ut our aid. But, if we refuse to trade on equal
terms, her wants will not, therefore, go unsupplied. She can
manufacture for herself--her resources for manufactures and
commerce are, at least, equal to our own, with the exception of
capital and population, which the lapse of a few more years will
supply.

"The present may justly be considered a crisis in the commercial
policy of America. If it be decided that foreign markets are to
continue closed against American corn--if England, which is the
principal corn market of the world, refuse to exchange the
produce of her mills and workshops for that of the fields of the
Americans, they have no other alternative than to erect mills
and workshops from which to supply themselves. The effect of
such a course would prove decisive on the trade with England,
and go far to complete the ruin so effectually begun by the
British corn law and corresponding restrictions. If forced from
employment on the land, which an abundant and fertile soil has
naturally made their most profitable one, it will be found that
the Americans lack neither the talent, the energy, nor the
means, at once to extend their present manufactures to the full
supply of their own wants. They have water-power, coal, and
iron, in greater natural abundance and perfection than any other
part of the world."[A]

[Footnote A: "The United States are computed to contain not less
than eighty thousand square miles of coal, or sixteen times as
much as Europe. One of these coal fields extends nine hundred
miles in length. The State of Pennsylvania has ten thousand
square miles of coal and iron. Great Britain and Ireland have
two thousand. All the north-western States of America contain
large quantities of coal. The coal strata of the States
generally lie above the level of the streams, and the coal is
taken from the hill sides. The beds of coal and iron are to a
great extent contiguous."]

This is not mere theory. The developement is actually begun:

"A few years since, the country smiths, and the matrons with
their daughters at the household wheel and loom, were the
principal manufacturers of America. Now the cotton mills alone
are computed at one thousand, and the capital invested in
manufacturing machinery at L23,500,000. The estimated value of
some of the principal