bill before us, embraces the design of fostering,
protecting, and preserving within ourselves the means of national
defence and independence, _particularly in a state of war_. * *
*The experience of the late war (1812) taught us a lesson, and one
never to be forgotten. If our liberty and republican form of
government, procured for us by our Revolutionary fathers, are worth
the blood and treasure at which they were obtained, it surely is
our duty to protect and defend them. * * * What is the real
situation of the agriculturist? Where has the American farmer a
market for his surplus product? Except for cotton, he has neither a
foreign nor home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is
no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much labor
employed in agriculture, and that the channels of labor should be
multiplied? Common sense points out the remedy. Draw from
agriculture the superabundant labor; employ it in mechanism and
manufactures; thereby creating a home-market for your
bread-stuffs, and distributing labor to the most profitable account
and benefits to the country. Take from agriculture in the United
States six hundred thousand men, women and children, and you will
at once give a home-market for more bread-stuffs than all Europe
now furnishes us. In short, sir, _we have been too long subject to
the policy of British merchants_. It is time that we should become
a little more Americanized; and, instead of feeding the paupers and
laborers of England, feed our own; or else, in a short time, by
continuing our present policy, we shall be rendered paupers
ourselves.'

Mr. Bigelow, in his late and highly valuable work on the tariff, says
truly (p. 103):

'Can any one question that our home production far outweighs in
importance all other material interests of the nation? * * * It is
the nation of great internal resources, of vigorous productive
power and self-dependent strength, which is always best prepared
and most able, not only to defend itself, but to lend others a
helping hand.'

If our people would maintain their own national integrity, their own
individual independence, and their true status in the great family of
nations of the earth, they will [at least until the present rebellion is
crushed, and until the public debt thereby created shall