This whole hue-and-cry about higher duties on coarse goods is theoretic. It leaves out of consideration that domestic production which is not merely supplying our own market, but is sending thousands of bales of cotton cloth to Calcutta, in the face of a discriminating duty in favor of its British rival, and is exhibiting the truly oriental spectacle of British drills in American drillings! It is a fact, that the troops of the greatest cottonmanufacturing country in the world are wearing, on the plains of what was once the greatest cotton-growing country of the world, pantaloons and jackets made of American cotton and in American mills! Indeed, it is the exportation of these articles to Calcutta and China which has enabled some of the manufacturers to make those great dividends of which we have heard so much. Now, every schoolboy must understand, that this export trade could not go on for an instant, unless the American drillings were cheaper and better than the British.

Gentlemen on the other side rest all their arguments on the hypothesis that our laboring classes actually wear foreign clothing. They seem to entertain the idea that the American laborer goes out to his work in the morning in a Manchester shirt, a London hat, and a Paris boot! And if he does not now, they are for making him do so at the earliest moment. What a picture! Why, an American working-man would not know himself in a looking-glass, in such an attire. Every body knows that we supply these things ourselves, and supply them at a

cheaper rate, and of a better quality, than others would supply them if there were no duty. And we can continue to do so, if we can only keep our own market to ourselves. But even if it were not so, even if the foreign fabrics of this sort could be procured a few cents cheaper, I believe in my soul that the American laborer would scorn such economy. The independent yeomanry of this country will never again be content to be dependent on any other country for the manufacture and making up of their daily dress. They do not understand the democracy, the Americanism, of such wear. The farmers and mechanics are yet to declare themselves, who would not be willing to pay a cent or two more, either for their weekday jackets, or their Sunday suits, for the sake of having them homemade. Such

clothes, if they were dearer at all, would be dearer in more senses of the word than one. They would be associated with that National Pride, of which, even the coldest abstractionist in these halls could not fail to have felt some touches, as he visited the late National Fair; and which, though it may be derided by politicians and economists, is to the common heart above all calculations of moneyed value. They would be associated, too, with that National Independence, which was but half achieved by the arms of our Fathers, and which remains to be consummated by the arts of their sons. The workingmen of this country, I verily believe, if interrogated upon such a point, would answer, as Benjamin Franklin answered at the bar of the British House of Commons in the days of the Stamp-Act:

"What used to be the pride of Americans?"

"To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain."

"What is now their pride?"

"To wear their old clothes over again, until they can make new ones for themselves."

Mr. Chairman, there are many other points which I had proposed to touch, but I have only time to conclude with the following propositions, which briefly embody all that I have said, and much that I would have said.

I maintain, then :

1. That provision ought promptly to be made for furnishing the government with whatever additional revenues and resources may be necessary for bringing the existing war with Mexico to a just and speedy conclusion, and establishing an honorable peace. 2. That no additional revenue can be relied on from the bill now under consideration, either as originally reported, or with the modifications which have been proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury; but that, on the contrary, the whole experience of the country shows that the operation of such a bill would be materially to diminish the revenue.

3. That this bill is, at best, a mere experiment, and one which, there is great reason to fear, would result in both curtailing the resources of the government, and crippling the industry of the people; and that in adopting an entire system of ad valorem duties, it would open the door to all manner of inequalities and frauds, and would be especially oppressive to the honest American merchant.

4. That the tariff of 1842 has proved itself for three years past emphatically a revenue tariff; yielding, with signal uniformity, and in precise correspondence with the calculations of its framers, a net average annual revenue of nearly twenty-seven mil lions of dollars, and at once protecting the labor and enriching the treasury of the

nation; and that no substantial modification- certainly no material reduction of the duties which it imposes, would be likely to yield any thing like an equal amount to the government.

5. That an issue of eight or ten millions of treasury notes, and the imposition of moderate specific duties on tea and coffee, for a short term of years, and for the single purpose of defraying the expenses of the war, are the only measures for increasing the resources and revenues of the nation which can be adopted with any reasonable pros pect of success; and that, unless the administration and its friends intend to take the responsibility of resorting to direct taxation, or of incurring a large national debt, these measures ought to be adopted by them without delay.

WHIG PREDICTIONS AND WHIG POLICY.

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE STATE CONVENTION OF THE WHIGS OF MASSACHUSETTS, IN FANEUIL HALL, SEPTEMBER 23, 1846.

I SHOULD have preferred on many accounts, Mr. President, to remain still longer a listener on this occasion, and to postpone until a later hour, if not altogether, any remarks of my own. But I cannot hesitate to respond, without further delay, to the unequivocal and cordial summons which has now been made upon me. Indeed, Sir, I am proud to participate, at any time, and in ever so humble a way, in the proceedings of such a meeting as I see before me. The mere presence at it, to those who have been so lately and so long confined to far other company, is a privilege which you and I, at least, know how to appreciate." I rejoice to see once more the faces of so many true-hearted Whigs of Massachusetts; — faces, not a few of which have been familiar to me in other years, and in other fields of public or political service; - faces, all of which I may greet as the faces of friends, if there be any thing of truth in the saying of the great Roman orator, that one of the strongest bonds of human friendship is, "to think alike concerning the Republic."

Nor, Sir, can I find it in my heart to regret that this Convention is assembled here, in this city, covered with memorials of the patriotism of the fathers, and of the philanthropy and munificence of their sons; and in this hall, devoted, from the first, to human liberty, and whose echoes are ever true to the cause to which it was consecrated. And not of liberty alone, much less

Hon. Charles Hudson was in the Chair, having just returned with Mr. Winthrop from a protracted session of Congress.

of Boston alone, or of Massachusetts alone, do these venerated columns, or yonder votive canvas, speak to us, but of "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."

We meet this day, Mr. President and Gentlemen, under circumstances of more than ordinary interest. Rarely, if ever, have so many momentous issues been presented at once to our consideration. When we were assembled in this hall last year, the administration, against whose accession to power we had so vigorously but so vainly struggled, had but just entered on the threshold of their career. Their principles and purposes had only found expression on paper or in words, in the resolutions of some Baltimore convention, in the manifestoes of some mass meeting, or in the hardly more dignified phrases of an inaugural message. We had, then, some reason, or at least some room, for hoping, that their practice might fall short of their professions; that their bite might be less bad than their bark; that they might not be quite willing, or if willing, not quite able, to carry out to their full consummation the plans they had so boldly avowed. A year of action has since ensued; a year of busy, earnest, varied, crowded, action. Their whole policy has now been prac tically disclosed and developed. There is scarcely a subject in the whole wide field of national legislation, which has failed to receive the impression, the deep and strong impression, of their ruling hand. Questions foreign and questions domestic, questions of currency and questions of commerce, questions moral and questions material, questions of peace and questions of war, questions of labor and questions of liberty, have been drawn, with startling rapidity, within the sphere of their deliberation, and have received the unequivocal stamp of their deci sion.

Their acts are now before us. We now know them by their fruits. And it well becomes us to examine those fruits, and to see for whom they are meat, and for whom they are poison.

In pursuing such an examination ever so cursorily, Mr. President, no man who hears me can fail to be struck with the complete coincidence which is found, between the predictions which were pronounced by the Whig presses and the Whig speakers, two years ago, as to the consequences of Mr. Polk's election to