Besides the general prosperity of the operatives, the shareholders in the different corporations divide from eight to fifteen per cent, per annum on their capital.

The inquiry naturally suggests itself, why the state of things in the manufacturing districts of Great Britain should be so widely different from this?  Some may satisfy themselves by recollecting that England is an old and America a young country; though, to my mind, this affords no reasonable explanation of the contrast—­since, from the possession of surplus capital, complete machinery, and facility of communication, et cet., the advantages for commerce and manufactures, under a system of perfectly unrestricted exchange, must preponderate greatly in favor of the former.  But whatever the solution of the difficulty, it is quite evident that the statesman who would elevate the moral standard of our working population, must begin by removing the physical depression and destitution in which a large proportion of them, without any fault of their own, are compelled to drag out a weary and almost hopeless existence.  To some peculiarly constituted minds, “over-production” is the explanation of the present appalling distresses of this country; and what they are pleased to consider a healthy state of things, is to be restored by a diminution of production;—­yet nothing is more certain, than that the largest amount of production which has ever been reached, is not more than adequate to supply our increasing population with the necessaries of life, on even a very limited scale of comfort.  A diminished production implies the starving down of the population to such a diminished number as may obtain leave to toil, and leave to subsist, from legislators, who, either in ignorance or selfishness, set aside nature’s laws, and disregard the plainly legible ordinances of Divine Providence.  If we reflect on the part which commerce is made to perform in the moral government of the world, on the one hand as the bond of peace between powerful nations, by creating a perpetual interchange of temporal benefits; and, on the other, as the channel for the diffusion of blessings of an intellectual and spiritual kind; we are conducted irresistibly to the conclusion, that any arbitrary interruption of its free course must draw down its own punishment.

Though the laws of nature may not permit the limited soil of this country to grow food enough for its teeming population, yet while Great Britain possesses mineral wealth, abundant capital, and the largest amount of skilled industry of any nation in the world, the tributary supplies of other countries would not only satisfy our present wants, but would, I firmly believe, with an unfettered commerce, raise our working population, the most numerous, and by far the most important part of the community, to the same level of prosperity as the same class in the United States.  Then would there be more hope for the success of efforts to elevate the standard of moral and intellectual cultivation among them, for as an improvable material they are no way inferior to any population upon earth.  John Curtis of Ohio, a free trade missionary to this country, has published a pamphlet full of important statistical facts, illustrating the suicidal policy of Great Britain, from which I venture to take the following extracts: