that free trade in corn, once turned that marsh not only into a garden, but for a hundred and fifty years maintained it the commercial emporium of Europe, and has never ceased to secure for its inhabitants an abundance of cheap bread, at steady prices, even while the growers of it were themselves in want. How different is the picture, (as to her corn market, we mean,) presented by England, with all her superior advantages! Cutting herself off, as by her corn laws she has done, from the common bounty of Providence, she has been ever liable to all the ruinous fluctuations of her own domestic harvest-now a glut in her grain market-now a scarcitynow a famine. Within the present century, at least five times has she been on the brink of starvation, demanding as often a modification of her laws to meet the emergency. Within the same time prices have fluctuated nearly threefold; from £6 5s. 5d., the Winchester quarter for wheat, as in 1812, to £2 3s. 3d., as in 1822. To estimate the pecuniary loss sustained by England under the operation of these laws, is not an easy task. The injury arising from ruinous fluctuation, is of course not a calculable item; that, however, arising from increased price, may be measured upon the average quantity consumed. Taking that amount at 60,000,000 quarters, (McCulloch's estimate some years since was 52,000,000,) every shilling added to its price by restriction, would be equal to a tax imposed upon the nation of £3,000,000, and supposing the average rise to be equal to 7 shillings, (McCulloch's estimate,) the actual annual loss to the nation would amount to the enormous sum of £21,000,000.

But the advocate of the corn laws has another objection to their removal. It would, say they, ruin the agriculture of England. But what, we ask, has it done in the Netherlands? Let such arguer, we say, visit that garden of Europe, and judge for himself; and when he there sees every foot of land made productive under the hand of labor, and even soils destined it would appear by nature to perpetual sterility, through patient industry, and the blessing of CHEAP BREAD, turned to profit, (such soils, for instance, as in England remain uncultivated to the extent of millions of acres,) then will he receive a practical answer to his doubts on this point, and have, at least, one barrier removed from the rightful decision of the question at home.

Now it is somewhat strange, and to us, as American economists, not very flattering, that from our own chief

magistrate should have recently come the authority most quoted against ourselves in this matter. In the late decisive vote in the British house of lords, against the introduction of American corn, we find, according to the London Spectator of June 11th, Lord Melbourne quoting Mr. Van Buren to this effect. "I lay great stress," said his lordship, " on Mr. Van Buren's opinion, of the hazard of depending upon foreign nations for a supply of corn." So much, we say, for our rulers making their state papers political essays, and teaching false science besides, to have it cast in our teeth by foreigners, as if it were the recognised judgment of the nation. But whatever be the strength or the weakness, politically speaking, of the corn laws of England, they stand, so long as they shall stand, a monument of ignorance in the eyes of the political economist, false in reasoning, and baseless in principle.

But of this state of things, what is to be the result? one of two consequences, we think, must necessarily follow. Under the great and increasing superabundance of American bread stuffs, England has but two choices, and America, at present, waits her choice-either to take our grain, upon a fixed and moderate duty, a principle already admitted in her temporary act of 1825, which is the only condition on which a permanent national trade can exist, and thus retain, with constant enlargement, the United States as a market for her manufactures; or persisting in her corn laws as they now stand, to close her accounts as rapidly as may be with her best customer, and to see in her henceforward a rival manufacturer, both at home and abroad. The alternative is a simple, clear, and necessary one. Cheapness of bread is a bounty, alike upon foreign trade and upon home manufactures, and which shall predominate, depends upon the course adopted abroad in relation to us. Our wheat will not, however, be long upon our hands, before it begin to sprout up in the form of cloth, hardware, china, and all other shapes of comfort and luxury, for which, abroad, if foreign markets admitted it, it would be the payment. As that trade now stands with England, it is indeed one of utter dependance. England is willing to sell to us, but unwilling to buy from us. America is willing, now, at least, both to buy and sell. The only possible form of trade, in the mean time, between such parties exchanging unequally, must be one of large and increasing credits-such as ours has long been with England,

and such as it must be again, if trade is ever widely reestablished under the existing state of things. But of such enlarged restoration, there is much room for doubt. There is distrust and disinclination on both sides. England now reasons, as she has lately acted, most unwisely, with regard to the past crisis, of which she herself was the moving cause. Even, therefore, should England now be willing to re-establish things as they were, it is still a question, whether her ruined debtor can so easily forget and forgive-or rather, whether the American trader and agriculturist will not prefer to seek their market where they are not exposed to such ruinous caprice; and that is in the domestic exchanges of their own country. It is idle to suppose such feelings not to exist in the United States, and that very widely too; and if so, then, as likely to display themselves, if matters continue as they are, certainly in the determination of much individual capital and enterprise, and it may be in some decided form of national policy-a new tariff, perhaps, or prohibitory duties tending to hasten the change, by making profitable all such conversion of national industry. That such coming change, over our country, is even now "casting its shadows before," no observant American can doubt. For ourselves, we hail it not with pleasure; for such isolation, between countries once named "mother and daughter," accords neither with our feelings nor our judgment. But still, we witness it without surprise, as being the natural, we might almost say, the necessary result of the recent financial course pursued by England, and of her present determination to hold on to the exclusion of American corn. Such policy, while at the same time she withholds her long accustomed American credits, not only awakens such inclination, but at the same time renders, in our judgment, some such countervailing policy almost inevitable.

Again, therefore, we repeat, England has the alternative before her- AMERICAN CUSTOM WITH AMERICAN CORN; or, AMERICA A RIVAL INSTEAD OF A CUSTOMER; a rival too, not only in supplying her own home consumption, but as meeting the English manufacturer in every port, anticipating him in every foreign demand, and in spite of inferiority of capital, contriving to undersell him in every market, and in every form of manufacture, through superior industry, enterprise, economy of labor, and, to crown all, superior cheapness of bread. What would be the eventual result of such competition in foreign markets, England may even now judge, for

she knows well, that wherever the American capital and skill have already taken firm hold of any manufacturewhether fostered in it by our own laws, or forced to it by those of England-the American manufacturer has driven, or is driving, his English rival out of every open foreign market; and we doubt not, in many articles, at this present moment, could successfully drive him from his own. In the coarser cottons, for instance, and some of the hardwares, America is able now to undersell the manufacturers of Manchester and Birmingham at their own doors-and can put up, as she is putting up, machinery in their mills, and locomotives on their rail-ways, cheaper, and not only cheaper, but better, than the best English establishments can now afford to do the same work, and that under all the disadvantage of freight. If such, then, be the result of incidental competition between the two manufacturers, what will it be when awakened by national jealousy, sharpened by all the zeal of individual rivalry, and aided by the acknowledged superiority of American mechanical talent. The result will be little less, we think, in a very few years after their establishment, than a complete transfer of its present manufacturing monopoly from England to America, and with it not a small but a large share of that very surplus capital she now husbands so carefully. What political change must accompany or follow such financial revolution in England, no Englishman can contemplate, we think, without dread, and no philanthropist or christian without sorrow. For England to wane from her long acknowledged supremacy, will be trial enough for a proud people; for her to fall into anarchy would be, even to the mind of an American, like striking the sun from the moral firmament. Let her then, we say, be wise in time; let her by freedom of exchange prolong her date of present empire, and by colonizing the West, identify herself with coming greatness; by her surplus capital and labor, expended on soils far more fertile than her own, let her increase the joy of starving millions in Europe; let her science guide, let her arts adorn, let her religion bless, the rising wilderness; and then, whatever be the date assigned to the fortunes of Old England, the continent of the new world will still preserve her name, her lineage, her fame, her language, and her faith, and be to the coming generations of men what her ancestral land has already been to her- A MOTHER OF MANY NATIONS.

ART. III.-Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Edited by the Executors of his son, John, Earl of Chatham, from the original manuscripts in their possession. In four volumes. London: 1839. John Murray.

THE friends of virtual representation have often boasted, that the most distinguished of their opponents have dated their rise from a rotten borough. The elder Pitt, at the age of twenty-seven, came into parliament from Old Sarum, a seat which his brother had just vacated, and to which he possessed indefeasible claims. The ministry of Sir Robert Walpole was then at its flood. For twenty years it had held undoubted possession of the votes of the house of commons, and the affections of the sovereign; so that, by its subservience to the one, and its corruption of the other, it had obtained what seemed to be a freehold on the government for the lives of two of its monarchs. We do not impute to Sir Robert Walpole the full measure of the corruption of his administration. He held office at a time when nothing but the highest abilities, or most vigilant management, could preserve a ministry from destruction. All party landmarks had been torn away on the triumph of the Hanoverian family, and he found that as every political quack around him was out-bidding him in the market, the only way to make his prescriptions go down, was to gild them. His ranks were continually exposed to defection, because there was no enemy at hand to render union necessary. He found himself raised, by the unexpected death of Queen Anne, from a position in a small and hopeless minority, where he was excluded not only from office, but from court, into the highest office of state, backed not only by the favor of his sovereign, but by the confidence of the kingdom. The tory party, after the ac cession of George I., had no ground of hope, except through the expulsion of the reigning family. However attached the king may have been to their creed, he was compelled from necessity to respond to that of their opponents. The bill of recognition in 1690, the repeal of the non-resisting act, the act of settlement, and the oath of abjuration, had left to the tories no alternative but whiggism or jacobitism. They were thrown into a position which involved them, if they kept their ground, in the grossest inconsistencies. Their