The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1855-09-06
A FALLACY OF MIR. BENTON.

| ern press, from advance sheets of the second
volume of Benton's Thirty Years View" which
shows that great minds are not exempt from
great errors. The following extract will show
that Mr.. Benton has fallen into the trap which
Ellwood Fisher laid some years ago, for the
purpose Of catching the ear of the South, in
regard to the commercial condition of that
section prior to the Revolution
| To show the working of the Federal Govern
ment is the design of this View-show how
things are done under it, and their effects-that
the good may be approved and pursued, the evil
condemned and avoided, and the machine Of
Government be made to work equally for the
benefit of the whole Union, according to the
wise and benefcent intent of its founders. II
| thus becomes necessary to show its working IN
| the two great Atlantic sections, originally sole
parties to the Union-the North and the South
complained of for many years-on one part as
unequal and oppressive, and made so by a
| course of Federal legislation at variance with
the object of the Confederation, and contrary to
| the intent or the words of the Constitution.
"The writer of this View sympathized with
that complaint-believed it to be, to much ex-
tent, we'll founded-saw with concern the cor.
roding effect it had on the feelings of patriotic
men of the South and often had to lament
that sense of duty to his own constituents re-
quired him to give votes which his judgment
| disapproved and his feelings condemned. This
complaint existed when he came into the Senate;
it had in fact commenced in the first years of the
Federal Government, at the time of the assump-
ton of the States debts the incorporation of the
first national bank, and the adoption of the fund
ing system-all of which drew capital from the
South to the North. 1t continued to increase !;
nd Of ba iod 10 xubfn nboy,t a1afo
it had reached the stage of an organized Sec
tional expression, in a voluntary convention of
the Southern States. 1t had oi.en been express
ed in Congress and in the State Legislatures,
and habitually in the discussion of the people !;
but now it took the more serious form of joint
action, and exhibited the spectacle of a part of
the States assembling sectionally to complain
formally of the unequal, and to them injurious,
operation of the common Government, establish
ed by common consent for the common good; and
| now frustrating its object by departing from the
purposes of its creation. The convs6Dn was
called commercial, and properly, as The griev-
ance complained of was in its root CONNER
cial, and commercial remady was proposed.
at met at Augusta, Georgia, and afterwards
at Charleston, South Carolina and the evil
complained OF, and the remedy proposed, were
strongly set forth in the proceedings Of the BODY
IL
and Southwestern States. The changed rela-
tive condition of the two sections OF the coun-
try, before and since the Union, was shown in
their general relative depression of<xk0operity
since that event, and especially int reversed
condition of their respective foreiep import
trade. In the colonial condition, HSScompari-
son was wholly in favor of the South npder the
Union, wholly against it. Thus ia the year
l760-only sixteen years before the Declara-
ton of Independence-the foreign imports into
Virginia were $3.50, 900 sterling and into South
Carolina E555, 1000; while in New York there
were only Gl89,OOO; into Penpsylvania,
$780, and into all the New England colo
MES, collectively, only G56l, 200.
"These figures exhibit an immense superior
ity of commercial Prosperity on the side of the
South in its colonial state, sadly contrasting
with another set of figures exhibited by the
Convention to show its relative condition with
in few years after the Union. Thus, in the
year 1921, the imports into New York had risen
to S23,000,0 900, being about seventy times its
colonial import at about an equal period before
| the adoption of the Constitution and those of
South Carolina stood at 1000, 000--which, for
| all practical purposes, may be considered the
same that they were in l760.
"Such was the difference-the reversed con-
| ditiOns-of the two sections worked between
| them in the brief space of two generations
| within the actual lifetime of some who had
seen their colonial conditions. The proceed
| ings of the Convention did not stop there, but
brought down the comparison (under this COM
mercial aspect) to near the period of its own
sitting-to the actual period of the highest man.
Hesitation of discomfort in 1882, when it produ-
ced the enactment of the South Carolina nulli-
flying ordinance. At that time, all the dispro-
portions between the foreign commerce of the
two sections had inordinately increased. The
New York imports (snce 1921 had more than
doubled; the Virginia had fallen off one half;
South Carolina, two-thirds. The actual figures
stood: New York, fifty-seven millions-V Virgin
ia, half a million-South Carolina, one million
and a quarter.
"This was disheartening view, and render
ed more greivous by the certainty of its contin.
uation, the prospect of its aggravation, and the
conviction that the South Tin its great staples
furnished the basis for these imports, of which
it received so small SHARE"
"This is what the dry and naked figures
show. To the memory and Imagination it is
worse; for it is tradition of the Colonies, that
| the South had been the seat of wealth and hap
| piness, of power and opulence; that a rich
population covered the land, dispensing a
| baronial hospitality, and difusing the felicity
which themselves enjoyed; that all was life,
| and Joy, and afauence, then. And this tradition
was not without similitude to the reality, as this
| writer can testify, for he was old enough to
have seen latter the Revolution) the still sur
viving state of Southern colonial manners.
when no traveller was allowed to go to tavern.
but was handed over from, family to family.
through entire States; when holydays were
days of festivity and expectation, long prepared
for, and celebrated by master and slave with
music and feasting, and great concourse of
friends and relatives; when the gold was kept
in desks or chests latter the downfall of paper,
and weighed in scales and lent to neighbors for
short terms, without note, interest, witness or
security, and on bond and land security for
long years and lawful usance, and when petty
litigation was at so low an ebb that it required
a fine of forty pounds of tobacco to make a
| man serve as constable.
"The reverse of all this was now seen and
felt, not to the whole extent which fancy or
policy painted, but to extent enough to con-
| stltute reverse, and to make a contrast, and
to excite the regrets which the memory of past
joys never fails to awaken"
Prior to the Revolution, the people of the
Colonies, North and South, and particularly
the latter, were almost exclusively engaged in
agriculture. Manufacturing, as the term is
popularity understood, as well as the mechanic
arts, were discouraged by the mother country.
The manufacture of many articles was prohib.
tied by law; and if these restrictions were being
gradually removed, their effect was still felt in
the habits of dependence upon England which
they produced.
In consequence of this state of things nearly
every article of manufacture consumed in the
South was imported from ENGLAND not h,