build up a manufacturing interest adequate to supply the wants of the Northwest, or to consume the produce of these wide fields; and the burden of taxation for internal improvements, uncompleted and unproductive, would be very heavy and hard to bear:  and all the population that is concentrated upon manufactures, is so much kept back from the occupation of that noble domain; and the national treasury would feel the effects of the curtailment of imports and the cessation of land sales; and the amount of misery which the loss of the American market would occasion to the starving operatives and factory children on the other side of the Atlantic, is worthy to be taken into the account, by every statesman who has not forgotten that he is a man.”

If we refuse the Americans as customers, we compel them to become our rivals; and, after supplying their own wants, they will compete with us for the trade of the world, on more than equal terms.  Our statesmen may yet employ America to build up the prosperity of our country whilst increasing her own, or they may suffer its rapidly developing and gigantic resources to work out our ruin:  the alternative is before them and before the country—­but decision must be prompt, for there is no pause in the march of events.  However unwise the policy, we cannot be surprised that the American and Continental manufacturer are each applying to his government to follow our example, and protect home trade by fiscal regulations.

This question of trade with America has also most important anti-slavery bearings—­and here, again, I find my own views anticipated by the able writer already quoted: 

“The present policy of restricting the traffic with America so closely to cotton, gives a deceitful appearance to the stated imports and exports.  From these statements there should, in fairness, be deducted the value of all the raw cotton which is returned to America; and, in fact, if the true exchange trade would be seen, all should be deducted that is exported from England.  That portion of cotton goods which is of English origin, that is, their value above the raw material out of which they were made, is, in fact, the only real part of English export.  Before exclusive importance was bestowed on cotton, the exchange with America was in a large proportion of articles not to be returned.  It would be so again if trade were free.”

Again: 

“To one effect which would be produced in America by the repeal of the corn and provision laws, no party or class in England can profess indifference, and that is, its effect on slavery in the United States.  At the present time, England gives a premium to American slavery by admitting, at low duties, the cotton of the slave-holder, which is his staple production, and refusing corn, which is mostly the produce of free labor.  The slave-holding States, to the productions of which Great Britain confines her American trade, are less populous and less