erately prosperous until these evil times came on.

Annually, however, for some years, he has been going backwards. Not less industrious, not less frugal, he has yet found, that, however good nominally the prices he might receive at the South and Southwest for his tools, the cost of converting his Southern or Western funds into money current in New England was ruinous. He has persevered, however, always hoping for some change for the better, and contracting gradually the circle of his work and the number of his workmen, until at length, the little earnings of the past wasted, and the condition of the currency becoming worse and worse, he is reduced to bankruptcy; and he, and the twenty families that he supported, are beggared by no fault of their own. What was his difficulty? He could not escape from the evils of bad laws and bad currency at home; and while his rich neighbor, who could and did, is made richer by these very causes, he, the honest and industrious mechanic, is crushed to the earth; and yet we are told that this is a system for promoting the interests of the poor!

This leads me naturally to the great subject of American labor, which has hardly been considered or discussed as carefully as it deserves. What is American labor? It is best described. by saying, it is not European labor. Nine tenths of the whole labor of this country is performed by those who cultivate the land they or their fathers own, or who, in their workshops, employ some little capital of their own own, and mix it up with their manual toil. No such thing exists in other countries. Look at the different departments of industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or mechanical, and you will find that, in almost all, the laborers mix up some little capital with the work of their hands. The laborer of the United States is the United States. Strike out the laborers of the United States, including therein all who in some way or other belong to the industrious and working classes, and you reduce the population of the United States from sixteen millions to one million. The American laborer is expected to have a comfortable home, decent though frugal living, and to be able to clothe and educate his children, to qualify them to take part, as all are called to do, in the political affairs and government of their country. Can this be said of any European laborer? Does he take any share in

the government of his country, or feel it an obligation to educate his children? In most parts of Europe, nine tenths of the laborers have no interest in the soil they cultivate, nor in the fabrics they produce; no hope, under any circumstances, of rising themselves, or of raising their children, above the condition of a day-laborer at wages; and only know the government under which they live by the sense of its burdens, which they have no voice in mitigating.

To compare such a state of labor with the labor of this country, or to reason from that to ours, is preposterous. And yet the doctrine now is, not of individuals only, but of the administration, that the wages of American labor must be brought down to the level of those of Europe.

I have said this is not the doctrine of a few individuals; and on that head I think injustice has been done to a Senator from Pennsylvania, who has been made to bear a large share of the responsibility of suggesting such a policy. If I mistake not, the same idea is thrown out in the President's message at the commencement of the last session, and in the treasury report. Hear what Mr. Woodbury says:

"Should the States not speedily suspend more of their undertakings which are unproductive, but, by new loans or otherwise, find means to employ armies of laborers in consuming rather than raising crops, and should prices thus continue in many cases to be unnaturally inflated, as they have been of late years, in the face of a contracting currency, the effect of it on our finances would be still more to lessen exports, and, consequently, the prosperity and revenue of our foreign trade."

He is for turning off from the public works these "armies of laborers," who consume without producing crops, and thus bring down prices, both of crops and labor. Diminish the mouths. that consume, and multiply the arms that produce, and you have the treasury prescription for mitigating distress and raising prices! How would that operate in this great State? You have, perhaps, some fifteen thousand men employed on your public works, works of the kind that the Secretary calls "unproductive"; and, even with such a demand as they must produce for provisions, prices are very low. The Secretary's remedy is to set them to raise provisions themselves, and thus augment

the supply, while they diminish the demand. In this way, the wages of labor are to be reduced, as well as the prices of agricultural productions. But this is not all. I have in my hand an extract from a speech in the House of Representatives of a zealous supporter, as it appears, of the administration, who maintains that, other things being reduced in proportion, you may reduce the wages of labor, without evil consequences. And where does he seek this example? On the shores of the MediHe fixes upon Corsica and Sardinia. But what is the Corsican laborer, that he should be the model upon which American labor is to be formed? Does he know any thing himself? Has he any education, or does he give any to his children? Has he a home, a freehold, and the comforts of life around him? No: with a crust of bread and a handful of olives, his daily wants are satisfied. And yet, from such a state of society, the laborer of New England, the laborer of the United States, is to be taught submission to low wages. The extract before me states that the wages of Corsica are,

"For the male laborer, 24 cents a day;

And the female do. 11 cents do." ;

both, I presume, finding their own food. And the honorable gentleman argues, that, owing to the greater cheapness of other articles, this is relatively as much as the American laborer gets; and he illustrates the fact by this bill of clothing for a Corsican laborer:

Eight francs are equal to one dollar and sixty cents, and five francs to one dollar. Now, what say you, my friends? What will the farmer of New York, of Pennsylvania, or of New England say to the idea of walking on Sunday to church, at the head of his family, in his jacket two years old? What will the young man say, when, his work ended, he desires to visit the families of his neighbors, to the one pair of pantaloons, not

quite two years old, indeed, but, as the farmers say of a colt, "coming two next grass," and which, for eighteen months, have every day done yeoman's service? Away with it all! Away with this plan for humbling and degrading the free, intelligent, well-educated, and well-paid laborer of the United States to the level of the almost brute laborer of Europe!

There is not much danger that schemes and doctrines such as these shall find favor with the people. They understand their own interest too well for that. Gentlemen, I am a farmer, on the sea-shore, and have, of course, occasion to employ some degree of agricultural labor. I am sometimes also rowed out to sea, being, like other New England men, fond of occasionally catching a fish, and finding health and recreation, in warm weather, from the air of the ocean. For the few months during which I am able to enjoy this retreat from labor, public or professional, I do not often trouble my neighbors, or they me, with conversation on politics. It happened, however, about three weeks ago, that, on such an excursion as I have mentioned, with one man only with me, I mentioned this doctrine of the reduction of prices, and asked him his opinion of it. He said he did not like it. I replied, "The wages of labor, it is true, are reduced; but then flour and beef, and perhaps clothing, all of which you buy, are reduced also. What, then, can be your objections?" "Why," said he, "it is true that flour is now low; but then it is an article that may rise suddenly, by means of a scanty crop in England, or at home; and if it should rise from five dollars to ten, I do not know for certain that it would fetch the price of my labor up with it. But while wages are high, then I am safe; and if produce chances to fall, so much the better for me. But there is another thing. I have but one thing to sell, that is, my labor; but I must buy many things, not only flour, and meat, and clothing, but also some articles that come from other countries, a little sugar, a little coffee, a little tea, a little of the common spices, and such like. Now, I do not see how these foreign articles will be brought down by reducing wages at home; and before the price is brought down of the only thing I have to sell, I want to be sure that the prices will fall also, not of a part, but of all the things which I must buy."

Now, Gentlemen, though he will be astonished, or amused,

that I should tell the story before such a vast and respectable assemblage as this, I will place this argument of Seth Peterson, sometimes farmer and sometimes fisherman on the coast of Massachusetts, stated to me while pulling an oar with each hand, and with the sleeves of his red shirt rolled up above his elbows, against the reasonings, the theories, and the speeches of the administration and all its friends, in or out of Congress, and take the verdict of the country, and of the civilized world, whether he has not the best of the argument.

Since I have adverted to this conversation, Gentlemen, allow me to say that this neighbor of mine is a man fifty years of age, one of several sons of a poor man; that by his labor he has obtained some few acres, his own unencumbered freehold, has a comfortable dwelling, and plenty of the poor man's blessings. Of these, I have known six, decently and cleanly clad, each with the book, the slate, and the map proper to its age, all going at the same time daily to enjoy the blessing of that which is the great glory of New England, the common free school. Who can contemplate this, and thousands of other cases like it, not as pictures, but as common facts, without feeling how much our free institutions, and the policy hitherto pursued, have done for the comfort and happiness of the great mass of our citizens? Where in Europe, where in any part of the world out of our own country, shall we find labor thus rewarded, and the general condition of the people so good? Nowhere; nowhere! Away, then, with the injustice and the folly of reducing the cost of productions with us to what is called the common standard of the world! Away, then, away at once and for ever, with the miserable policy which would bring the condition of a laborer in the United States to that of a laborer in Russia or Sweden, in France or Germany, in Italy or Corsica! Instead of following these examples, let us hold up our own, which all nations may well envy, and which, unhappily, in most parts of the earth, it is easier to envy than to imitate.

But it is the cry and effort of the times to stimulate those who are called poor against those who are called rich; and yet, among those who urge this cry, and seek to profit by it, there is betrayed sometimes an occasional sneer at whatever savors of humble life. Witness the reproach against a candidate now before the people for their highest honors, that a log cabin, with plenty of hard cider, is good enough for him!