of the not-to-be-hazarded displeasure of that subordinate judge and his superiors. *** These things, and others of the same complexion in immense abundance, determined me to quit the profession as soon as I could obtain my father's permission. I did so, and have found it more to my taste to endeavor, as I have been doing ever since, to put an end to these abuses, than to profit by them."

To the early detection of these abuses of his profession, the world is indebted for the nearly sixty years' labor of this great man in the field of law reform.

The remark most likely to be made, by even fair-minded persons, respecting this event in the life of Bentham, is, that few lawyers have sufficient honesty to abandon their profession on such grounds. The more just and enlightened remark would be, that few men are apt to display such conscientious disinterestedness as he exhibited. The law, like every other profession and calling, furnishes its share of dishonest men; but, we have never seen the evidence to support the very common opinion, that it furnishes more than its proportional share. The swindlers that infest our courts are such, not because they are lawyers, but because they are rogues; and, other things being equal, they would have been rogues had they chosen to be physicians, merchants, or horse-jockeys, instead of lawyers. Undoubtedly the pursuits of the legal profession afford great opportunities for falsehood, chicanery, and extortion; but they do not furnish a monopoly of these opportunities; and we are not aware that the members of the legal craft are more apt to embrace those which fall in their way, than are persons who pursue other avocations. The men who are wont to denounce the whole legal fraternity as a pack of licensed swindlers," should remember, that in all civilized countries, and from time immemorial, magistrates and judges have been lawyers, and that to them have been intrusted the protection of the lives, liberties, reputations and property of mankind, and that the instances in which venality and corruption have stained the judicial ermine are so rare, that the exceptions to the general rule of virtuous administration stand as exclamation points in history-that of science. art, literature, education, and social progress in all its multiform departments, the legal profession, in every age, has been among the most zealous and munificent patrons-that of all classes of men that have labored, during the last hundred years, to curb the prerogatives of kings, extend the blessings of representative government, unfetter the limbs, emancipate the minds, and increase the power of the untilled masses, none have been more conspicuous than lawyers-that the most illustrious British martyrs to the cause of liberty, in the olden time, were lawyers-that Erskine, Vergniaud, Emmet, Gaudet, Grattan, Brissot, Romilly, Petion, MacIntosh, Manuel, Brougham, Dupont, Jeffrey, Barrot, O'Connell and Rollin, who have borne up the standard of European freedom, in our day, were lawyers-and that Jefferson, Adams, Otis, Henry, Lee, Sherman and Hamilton, with many other bold spirits that aided in founding republican institutions during the American revolution, were lawyers.

We will return to our notice of Mr. Bentham. He has been justly called "the father of Modern Law Reform." When he entered upon his work, he found the common law of England entrenched behind the interests, and defended by the prejudices of the most powerful classes of the kingdom. Venerable for its age, the legacy of the dead past, the work

of 66 our wise ancestors," to question its claims to unmixed homage, and to doubt whether it was worthy to be regarded as "the perfection of human reason," was deemed an atrocious libel upon the characters and memories of its architects. Though its precepts were to be found only in camelloads of statutes, many of which had grown mouldy with time, or in adjudications scattered through volumes to be counted by thousands; and though many of these statutes and adjudications had outlived the causes which originated them, and the reasons on which they were based, while others merely tended to increase the general confusion by the war of contradiction they waged among themselves; yet, the most ignorant layman in the kingdom was presumed to know the law, and was fined, bankrupted, imprisoned or hung, for not obeying what it puzzled the most acute lawyers to comprehend, and what, after hearing arguments on all sides, it required learned judges months of research and reflection to ascertain; and even then, their dictum was law solely because they had declared it so to be! The practice of the courts, the mode of applying the precepts of this system to the ever-shifting exigencies of society, was only less obscure, contradictory and complex, than the precepts themselves. It was to be gathered from such a mass of old and new statutes, decisions, and rules, that the caution and skill requisite to get a suitor into court at all, was equalled only by the extreme difficulty of getting him out when he was once fairly in. This vast, shapeless and labyrinthian structure, erected of materials furnished by the Briton, the Goth, the Dane, the Norman and the Saxon, had been rendered still more intricate and incongruous by the numerous alterations and additions which the modern Englishman had been compelled to make, so as to render it barely tenantable in an advanced state of society.

And this was the judicial system which Bentham began to examine, previous to commencing the work of its reformation. It must have been impressed on the mind of every American who has made the law his study, that English writers upon jurisprudence deal much less in discussion about first principles, than continental authors. English treatises are generally mere digests or compilations of the decisions of the courts, and are rarely accompanied by the reasons on which they are based. They are usually quite barren in original speculations. This is in part owing to the mode in which the common law of England has grown into being; but it is no doubt in part to be attributed to that inherent and hereditary reverence for authority and precedent, which is so prominent a feature in the character of the English nation. Bentham was the first Englishman who entered seriously upon the task of exposing and remedying the radical defects of the judicial system of his country. Theretofore, its students, practitioners and ministers had been content to sift its precepts from its chaotic mass of statutes and decisions, and from the same sources to collate and digest its forms of procedure. True, Blackstone, in his Commentaries, had endeavored to trace the law up to its fountains; but he always seemed to be searching for some wise reason for some absurd rule: while his choicest eulogiums were often bestowed upon the worst parts of the system. The bold spirit of Mansfield occasionally diverged from the old beaten track of his predecessors, and struck out new paths more in harmony with enlightened reason and a progressive age; but his successors, during the twenty years which followed his retirement, succeeded in pretty effectually restoring the ancient landmarks he had thrown down. Proba

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