Daily National Intelligencer

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.

"The De'il among the tailors."

Gentlemen—There is a mighty propensity growing up of late, to petition Congress for almost every thing in this world. Whenever people want land, they petition Congress; whenever any revolution of commerce or change in the relations of differents parts of the world, circumscribes the trade of any particular class of men, they immediately petition Congress. Nay, Messrs. Editors, if an unreasonable woman chooses to bless her spouse with some nineteen or twenty children, Congress is called upon to sanction this enormity, by giving a bounty in lands, for the encouragement of all special breeders.

All seem to want exclusive bounties or exclusive privileges—the hatter petitions for a monopoly of hats—the shoemaker for a monopoly of shoes—and so with almost every class of tradesmen. Instead of fairly entering into a competition with foreign manufactures, and beating them out of the market, they probably find it much easier to acquire, by petitioning Congress, the salutary privilege of making their wares as bad as possible and selling them for any price they please.

This is pleasantly called making the country independent, by an approved modern patent method, that is to say by making three-fourths of the people dependent on the other, for almost all the conveniences of life. But I dont mean to enter into this extensive subject. My present business is with the tailors, who have, as I perceive, gathered themselves together in Philadelphia, and most manfully determined to besiege Congress with thimble and needle, to pass a law prohibiting the importation of ready made clothes. Now, ready made foreign clothes are already saddled with an immense duty, and yet it passed under my personal observation, not four months ago in Philadelphia, that ready made imported English waistcoats, in every respect equal to those made by our tailors, were bought by more than one gentleman, for less than one-half the price charged by those exceedingly modest petitioners. The same disproportion was observable in coats and pantaloons.

Now, gentlemen, it is worth while to enquire, why such things are? Taxed as every thing is in England up to the eyes, how happens it that, with all the costs of importation, added to a most heavy duty here, ready made clothes can be sent to this country and sold at half the price of domestic articles of the same kind? How happens it, sirs, that while every material employed in making these cloths, has fallen so enormously in this country, there should be so little difference in the price of coats, &c at this time, and when the materials were fifty per cent. dearer? The secret of the riddle will be found in the fact of every tailor's growing rich in a few years by the inordinate usurious profits he exacts from his customers. It is these profits that they wish to have secured to them, by act of Congress, solely no doubt on the score of maintaining the independence of their country ! Patriotism, gentlemen, carries a broad mantle like charity, that covers at least one half the wiles of selfishness from the broad glare of sunshine. It is under this convenient cloak that people petition Congress, for the privilege of rendering millions of consumers tributary to the inflexible cupidity of every class of tradesmen, or manufacturers, as they choose to call themselves, in this age of "big words."

But, to the point. I happen to be neither merchant, cobbler, tailor, tanner, or manufacturer of any kind. I belong to a numerous class of men in this country: I mean the people who wear clothes—when they can get them—certainly no small portion of the community, and withal possessing a reasonable claim to common justice. Now, sirs, if these tailors should succeed in stitching Congress into the folds of this unreasonable petition they design to present, instead of getting themselves basted out of the house—if, I say, they should succeed in their conspiracy against the rights of men—what, to use the language of a great orator, among the ancients—“What will become of our past posterity—what, sir, will become of our future ancestors—what will become of the wearers of capeless skirtless coats, and Cossack breeches? What will become of the people who wear four waistcoats to their backs, each with broach and breast-pin dight, solely for the benefit of these unreasonable tailors? Sir, were these men to petition me, I would answer with the poet,—

“Avaunt, and quit my sight

Thy shears are edgeless—

Thou hast no thread and needle in those paws,

That thou dost stitch withal!

Approach thou like the dingy chimney sweep,

With rug and scraper—

Or dare me to the shopboard with thy shears—

If trembling I inhibit, then protest me

The very botch of a button hole—

Hence, horrible tailor—hence!”

Yours, gentlemen,

BOBBY BREECHES.