In the month of October of the same year, 1816, the iron manufacturers, in one district in Wales, to the number of ten or twelve thousand, traversed the country begging bread and cheese, but refusing beer, lest in their intoxication they should do what they would afterwards be sorry for.' We have no space for further details of their sufferings, but beg leave to present our readers with a view of the condition of the cotton manufacturers in England in 1818. For this purpose we lay before them the cotton spinners' address to the public,' in August, 1818.

'We, the Mule cotton spinners of Manchester, consider it a duty incumbent upon us to address the public, at the present juncture, to contradict the many false statements and misrepresentations, that have appeared in the public papers.

'We are stated in all the papers to have turned out for an advance of wages, this we admit to be in part true, but not absolutely So. Two years ago, when our employers demanded a reduction of ten hanks, they affirmed that the state of the market imperiously called for such reduction; but when the markets would admit of an advance, they would willingly give it. We depended on their honor, and continued to labor for more than twelve months at the reduction proposed. About ten months since, on comparing the price of cotton and yarn, we found that the markets would allow our employers to fulfil their promise; we therefore solicited them to that purpose, and only wished to be reinstated in the same prices we worked at, previous to that reduction. Some declared they could not give it; others they would not, but the greater part, that they would, if others did, but they should not like to be the first. Thus we continued working and soliciting for the last eight months, though the demand for yarn has been unprecedented, and the consequent rise in twist great; they have still refused our just request; and in order to cause a belief that trade was in a declining state, gave notice that they should only work three days in the week, which appeared so extremely ridiculous, that the very children employed in the factories laughed at it.

'It is asserted that our average wages amount to thirty or forty shillings per week. It is evident that this statement was made by some individual either ignorant or interested. In 1816, the average clear wages of the spinners in Manchester was about twenty four shillings. They were then reduced from twenty to twenty five per cent, and have ever since labored under that reduction, and it is to be remarked, that spinners relieve their own sick, as well as subscribe to other casualties; therefore, when their hours of labor, which are from five in the morning to seven in the evening, (and

in some mills longer) of unremitting toil, in rooms heated from seventy to ninety degrees, are taken into consideration, we believe the public will say with us, that no body of workmen receive so inadequate a compensation for their labor.

"The next thing we would advert to is, our employers have asserted, that if they submit to our present request, which they admit is reasonable, it would not be long before we demanded another advance of ten hanks more. Whatever some individuals may have said, we know nothing of, but the great majority of spinners have never said or intended any such thing. And we hereby declare, "that we are willing to enter into a treaty with our employers on fair and honorable terms."

'We believe there is no species of labor so fraught with the want of natural comforts, as that the spinners have to contend with; deprived of fresh air, and subjected to long confinement in the impure atmosphere of crowded rooms continually inhaling the particles of metallic or vegetable dust, his physical powers become debilitated, his animal strength dwindles away, and few survive the meridian of life, and the grave is often the welcome asylum of his woes. His children! but let us draw a veil over the scene, our streets exhibit their cadaverous and decrepit forms, and any attempt to describe them would be impossible.

'Let it not be understood that we attach blame to our employers as applied to these calamities; they are perhaps inseparable from the very nature of the employment, and our masters may lament but cannot redress them. All we ask is a fair and candid investigation into the grounds of our complaints, and we are confident that both justice and humanity will decide in our favor.

"We solemnly declare, as fathers, as men, as loyal subjects, and well wishers to a constitution, the spirit and letter of which will not countenance anything like slavery and oppression, that we cannot obtain, with the greatest possible industry, the common comforts and necessaries of life at the present low prices. To labor hard is not an easy task, but to labor hard and want is impossible. Let our masters consult their own hearts, and as the seat of justice and humanity, they will not long hesitate to grant our just request.'

We appeal to such of our readers as are conversant, even with the English newspapers, to bear us out in the assertion, that volumes of details like these might be collected. It is therefore only in the heat of argument, that propositions like the following could be advanced by such men as Mr Clay.

'The views of British prosperity, which I have endeavored to present, show that her protecting policy is adapted alike to a state of war and of peace. Self poised, resting upon her own internal

resources, possessing a home market, carefully cherished and guarded, she is ever prepared for any emergency. We have seen her coming out of a war of incalculable exertion, and of great duration, with her power unbroken, her means undiminished. We have seen, that almost every revolving year of peace has brought along with it an increase of her manufactures, of her commerce, and, consequently, of her navigation. We have seen that, constructing her prosperity upon the solid foundation of her own protecting policy, it is unaffected by the vicissitudes of other states. What is our own condition? Depending upon the state of foreign powers confiding exclusively in a foreign, to the culpable neglect of a domestic, policy-our interests are affected by all their movements. Their wars, their misfortunes, are the only source of our prosperity. In their peace, and our peace, we behold our condition the reverse of that of Great Britain, and all our interests stationary or declining. Peace brings to us none of the blessings of peace.'

We confess we perceive none of the facts, by which this comparison is borne out; nor by what possible agency a tariff of duties, either in England or America, can be depended on to prevent immense distresses on any sudden change either from peace to war, or war to peace. Such a transition must always produce vast and sudden fluctuations in the market, and against these changes what tariff can protect us?

The extracts we have already made are sufficient preparation for the remark, paradoxical as it may seem, that all the protection extended by the foreign governments held up to our imitation has not produced the prosperity of manufactures themselves, considered as one of the branches of the national industry. It might be taken as one proof of this, that, with the extraordinary growth of manufacturing industry in Eng land, for the last half century, pauperism has kept equal pace, and has, within the last generation, been carried to a height unexampled and truly appalling. It is easy to deny this to be the effect of any necessary connexion between the things, and yet those, who deny it, may safely be challenged to point out any other cause. The factories create a demand for a large quantity of manual labor of the very lowest kind. It is well known, that a few weeks are sufficient to train most of the laborers employed in spinning cotton, and the exercise of intellect in this occupation is almost nothing. Labor of this kind must be miserably paid. Mere hand labor is very little

higher in the order of things than machine labor. A living machine endued with a grain of intellect is needed; no more. This is the kind of population, which manufactures tend directly to introduce; and it needs not be said, that it is a wretched population at best, exposed on every fluctuation of the market to be thrown out of employment, and ill fitted for any other.

But without urging this point, and allowing that in this respect things may possibly be somewhat more prosperous in America, we still maintain that there is not a country in the world where the great manufactures, those most protected, flourish. By a flourishing manufacture, in any valuable sense of the term, we mean one that supports the working class in decent competence. In almost every branch of manufactures, in every country, the wages of labor, like the wages of sin, is death; and we may well add with Dr South, poor wages it is that will not keep a man alive. The cloth, the cutlery, is good, and much is made, and it sells to profit, and the proprietor of the factory flourishes and grows rich, but what becomes of the manufacturer? Is it flourishing to weave and spin sixteen hours in the day on wages so confessedly inadequate, as to require from the overseers of the poor an additional shilling per week, for every child with which the miserable father is cursed? The manufacture of muslin flourishes, we suppose, in India, where those who weave it sit up to their armpits in water, twelve hours in the day, and are paid with a cup of rice. The Osnaburghs of Westphalia are woven by the poor peasantry of that country, who live in cabins, to which the meanest log hut in America is a palace. Is this flourishing? The manufacturers of iron in Russia and Sweden earn seven cents a day. Is this flourishing?

Why do not the friends of the tariff, who admire the foreign protecting policy, imitate it in its prominent parts? There are in many of these countries, and have been in all, laws regulating the wages, which shall be paid to workmen in the different trades. Let them apply to Congress for a law, that the laborer shall be paid but seven or eight cents a day. This will go effectually to the case, and enable the American undertaker to meet the foreign commodity. The mere smallness of wages, moreover, is but one only of the ingredients in that system, which we are taught to admire and strive to in

troduce. Seven cents a day in a country, where one hundred and twenty thousand men are serfs on the estate of one landholder; where it is the proudest privilege of the human stock, that it cannot be sold without the soil; seven cents a day in such a country may be very tolerable wages. It will buy a man a little meal and a little lard for his food, and a piece of coarse tow or woollen cloth for his clothing, and with this he is amply provided. A few shillings a week may be very tolerable wages in a country like England, where the people, as a mass, have no voice in the government, where a great inequality of rank and power is an acknowledged and recognised part of the system, at which no one murmurs; where the honors, the prizes of life, with some few exceptions, that prove the rule, are placed at a hopeless distance from all competition on the part of the laboring classes. But this is all different here. A manufacturer's vote is as good as his employer's. He expects to dwell, not in as good a house, and also in none of your Manchester cellars, but in an exceedingly comfortable tight tenement. On Sundays, he expects to wear very nearly as good a coat and hat as his rich neighbor, and to see his wife and daughter in a cambric or a silk. If either of his boys is at all clever, he expects to send him to the grammar school in the town, or the next academy, to prepare for college and receive an education, that shall fit him for the highest places of professional respectability. The wages of the manufacturer must be calculated on this scale; they must support, not a degraded, brutified vassal, but a reflecting, aspiring man, a freeholder, a voter, a constituent of those, who make the laws and who govern the country.

The English system of eking out the laborer's wages by the contributions of the overseers of the poor and the parish officers will not do here. The elder and graver laborer will not seldom be a deacon and an overseer himself. The system of eating meat once or twice a week only will not do here; our manufacturers will take no protection, which does not protect them in a hearty dinner of meat every day, with enough left cold to come handsomely upon the table the next morning at breakfast. The manufacturer here is surrounded by a different class of men, from those about him there, and he must live accordingly. He is not surrounded by an humbled tenantry, who if they possess not each an annual income of one