hat the trade of the
world is in the hands of Great Britain; that she absorbs most of every
nation's raw material; and that she and France supply the world with
ten thousand articles of industry, that should furnish work to our
manufacturers, and freight to our ships? There are some who will say
that it is because of her manufacturing system. Grant it. But how did
she establish that imperious, and overshadowing, and powerful system,
and how does she keep it up? Her energetic people have ever had the
fostering care of her government. Their steam mail system has been
established for twenty-four years. It has furnished the people with
the means of easy transport, rapid correspondence, the remittance of
specie, and the shipment of light manufactured goods to every corner
of the world; it has invited foreigners from every land to her shores
and her markets; and it has been the means of throwing the raw
material of the whole world into the lap of the British manufacturer
and artisan, and enabling them thus to control the markets in every
land.

But we can get along, it is said, without such a manufacturing system
and such an ubiquity of trade. This is a mistake. The productions of
our soil are not sufficiently indispensable to the outer world to
bring us all of the money we need for importing the millions of
foreign follies, to which our people have become attached. It is not
right or best for us that while our "Lowell Drillings" stand
preeminent over the world, we should so far neglect the Brazilian, La
Platan, New-Granadian, Venezuelan, and East-Indian trade, that
Manchester shall continue, as she now does, to manufacture an inferior
fabric, post it off by her steamers, forestall the market, and cheat
us out of our profits; and that, by means of the reputation which our
skill has produced. And a few more crises like the one through which
we have just begun to pass, will open our eyes to the necessity of
doing something ourselves to make money, and show that foreign trade
in every form, and the sale of every species of product known to the
industry of a skillful people, must be watched with jealous national
and individual care, and nurtured as we would nurture a young and
tender child. There are many fields of trade which may be said to
pertain naturally to this country, and which we have as wholly
neglected and yielded to Great Britain, as if she had a divine right
to the monopoly of the entire commerce of the world. No on