Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1852-02-14
EDITORS CORRESPONDENCE

PORTLAND, fEBhuAhf 1904.
Messrs GALES q SEAToN Although private
citizen at one of the extremes of the Union, | am
disposed to give you the substance of dailyrepeat
ed train of thought as to the administration of
National Government in relation to our pecuniary
concerns If you think it will tend to awaken sin
gle one of our Legislators to an important reality OF
the country they govern, please honor it with place
in your columns.
The spectacle Though by no means commonly of
guardian, or trustees, in contempt of their oaths,
consuming by course of waste and extravaganza
the property committed to their care is always a
melancholy one though affecting not at all the in
terest of the observer. What, then, must be the
feeling of every inteligent American citizen as he
reflects on the financial management of our national
concerns If in 1916, when for several years we
had been steadily recovering from the effects of a
previous illreguated Tariff, it excusable to ex-
pertinent on all the great interests of the country,
with view solely to increase revenue, or from a
more unworthy motive, and before it had been de-
monstrated by facts that the prosperity of the nation
could bear it, what but suicidal is it to persist
in such course from year to year since it has ceased
to be an experiment and every month proves we are
transferring without equivalent to foreign nation
the labor we should perform ourselves thus closing
our factories rendering idle operatives, reducing
the consumption of our agricultural productions as
we'll as of cotton the great staple for expectation, so
that all the immense receipts of gold from California
are only sufficient to avert the suspension of specie
payment by our banks, and general bankruptcy
while they entirely fail to stimulate industry and
promote prosperity any and all the departments of
industry and enterprise Instead of exhibiting to
the world, as with suitable specific Tariff should
now do, state of nearly unexampled prosperity, as
shown in an increased value of land and of all the
productions of the SOIL in manufacturing activity in
ship building navigation, and commerce, these in
terests are all langushing, and our haf-monthy re-
turns of gold as surely and frequently shipped
to Europe as they reach us from the other side Of
own continent, scarcely leaving us commission
on their transit to England.
The writer is neither engaged in manufacturing
agriculture, navigation, commerce, nor the fisheries,
but as clearly sees and indirectly feels the blasting
effects of our present Tariff on each of these if
he were directly interested in them all and had he
the power and the moral right to dispose of all the
for the country on no better terms with the two
Houses of Congress, he would propose to them, In
return for restoration Of the Tariff of AZ or 43,
any other that would restore to US the employment
we have surrendered to British manufacturers after
preparing at great expense to do it ourselves to
empty the whole of this gold into the sea; for the
good reason that the sea has bottom, and sooner
later the gold poured into it would reach the sur
face. and so much of it would be ours to use among
ourselves but it has not yet been ascertained that
there is any bottom limit to the British manufac-
turing inundaton, so long as American labor, so
poorly protected, is thus brought into competition
with theirs. ii. G..