When, on the contrary, they are not obtained, and when, consequently, the prices of raw materials and of finished products recede from each other, the reverse is seen, society then assuming the form here exhibited :—

Appropriation.

Transportation.

Conversion.

Agriculture.

Such is the tendency in all the countries that follow in the lead of England, and in England herself. Instability is, therefore, the characteristic of all those countries.

American policy has been in harmony with neither. While recognizing generally the expediency of protection, and the propriety of creating a domestic market for the planter's and the farmer's products, powerful parties have held that it was to be regarded, not as a measure of national policy promotive of the good of all, but as a special favor to certain classes whose interests were to be promoted at the cost of all; and for that reason to be granted only so far as was consistent with the raising of the greatest public revenue. Instability has, therefore, been the especial characteristic of American policy, protection having been resorted to whenever the public treasury was empty, and abandoned whenever it had again been filled. As a consequence of this it is that we are now afforded the opportunity of studying, on the same ground, the working of both the systems already examined in reference to so many, so different, and so widely-scattered nations; and to that examination it is proposed that we now address ourselves.

CHAPTER XXI.

OF VITAL CHANGES IN THE FORMS OF MATTER-CONTINUED.

21. The American Union a country of contrasts-its social system tending towards centralization and slavery, while its political one is based upon the idea of decentralization and freedom. Natural tendency towards association and combination. Counteracted by a national policy tending towards dispersion.

22. Early tendencies towards the adoption of the system which looked towards bringing together the producer and the consumer. Variable character of American policy since the close of the great European war.

83. Policy of Colbert and Cromwell adopted in regard to shipping. Freedom of trade obtained by means of protective measures.

4. American policy; generally, in full accordance with the doctrines of the British school. Consequent decline in the prices of the rude products of the farm. The man who must go to any market, must pay the tax of transportation. Heavy taxation of American farmers.

5. Civilization grows in the direct ratio of the removal of obstacles standing between the producers and the consumers.

26. The planter steadily giving more of his raw materials, and receiving less in exchange for them. Consequent exhaustion of the soil, and weakness of the State.

87. Barbarism grows, everywhere, in the direct ratio of the export of the rude products of the soil, and consequent decline in the powers of the land.

§ 1. France, as has been shown, is a country of "contrasts," resulting from the fact that its social and political systems are not in harmony with each other, the former tending regularly towards increase in the value of land and of man, the creation of local centres, and the establishment of freedom; the latter as certainly towards decrease in the value of land, centralization of wealth and power in the capital, and reduction of men to the condition of mere machines, to be used by men whose trade is politics.

In the American Union, too, we find "contrasts," whose existence is due to the fact, that it has a social system which looks towards centralization and slavery, standing in the presence of a political one based on the idea of local activity and perfect self-government. In France, a sound social system is slowly, but certainly, correcting the errors of the political one, with constant tendency towards increase of freedom; whereas, in these United States, social error is gradually triumphing over political truth, with growing tendency toward the further dispersion of man, the absorption of local centres of action, the centralization of power in great cities, and the increasing subjection of those who labor to the will of those who live by the exercise of their powers of appropriation. First among the nations of the earth to de

a

clare that "all men are born equal," they now stand alone among civilized communities in having among them teachers who assert that "free society has proved an utter failure;" that "slavery, whether for the white man or the black, is a legitimate, useful, and expedient institution ;" and that it is a duty to strive "not merely to retain it where it is, but to extend it to regions where it is yet unknown."*

* The reader is here requested to bear in mind that the picture of the American Union now about to be presented is the one that was furnished by Mr. Carey several years prior to the breaking out of the pro-slavery rebellion in 1860-61. With the exception of the short period from 1842 to 1847 the country had been then for more than a quarter of a century wholly subjected to that system which looked towards having but a single workshop for the world—towards compelling all the raw materials of the world to travel thousands and tens of thousands of miles in search of the little spindle, the little loom, and other little and inexpensive machinery of conversion-and towards a constantly increasing subjection of the producers of the earth to the will of those who controlled and directed the machinery of exchange. In all other countries such subjection had been attended by constant increase in the tax of transportation, by decline in the powers of the land, and by diminution in the laborer's power to control his own actions, and it would have been fair to presume that the same results would certainly here be realized. That they had then been so, was proved by the facts, that exhaustion of the soil had been constant in all those portions of the country in which employments had not been much diversified-that the dispersion of the American people had been greater than had ever before been known-that the tax of transportation had therefore borne a constantly increasing proportion to the selling prices of the farmer's and planter's products— that the laborer had become more and more a mere instrament in the trader's hands-that absenteeism had steadily grown--and that the tyrant Southern overseer had become more and more the master of both land and laborer.

So far as regarded the nation at large, these results had then exhibited themselves in a constant increase of the Slave Power, and in a tendency towards disunion that has since culminated in a civil war the like of which has no existence in the annals of the world. Had the people of these United States followed the example of France instead of traveling in the direction indicated by English traders-had they steadily maintained that system of policy which tended towards bringing the consumer and the producer together, and towards increasing the diversity of their own pursuitsNorthern and Southern land would both have grown in their money value as Southern laborers had been becoming more free, and Federal power would have grown as local institutions had become more and more developed. To the fact that such a system was not maintained, and to that alone, are we now indebted for the waste of life and property, and for the destruction of human happiness, that

In no part of the world does the political system, based as it is on the idea of local centres counteracting the great central attraction, so nearly correspond with that wonderfully beautiful one established for the regulation of the universe. In none, therefore, are the natural tendencies of man towards combination with his fellow-man so fully exhibited. The type of the system is seen in the "bee," or union of the older members of a settlement for the purpose of providing accommodation for their newly arrived neighbors. The logs are to be rolled, the roof is to be raised, or the corn to be husked. į Each of these operations would require severe exertion on the part of the lonely settler; but all are rendered light by means of combination among those around him. The newcomer has, probably, neither horse nor plough; one neighbor lends him the former, while another supplies the latter, and thus is he enabled soon to obtain both horse and plough of his own. A place of worship being required, all, whether Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, or Presbyterians, unite to build it; its pulpit to be occupied by the itinerant preachers of the wilderness. On one day we find them associating for the making of roads, and holding meetings to determine who shall superintend their construction and assess the taxes required for that purpose. On another, they meet to select persons to represent them at the county board, in the State Assembly, or in the Congress of the nation. Next they settle where the new school-house shall be built, who shall collect the funds required, or select the little library that is to aid their children in applying the knowledge acquired from their teachers. Again, they form associations for mutual insurance against fire; or little savings' funds, called banks, at which the man who wishes to buy a plough may borrow the little money that he needs. Little mills grow up, and expand into large ones, in which the capitalists of the neighborhood, shoemakers and sempstresses, farmers and lawyers, widows and orphans, are interested; little towns appear, in which every resident owns his own house and lot, and is therefore directly interested in the advancement of all, each feeling that the first of the objects needed to be attained is

have attended the three past years. That waste and that destruction, great as they have been, and the debt that has been created, large as it is, constitute but portions of the price that the country is now required to pay for the abandonment, in 1832, of the policy that had been instituted by the passage of the protective tariffs of 1824 and 1828

an entire security in the enjoyment of the rights of person and of property. The power to associate steadily increases, and with it the habit of combination, which is most seen where wealth and population most abound, in the New England States. There we see a network of association so far exceeding any thing elsewhere known, as to be entirely beyond comparison. Nevertheless, look to what quarter we may, we find a state of things in striking "contrast" with all this, as will here be shown.

The population of the Union is now (1856) 27 millions, and the surface comprised between the Mississippi and the Atlantic is 640,000,000 of acres, each of which could support a full-grown man; yet are men flying to Kansas and Nebraska, Utah and Oregon, there to commence their labors far from market and under circumstances the most disadvantageous.

The natural tendency of man is to combine his labors with those of his fellow-men; yet here, men fly from their fellows, wasting their labor on the road, and employing it unprofitably at their journey's end.

His natural tendency is to combine his axe with his neighbor's spade, lending the one and borrowing the other; yet here, the man who owns the axe flies from him who has the spade.

His natural tendency is to commence on the thin soil of the hill-side, and to work down towards the rich soil at its foot, gathering manure on the one to enrich the other; yet here, he flies from the rich soils near him to seek poor ones at a distance.

His natural tendency is to combine with his neighbors to improve old roads; yet here he flies to a distance and opens new ones, so that two are to be maintained instead of one.

His natural tendency is to combine with his neighbors for improving the character of education in old schools; but here, he flies to places where no schools exist.

His natural tendency is to hold in regard old places and old houses, mellowed by time and sanctified by the recollections of those who had before inhabited them; but here, he flies from them to cut out new places in the woods, whose rudeness is enhanced by the recollection of those he has left.

Why is this so? Why do men fly from rich lands to seek poor ones in the West? Why, in rich countries with canals and railroads, towns and telegraphs, does population cease to grow, and land become from day to day more consolidated, always an evidence of declining civilization?