st hopeless
existence. To some peculiarly constituted minds, "over-production" is
the explanation of the present appalling distresses of this country; and
what they are pleased to consider a healthy state of things, is to be
restored by a diminution of production;--yet nothing is more certain,
than that the largest amount of production which has ever been reached,
is not more than adequate to supply our increasing population with the
necessaries of life, on even a very limited scale of comfort. A
diminished production implies the starving down of the population to
such a diminished number as may obtain leave to toil, and leave to
subsist, from legislators, who, either in ignorance or selfishness, set
aside nature's laws, and disregard the plainly legible ordinances of
Divine Providence. If we reflect on the part which commerce is made to
perform in the moral government of the world, on the one hand as the
bond of peace between powerful nations, by creating a perpetual
interchange of temporal benefits; and, on the other, as the channel for
the diffusion of blessings of an intellectual and spiritual kind; we are
conducted irresistibly to the conclusion, that any arbitrary
interruption of its free course must draw down its own punishment.

Though the laws of nature may not permit the limited soil of this
country to grow food enough for its teeming population, yet while Great
Britain possesses mineral wealth, abundant capital, and the largest
amount of skilled industry of any nation in the world, the tributary
supplies of other countries would not only satisfy our present wants,
but would, I firmly believe, with an unfettered commerce, raise our
working population, the most numerous, and by far the most important
part of the community, to the same level of prosperity as the same class
in the United States. Then would there be more hope for the success of
efforts to elevate the standard of moral and intellectual cultivation
among them, for as an improvable material they are no way inferior to
any population upon earth. John Curtis of Ohio, a free trade missionary
to this country, has published a pamphlet full of important statistical
facts, illustrating the suicidal policy of Great Britain, from which I
venture to take the following extracts:

"England already obtains luxuries in superabundance; but these
can never supply the wants of her artizans--they demand
substantial bread and meat, and a market where the