Daily National Intelligencer

FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER

MAGIC OF WEALTH.

No. III.

In calling in at this day the aid of domestic manufactures to our national prosperity, we are merely pursuing that natural path, which the policy of the living world has proved to be not only judicious, but absolutely necessary for the safety of the nation, and the happiness of the people. I speak here of those nations who have a population so extensive as to furnish various classes, who cannot otherwise be usefully employed. Such I contend is the actual state of America at this epoch, and it is made more particularly evident by the circumscribed situation of our commerce, owing to the general pacification, and the natural struggle of each nation, to enjoy that portion of it which belongs to them, and to reap all the advantages which flow therefrom.

I am aware of all the arguments which can be brought forward by the opponents to domestic fabrication, and I should be happy to see them all marshalled in array against me; for although I boast not of the strength of my pen, I am so satisfied of the strength and goodness of my subject, that I am convinced they would fall before it and be dissipated like the mists of the morning before the meridian sun. The great, and by them considered the mammoth objection to the establishment of Domestic Manufactures, is, that we have so extensive a territory, a great proportion of which is yet uncultivated, that all the unemployed population should be directed to this point. They maintain also that the industry of the field is more conducive to health and vigor than the confinement which manufactories demand. These assertions they pretend are irrefutable: but at the same time that they pretend to believe them orthodox, they shrink from that candid discussion which would prove their weakness. Our improvements in Agriculture and its prosperity, have hitherto progressed with a rapid yet natural and steady march, and it is no more to be forced into a premature increase, than the acorn can be made to produce an oak before the time allotted by nature. Our Agriculture at this day is fully equal to our population; every attempt to make it go beyond this, would only injure instead of benefitting the cultivator of the earth. They have hitherto enjoyed an uninterrupted prosperity, and as lords of the domain they may be considered the most independent class of the community. On the establishment of our constitution, every necessary protection was extended to them by the framers of that instrument; and the making all exports free of duty or taxation, was intended (as it has proved) to give a spur to the cultivation of the earth beyond our natural wants, and thus enable us to pay for those articles of foreign growth or manufacture which we drew from abroad, as necessary for our comfort or convenience.

The agriculturist, looking at this house on his real interest, would feel no jealousy in seeing the government extending its parental hand towards the industry of that portion of the community who have devoted themselves to domestic fabrics. They would perceive no collision; no opposition which could be fanned into hostility, or produce the smallest injury to their own pursuits, the culture of the earth. The industry employed in manufactures is not taken from the field; it consists in a great measure of those infant hands and flexible fingers, which could not be of avail in the hardy pursuits of agriculture, and which would be unemployed and useless, if not directed to those objects suited to their tender age and delicacy of frame. It is a fact well known, that not more than 4 per cent. of the labor employed in manufactories, is of that class which could be useful to the tillage of land, in the clearing of forests, and even that is not drawn from the field but from cities, which if not employed in this manner become injurious to society, and paupers or depredators on the public. As to the arguments against the salubrity of Manufactures, whatever may be the case in populous cities, where confined air, scarcity of food, and that not of the most healthy kind, may produce disease, the reverse has been fully proved in the experiments made in America, where the pure air of our villages, and the extensive buildings in which they are employed, allow them both sufficient air and exercise, and their labor at the same time enabling them to live better than if they were idle.

M.