New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1850-12-14

The House went InlO COulLulLltt Vi luC
Whole on the Private Calendar and after
ward adjourned over to Monday.
The Question OF Industrial Independence
IN 1850.
That our Country is now, in state OF
profound peace, bountiful harvests, rapidly
increasing population and production, run
ming steadily and heavily in debt, is fact
which ought never to be forgotten until
fact it shall cease to be. True, we are
making Railroads somewhat rapidly, but
England, with smaller effective popu-
lation than ours. and much heavier in
ternal burdens on her industry, made
hers still more rapidly, yet does not owe
other nations a dollar for them. On the
contrary, nearly every other nation on earth
thatcan safely be trusted, (and some which
cannot) are to-day largely her debtors, and
some of them becoming still more deeply
so-ours, for example. Yes, with every
internal element of production, every rea-
son for paying our present heavy debts IN
stead Of running up new scores, we are run
ning behind hand at the rate of some Forty
or Fifty Millions per annum We want
Iron for Railroads: and we have the ore
and the Fuel in abundance and of every de-
sirable quality; we have an abundance of
skill and energy, now idle but eager to be
employed in IRON making; and yet the
roads now making across out own ore and
coal-beds are ironed from Great Britain, be-
cause her long experience in and virtual
monopoly of Iron making, the profits on our
trade and on her monopoly Of the worlds
most lucrative fabrication and commerce
enable her to sell very inferior quality of
Iron at low price and kindly acconmo-
date US with ten to twenty years credit on
q good share of the purchose-money. All
this goes on very smoothly-for all but our
laborers who are defraudedo of the work and
wages belonging tothem by this cheap buy
ngin England-but what is to be the end
of it? Forty millions a year for every
twenty-five years IA short lite-time)
amounts to One Thousand Million Dollars,
TO say nothing of the interest meantime ac-
cruing. The interest on that Thousand
Millions must be some Sixty Millions
year. If we cannot now pay our way by
Forty Millions, what shall we do when the
annual interest Of our Foreign Debt shall
be Sixty Millions per annum!
At this moment with our granaries filled
to OVERLOOKING and our hills covered with
sheep and cattle, one-half the works in
tended for Iron-making are standing idle
and going to wreck, because our People
are induced, through the sorceries Of per-
verted Commerce, to prefer European
Metals and Fabrics to those produced at
home, under the fatal delusion that the
former are cheaper But no man ever did
or can buy an article cheap which his own
boys ought to have made, and which they
will stand idle in default of making. 1t is
our earnest conviction that this Country is
to-day One Thousand Millions poorer, and
very far behind in art, skill, industry and
comfort, than what it would have been by
this time had the Tariff of 1928 stood I'M
modified till now Had we but enjoyed,
or could we now enjoy twenty-five years
of adequate, thoroughly efficient Protec-
ton to Home Industry, we believe that on
most articles we could afford to abolish
Duties altogether and enter into the freest
competition with every nation in the world.
That it would be desirable to do so, we
do not affirm; we regard it only in the
Light of probability. But we manage to
half protect and then expose our immature
enterprises to the competition of full grown,
afiluent, subtle and determined rivals, and
in the unequal struggle thus invited our
manufacturers 60 to the wall. Then come
glutted markets for labor and for many de-
scriptions Of products thence follows dis
tress, stagnation and bankruptcy, until the
People are transiently aroused and impelled
to seek a change of policy. A partial
halting, hesitating change is awarded; the
People sink to sleep again; and few
years restore the reign of the old delusions.
How long shall it continue thus
We estimate that the actual Foreign
cost of the Metals and Fabrics imported
from Europe during the year now closing
was certainly not less than Eighty Millions
Of Dollars, of which at least Seventy Mil