industry of England and her European rivals; we mean, to British India. There we find a deficiency of capital, an abundance of fertile territory, a consequent surplus of agricultural produce, and a lack of skill in manufacture which can only be gained by long experience under a strict protective policy, such as England has enjoyed for nearly two centuries; all these circumstances strongly reminding us of corresponding features in our own condition. Now, the Governor-General of India, in a recent correspondence with the East India Company on the subject of the Dacca weavers, makes this statement: "Some years ago, the East India Company annually received of the produce of the looms of India to the amount of six million to eight million pieces of cotton goods. The demand gradually fell, and has now ceased altogether. European skill and machinery have superseded the produce of India. Cotton piece-goods, for ages the staple manufacture of India, seem forever lost; and the present suffering to numerous classes in India is scarcely to be paralleled in the history of commerce."

We have introduced this example especially because it throws light upon another reason for the establishment of a protective policy, in America as well as in India; -we mean, the great difference in the cost of transportation between raw materials and manufactured goods, which operates greatly to the advantage of the country producing the latter, because manufactures have much the greater value in the smaller weight and bulk. Rice, wheat, cotton, and sugar are among what might be called the greatest natural exports. of India, as they are produced there very cheaply in great abundance. The average price of wheat at Calcutta is less than fifty cents a bushel; but the freight and other charges of transporting that bushel to England and selling it there amount to about eighty cents. England, therefore, though she has abolished her corn laws, enjoys a virtual protective duty against wheat from India, amounting to one hundred and sixty per cent. The cost of transporting English manufactured goods to India cannot, on an average, exceed forty per cent. of their value. The difference between these two rates, amounting to one hundred and twenty per cent., is, of course, really prohibitive in its effects; and India wheat is not brought to England at all. The difference in the cost of

transporting raw materials and manufactured goods across the Atlantic is certainly not so great as in sending them round the Cape of Good Hope; but it is enough to give a very important advantage in the traffic 'to England. Our chief article of export, raw cotton, is a very bulky one; and even breadstuffs and tobacco are more expensive, both for land and sea carriage, than the cheapest manufactures of the loom. We speak of the carriage, by land as well as sea, because the greater part of the raw material that we export is raised far in the interior, and the cost of bringing most of it to the Atlantic coast far exceeds that of carrying it over the ocean. On the other hand, our chief articles of import from Great Britain, with the possible exception of pig and bar iron, are of the finer species of manufacture, and therefore contain great value within little weight and bulk. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the average charges of transportation of so many different articles; but it would be perfectly safe to consider the difference as twenty per cent. on the whole value of the goods in favor of England; that is, as an English protective tariff to that extent. In other words, if we send a million of dollars' worth of raw material to England, we must pay thirty per cent. on its value for carriage, before it is admitted; while on a million of dollars' worth of fine manufactured goods received in exchange, the English have to pay but ten per cent. Consequently, on the very principles of free trade, which means nothing but trade with equal advantages to the two parties, we ought to levy a general protective duty of twenty per cent.

One other consideration in favor of what may be called the American system we must mention, because it affords an answer to an argument frequently and strenuously urged on the other side. It is said that a protective duty raises the cost to the consumer, not only of those goods which are imported, and which therefore pay the duty, but of those also which are manufactured within the country, and sold at an enhanced price, because they are in a great measure protected against foreign competition. We have already alluded to the fact which does away with at least half the force of this argument; namely, that a protective duty, being designed as a check to injurious fluctuations of price, is graduated with reference to the lowest price at which the foreign commodity

is ever sold, and not with reference to the average price. Thus, a duty of thirty, may not raise the average price more than fifteen, per cent., and this last may be the whole amount of real protection that the American manufacturer needs; but to secure this protection at all times, the duty must be fixed at thirty per cent., because circumstances may sometimes. force the foreign commodity upon the market at a price fifteen per cent. below its ordinary value. But farther, — this expressionforcing upon the market' points to another fact of frequent recurrence in trade, which demonstrates the necessity of placing a check upon excessive imports. The reaction of a commercial crisis in England, making dealers there eager to get rid of a large quantity of goods at almost any price, or the beginning of such a crisis in America, when the speculative fever tempts importers to accumulate stocks to a ruinous extent, may cause a glut in our market of many commodities at once, depressing the value of the whole exchangeable produce of the country to a degree far beyond the proportion which the stocks of those commodities bear to the aggregate of that produce. We have seen that the abstraction of a third part of the ordinary supply may double the price, or fail to raise it more than one sixth, according as the article is one of prime necessity, or one which people can easily do without. So the addition of a third to the ordinary stock of goods on hand may sink the price, not merely in proportion to that increase, but to one half of its former amount. The whole stock, then, both of foreign and domestic products, must be sold at this ruinous sacrifice.

But on this great question between free-trade and protective policy, these considerations of immediate pecuniary loss and gain do not deserve so much notice as the circumstances which we considered at length in our last number, -resulting from the devotion of the greater part of our people to rude or skilled labor, and from their consequent collection into towns and cities, or wide dispersion over the face of the country. Viewed in this light, we confess, the question seems to be one between progress in civilization and the arts, or a gradual return, we will not say to barbarism, but to that very imperfect stage of civilization which exists in all countries where the population are almost exclusively devoted to agriculture. The best legislative policy is that which will

most effectually develop all the natural advantages of a country, whether mental or material. To give full scope to all the varieties of taste, genius, and temperament; to foster inventive talent; to afford adequate encouragement to all the arts, whether mechanical, or those which are usually distinguished as the fine, arts; to concentrate the people, or to bring as large a portion of them as possible within the sphere of the humanizing influences and larger means of mental culture and social improvement which can only be found in cities and large towns; - these are objects which deserve at least as much attention as the inquiry where we can purchase calicoes cheapest, or how great pecuniary sacrifice must be made before we can manufacture railroad iron for ourselves. We see not how these ends can be obtained in a country like ours, which is, so to speak, cursed with great advantages for agriculture, emigration, and the segregation of the people from each other, without throwing over our manufacturing industry, at least for half a century to come, the broad shield of an effective protecting tariff. We shall need this shield only while we are passing through the term of our pupilage and apprenticeship, which, for a nation, of course, is always a protracted one; we shall need it, to adopt Burke's phrase, only while we are in the gristle, and have not yet hardened into the bone, of manhood. When we have enjoyed, as England has already enjoyed, the benefit of a strict protective policy for over a century, for the purpose of completing our education in manufactures, then we shall be ready to do, what England at last has done, to throw down all barriers, and to invite the world to compete with us in the application of industry and skill to any enterprise designed to satisfy the wants of man.

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E. H. Chase.

ART. V.-Report of a General Plan for the Promotion of Public and Personal Health, devised, prepared, and recommended by the Commissioners appointed by the Legislature of Massachusetts, relating to a Sanitary Survey of the State. Boston: Dutton & Wentworth, State Printers. 1850. 1850. 8vo. 8vo. pp. 544.

THE character and purpose of sanitary science are such, that every one is directly interested in diffusing a knowledge of it as widely as possible. It does not, like medical science, offer to cure diseases, but aims to prevent them. It is based upon well-observed and accurately-recorded facts. Drawing its inferences from a careful observation of the lamentable results of the actual mode of life, both of communities and individuals, it does not present a new theory of living, but points out the evils which may be avoided, and the advantages which may be gained by obedience to sanitary laws. It is no vague project for lengthening the natural term of life. It holds out no promise of an earthly immortality, or of an existence which shall be reckoned by centuries. Its only promise is to remove whatever artificially curtails or saddens our mortal life. When the old pass away, we are sad, but not comfortless. "Some natural tears are shed," as we receive their parting blessing; but we have faith, even amidst our tears, that it is a merciful dispensation which calls them to another life. But it is not so when infancy dies, or when youth and manhood perish by the roadside. When the silver cord is loosed before the music of the harp has been heard; when the golden bowl is broken before the waters of life have filled it, then our hearts are desolate and refuse to be comforted. It is the death of the young, the premature blighting of the flower in the bud, which, more than any other affliction, requires for its consolation the exercise of the highest Christian faith. The instincts of nature refuse to believe, that because such trials are permitted by the Great Disposer of life, they were therefore intended always to exist. From the details of sanitary science, from the forbidding statistical columns of Health Returns and Registration Reports, we learn the comforting lesson, that these saddest of all afflictions are owing more to the transgressions of man than to the