ational bank; now he
advocated the establishment of one, and handsomely acknowledged the
change of opinion. Before the war, he proposed only such a tariff as
would render America independent of foreign nations in articles of the
first necessity; now he contemplated the establishment of a great
manufacturing system, which should attract from Europe skilful
workmen, and supply the people with everything they consumed, even to
jewelry and silver-ware. Such success had he with his American System,
that, before many years rolled away, we see the rival wings of the
Republican party striving which could concede most to the
manufacturers in the way of an increased tariff. Every four years,
when a President was to be elected, there was an inevitable revision
of the tariff, each faction outbidding the other in conciliating the
manufacturing interest; until at length the near discharge of the
national debt suddenly threw into politics a prospective
surplus,---one of twelve millions a year,--which came near crushing
the American System, and gave Mr. Calhoun his pretext for
nullification.

At present, with such a debt as we have, the tariff is no longer a
question with us. The government must have its million a day; and as
no tax is less offensive to the people than a duty on imported
commodities, we seem compelled to a practically protective system for
many years to come. But, of all men, a citizen of the United States
should be the very last to accept the protective system as final; for
when he looks abroad over the great assemblage of sovereignties which
he calls the United States, and asks himself the reason of their rapid
and uniform prosperity for the last eighty years, what answer can he
give but this?--_There is free trade among them_. And if he extends
his survey over the whole earth, he can scarcely avoid the conclusion
that free trade among all nations would be as advantageous to all
nations as it is to the thirty-seven States of the American Union. But
nations are not governed by theories and theorists, but by
circumstances and politicians. The most perfect theory must sometimes
give way to exceptional fact. We find, accordingly, Mr. Mill, the
great English champion of free trade, fully sustaining Henry Clay's
moderate tariff of 1816, but sustaining it only as a temporary
measure. The paragraph of Mr. Mill's Political Economy which touches
this subject seems to us to express so exactly the true policy of the
United Sta