was thirty-eight and three quarter cents; in 1827, thirty-eight; in 1828 (the year of the tariff), forty-six; in 1829, thirty-six; in 1830, (notwithstanding the advance in the price of wool), thirty-two; and in 1831, thirty-two and one quarter.  These facts require no comments.  I have before me another statement of a practical and respectable man, well versed in the flannel manufacture in America and England, demonstrating that the cost of manufacture is precisely the same in both countries:  and that, although a yard of flannel which would sell in England at fifteen cents would command here twenty-two, the difference of seven cents is the exact difference between the cost in the two countries of the six ounces of wool contained in a yard of flannel.

Brown sugar, during ten years, from 1792 to 1802, with a duty of one and a half cents per pound, averaged fourteen cents per pound.  The same article, during ten years, from 1820 to 1830, with a duty of three cents, has averaged only eight cents per pound.  Nails, with a duty of five cents per pound, are selling at six cents.  Window-glass, eight by ten, prior to the tariff of 1824, sold at twelve or thirteen dollars per hundred feet; it now sells for three dollars and seventy-five cents. * * *

This brings me to consider what I apprehend to have been the most efficient of all the causes in the reduction of the prices of manufactured articles, and that is competition.  By competition the total amount of the supply is increased, and by increase of the supply a competition in the sale ensues, and this enables the consumer to buy at lower rates.  Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.  It is action and reaction.  It operates between individuals of the same nation, and between different nations.  It resembles the meeting of the mountain torrent, grooving, by its precipitous motion, its own channel, and ocean’s tide.  Unopposed, it sweeps every thing before it; but, counterpoised, the waters become calm, safe, and regular.  It is like the segments of a circle or an arch:  taken separately, each is nothing; but in their combination they produce efficiency, symmetry, and perfection.  By the American system this vast power has been excited in America, and brought into being to act in cooperation or collision with European industry.  Europe acts within itself, and with America; and America acts within itself, and with Europe.  The consequence is the reduction of prices in both hemispheres.  Nor is it fair to argue from the reduction of prices in Europe to her own presumed skill and labor exclusively.  We affect her prices, and she affects ours.  This must always be the case, at least in reference to any articles as to which there is not a total non-intercourse; and if our industry, by diminishing the demand for her supplies, should produce a diminution in the price of those supplies, it would be very unfair to ascribe that reduction to her ingenuity, instead of placing it to the credit of our own skill and excited industry.