Mr. Derby gets his $7,000,000 of revenue from tobacco, by levying a duty less than one-fourth of the English, that is, twelve cents per lb. on the Northern consumption, which he is content to put at a little more than 58,000,000 lbs., being only one-third of the 175,000,000 lbs., which he says the pamphlet assumes it to be. But in this he is entirely mistaken, for the pamphlet makes no such assumption. On the contrary, it states that the whole crop of the United States was 220,000,000 lbs., and the consumption of France and England 49,000,000 lbs., which would leave only 171,000,000 lbs. for the rest of the world. It then says that the South could supply France and England, and her surplus would furnish twenty-seven pounds per head for her whole population; and that to furnish the Northern population as abundantly, would require 175,000,000 lbs., but it does not say or pretend that the consumption of either population is so large. Such is a specimen of the reviewer's loose habit of quotation and argument. The real consumption of tobacco in the United States in 1849, may be found by adding the difference between the imports and exports to the crop of 1848, which gives us 110,000,000 lbs., and since it is much more generally used at the South than at the North, the consumption by the latter cannot exceed half, or 55,000,000 lbs, but as the production there is 10,000,000, the importation would be only 45,000,000 lbs. This consumption would be greatly diminished by a duty of twelve cents, equal to from 150 to 240 per cent on the present average price of five to eight cents per pound. The English consumption is less than one pound per head, and under this duty the Northern would not exceed three pounds, amounting to 40,000,000 lbs. But as the high duty would greatly stimulate production at home, she would probably buy and import from abroad, only half the quantity, and a duty of twelve cents on 20,000,000 lbs., would yield only $2,400,000 instead of $7,000,000.

Mr. Derby next calculates on $3,000,000 of revenue from rice, molasses, and other Southern produce. What the last is may be inferred from a sentence on the same page, where we are told that the North sells a vast quantity of different articles to the South, and receives payment "in drafts on produce," (exported to Europe,) and "cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, and breadstuffs, lumber, and naval stores." (p. 380.)

Now, as we cannot suppose the North would tax either the cotton necessary for her manufactures, the breadstuffs which feed her operatives, or the lumber or naval stores for her ships and navigation, and as we have already disposed of the sugar and tobacco, it follows that the whole $3,000,000 must be levied on rice and molasses. Mr. Derby does not give the details of the estimate, but it is fair to presume it should be reduced in the same proportion, with these we have just examined, and ought to stand at $1,500,000.

Then the taxes proposed to be levied on Southern produce, instead of $20,000,000, could not yield more than $9,525,000. Nor would the tea and coffee duties bring up the revenue to the desired standard.

The consumption of tea in the United States in 1849 was something more than 13,000,000 lbs., and yet Mr. Derby assumes that the North alone used 10,000,000, which would be more than in the ratio of her whole population to the Southern whites alone! and even this ratio would not be a fair measure, for the whites at the South are composed chiefly of the wealthier classes, and therefore may be presumed to consume more than an average. Again, the coffee consumed in the same year was not quite 151,000,000

lbs., of which Mr. Derby assigns to the hireling States 100,000,000; but the slaves are large consumers of this article, and if the consumption of the two sections was in the ratio of their whole population, the Northern share would be only 88,000,000 lbs.

In truth, tea and coffee are, to a great extent, substitutes for each other, and those who consume more of the one use less of the other; the value of the importations of both, in 1849, was slightly more than $11,200,000, and of this we may safely assume that the Northern consumption was not more than in proportion to the population, or $6,588,000. Now, this consumption would be greatly diminished by the duties that Mr. Derby proposes.

The average value of the tea imported in 1849 was a fraction over twenty-two cents per pound, and the duty of twenty cents would be equivalent to 90 per cent ad valorem. The average value of the coffee was not quite five and a half cents per pound, and the duty of six cents would be 111 per cent ad valorem. These duties are enormously high, and a reference to the official statements (2 Sen. Doc., 1845-6, K. and L.,) will show that the consumption was greatly affected by a lower tax. Instead of a consumption of 10,000,000 lbs. of tea, and 100,000,000 lbs. of coffee, the real Northern consumption, under these duties, would not exceed 4,000,000 of the former, and 40,000,000 of the latter, or a total value of $3,309,000, which, at the proposed duties, would yield a revenue of only $3,400,000, instead of the $8,000,000 which Mr. Derby expects. Add this sum to the revenue before estimated upon Southern produce, and we have for the whole customs revenue of the Northern Union only $12,925,000.

So much for Mr. Derby's estimates. But they are fallacious in a still more important point-for who pays the revenue from sugar, tobacco, rice, molasses, tea, and coffee? Mr. Derby must answer, as he has told us before, that the consumer pays the duty, and as these are the articles which enter most largely into the consumption of the laboring classes, the burden of such a revenue would fall chiefly on them. If it reached $28,000,000, as Mr. Derby estimates, instead of not quite $13,000,000, as I have calculated, then the burden would be only so much the heavier. These taxes on the necessaries of life would press hardest on the very class least able to pay them, and that, too, while it was forced to pay greatly increased prices for the "manufactures of cotton, iron, flax, and wool," which Mr. Derby proposes that the Northern Union should protect by a prohibitory tariff. It is true that he intimates that the North would be as successful in taxing the South without the Union, as she has been in it, and that a part of the revenue raised on importations from the South would "fall upon Louisiana," and "be to the loss of Virginia and Maryland." But this is entirely inconsistent with his repeated assertion that the consumer pays the duty, and we may answer him in his own words, that "the markets of the world are open to him, [the South,] those markets, and not ours, [the Northern,] fix the value of her produce." (p. 380.)

The real effect would be to diminish the Southern market for Northern produce, and thus to sap one of the chief foundations of Northern wealth. Mr. Derby seems to think that the entire loss of this "market for Northern produce" would be unimportant, and that the "annual growth of the North in products is at least 5 per cent, and two years will in great part supply the deficit." Most readers will not see how the loss of a market is remedied by an increase of the products to be sold in it, but New England is a wonderful calculator, and on the same principle, the growth of Northern

products in twenty years would make up for the loss of their whole

market!

I forbear to comment on the idea that their products would be increased 20 per cent by a protective tariff, if the present Union were dissolved, or that a law which would make one species of Northern labor more profitable and another less, without the possibility of increasing the whole amount of labor, would add one-fifth to its products. And I say nothing of Mr. Derby's estimate of a revenue based upon the merchandise purchased with California gold. I should suppose that few persons can believe that California and Oregon would not set up an independent government if this Union were dissolved; still less can it be imagined that they would desert the South, which lies nearer, and commands all the great highways by land and sea, in order to attach themselves to the North, when their peculiar creed is free trade, which Mr. Derby says the North would hasten to prohibit.

It is plain, therefore, that the whole Northern Union would have to rely on direct taxation for its revenue. An inquiry into its effects on the various classes of society, and the distribution of wealth at the North, would be very interesting. The answer would probably afford a more pleasing prospect to Northern laborers than to Northern capitalists; but this is not the place for such a discussion, and I can only recommend it to Mr. Derby's special consideration.

In comparing the relative condition and resources of the two sections without the Union, Mr. Derby says the North has all the seamen and the shipping. But ships are only valuable for Commerce, and Northern shipping derives its chief profit from carrying the Commerce of the South. The Navigation Laws, and the debate upon them, prove that Northern shipping is afraid of foreign competition, even in the coasting trade at home. What, then, would be its fate, if excluded from the South, or what advantage could it derive from ". access to all the ports and Commerce of the world," where it would meet on equal terms the rivalry it so much dreads?

The reviewer entirely misrepresents, by his quotation torn from the context, the statement of the pamphlet in regard to the condition of the Northern operatives. It draws a picture, not too highly colored, of the state of the laboring class in Europe, and proves that it is the consequence, in great part, of the pressure of population upon the supply of food. It is not asserted that Northern laborers are now in as bad a condition; but the question is asked, what security has the North that the same inexorable fatality will not overtake her? For, on the one hand, population increases there at double the natural rate. "The pauper labor of Europe," whose competition across the ocean is so much dreaded by the protectionist party, is pouring into the North at the rate of 300,000 per annum, and competing with her native laborers at their own doors. It actually expels them; it is said that the factory laborers of Massachusetts are now chiefly foreigners, and that the whole increase of her population since 1840 has been from foreign immigration, while the native population has diminished.* On the other hand, the supply of food does not increase in equal ratio, even in the whole North, with the population. The several censuses of 1840, 1845, and 1850, show a steady and rapid decline in the agricultural products of Massachusetts, and probably the same will be found true of all New England.

⚫ I speak on the authority of a recent statement in the Boston Transcript.

I call atttention to the remarkable statement in the note below, taken from a recent article by Mr. Kettell of New York.*

In the face of such facts, it is useless for Mr. Derby to talk of what science may possibly accomplish for the agriculture of England, who is daily becom ing more dependent on the foreigner for food, or to refer us to the fertile States of the North-west. The best judges declare that the soil is not inexhaustible even there, and that a positive decline of production in some quarters, and constant complaint of wheat winter-killed, rusted, &c., are the first signs of approaching failure. And if the Union were dissolved, how long will these agricultural States, whose interest is free trade, hold together with the Eastern States, who clamor for protection? Mr. Derby seems to think (p. 376,) that when the former States are "severed" from the South, their Commerce will not pass through New Orleans or Mobile, although he holds up to our admiration Holland, commanding the Commerce of the whole world, whose States were equally severed from her. But let New England take care that the North-west is not also divided from her. "Events may easily be imagined which would separate a Northern confederacy into two parts, the one, (the North-west,) leaning towards the South, and the other, (the North-east,) relying on a Canadian connection." (The Union, &c., p. 36.) In such an event, the Eastern States may themselves want that "scion of Victoria," whom Mr. Derby so kindly offers to the South. Such a ruler would certainly not have been foreign to New England at the time of the Hartford Convention, and even now would not be unsuitable to the tastes of the Boston millionaires, who so greatly affect British manners. If the pamphlet said that the population of the hireling States would outgrow the means of subsistence, and have to look to the slave States for a supply of food, it is fully justified by these considerations.

The farming interest shows, it appears, an entirely different state of affairs from the busy increase of the manufacturing population; and Massachusetts, precisely like England, has become almost entirely dependent upon other and distant regions for food and raw materials, and the analogy is extended to an apparent determination on the part of some of her citizens to qaurrel with those on whom her dependence is greatest. With an increasing demand for food, her production has decreased to almost the same extent. The import of flour into Boston in 1840 and 1850 was as follows:

The materials to employ hands, and the food to feed them, have been largely imported in increasing tonnage, while Massachusetts farms are less productive. The most remarkable decline however, is in sheep.

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Volumes are spoken on this subject by the single fact already shown, that according to the last census, and the Patent Office Reports, the Southern man may consume as much grain and meat as the Northern raises, and yet have a surplus for sale. Despite these facts, Mr. Derby tells us that “the factory operative eats fresh meat oftener than" (not the Southern slave, but) "the Southern planter!" In fact, these operatives are a wonderful people, from our reviewer's account. They own comfortable brick houses, or white cottages embowered in trees," the girls wear tasteful bonnets and silk frocks," and, I suppose, the men are clad in broadcloth and velvet! They consume untold quantities of "valuables from abroad," of sugar, and tea, and coffee, &c., and "fresh meat," and other "excellent fare;" they hold shares in the factories, and millions in the savings' bank! And yet, despite all this, they drudge and toil on, by manual labor at the loom, for twelve or fourteen hours a day, as the reports from the New England factories tell us-all, I presume, for the mere honor and glory of the country! "They form," says Mr. Derby, "a vast middle class;" but a middle class, implies one lower, and if the day laborers are the middle class at the North, who are the lower? He tells us that this middle class is "almost without a parallel;" that it" accumulates in savings banks, builds houses, ships, wharves, factories, and rolls up commercial capital,” (p. 377,) and elsewhere (p. 381,) he says that the accumulations in the savings banks are more than $13,000,000. But to whom do these accumulations belong? I suspect they are like the "houses, ships, wharves, and factories," which are not the property of the laborers who build them. I could easily find a parallel for such employments of the laboring class. Nay, even if the whole of $13,000,000 of savings be the property of the manufacturing operatives of Massachusetts, who were 128,000 in 1845, and are now many more, it would be considerably less than $100 per head, and a "parallel" may still be found; for these operatives are generally picked hands in the prime of life, and it would not be difficult to select a larger number of slaves in the cotton and sugar States, whose savings, that is, the perquisites and pocketmoney they make for themselves in the time allowed them by their masters, would average more.

The fact then remains unimpeached, that population already presses harder on the means of subsistence at the North, than at the South, and it gives clear indications of soon pressing still harder. It cannot be escaped, by statements on paper, of the wealth of Massachusetts, in which the value of the cotton and other material of her manufactures, is counted as a part of her productions; and when the same values enter the count again and again, under different heads! The pamphlet adduced, as one of the signs of the growing pressure of population upon food, the increasing pauperism of the North, and especially of Massachusetts. Mr. Derby replies, that this increase is due to the emigration of the unfortunate Irish. The answer is insufficient, for it admits that the supply of labor increases faster than the means of employment, which would be made much worse by losing, with the Union, all the employment afforded by the command of the Commerce of the South; but, in fact, this large foreigu emigration has become the normal condition of Northern population; it supplies the cheap labor-the white slaves--which sustain her industry-her operators are chiefly Irish. But is it true that the Irish emigration is the only cause of increased pauperism? I quote from the American Almanac, good Boston authority. The whole number of paupers in Massachusetts, in 1848, was 18,693. In