New-York daily tribune., 1857-09-28

| wide spread bankruptcies, is not surprising a.
vs SOW, 60 must we expect to reap. The readers
| Of THE TRIBUNE need not be reminded that, nom
the inception Of The policy Of lS46, known as MI.
| Secretary Robert J. Walkers Tariff Bill, our
columns lave not ceased to exhibit, in season sud
out of season, arguments against it. We have,
unseduced by apparent commercial steadiness and
prosperity held to the doctrine that the day OF
reck oning must come for the reckless and ignorant
assaults on the Protective System and the naugura
ton of British Free Trade. There are some sci.
| euces which admit of exact foretellings-for ex-
ample, an eclipse of the sun may be precisely pro-
missed by astronomy. There are other sciences
whose provisions are not the less certain, though
the particular day Of an obscuration may not be
| act down in advance. Under the latter comes the
science of Political Economy, IS little studied as
transcendent astronomy, but not the less true. or
| the entire number of men who presume to instruct
| or control the public, very, very few, make any
study of Political Economy. For the most part,
the trash taught in our colleges is worse than
nothing. 1t is simply very stupid and very pro-
vincial echo of the fasces of British Free Trade.
But Political Economy can be so studied so appre-
hended, that the inevitable revusions" can be
traced to specific causes which causes sound policy
| can remove.
When that mass of folly and misrepresentation
the Report of Mr.. Secretary Walker Of lS46-ap-
peared, the world was informed that the new era
of commercial independence was opened for this
country in general, and the City of New-YOrk in
particular. New-York was to be freed from
prOvincia-like dependence on London; she was TO
be the great distributor of wealth. the city ofcties.
II requires no special vaticnation to say that New
York will ultimately be the chief commercial city of
the word but the particular premises Of Mr.. Sec
retay Walker hive been latly denied BY the facts
of the last ten years. First, the value of money,
notwithstanding the sheer accident of the discovery
of the mines of California, has in the long run
steadily increased go that it is impossible to be had
at anything like legal interest The whole ordinary
transactions of men in this sense are 80 deranged
that from sc to 365 per cent. is freely given for
money The ordinary mode Of raising it on securi-
ties has come to about dead stand.stl for the
mass of people of modest means; and the best pa
per of the great houses is largely sold at destruc
lively usurious rates. when buyers can be found.
This, notwithstanding that some fifty millions of
gold come hither from California annually. With
out that gold, the present crisis would have been
anticipated by several years. Notwithstanding,
toe. that we are blessed as nation beyond all
others with iron mines, we have purchased our
iron abroad, and closed our fOundries. NOtwith-
standing our illmitable resources for raising and
manufacturing wool, we have bought abroad, and
shut up our woolen factories. We have neglected
utterly the manufacture of linens, silks, and various
other national staples and run in debt ngloriOusly
abroad for them. The great gold miner of all the
nations, We have run il debt to England for the
means to grade our railroads and buy the rOn We
have done with our iron and wool as we formerly
did with our cotton: allowed England TO manufac-
ture them for us, and paid her her own price. Tn.
questionably, considering her lights, there is no
country so stupid as the United States. Every
thing that France, England and Germany can ex-
clude, they do excade, and look to Protection for
prosperity. We have reversed this. Every bit of
Protection that we have has been gained through
the fire. We have never had Protection four years
heartily at time 1t lasted, amid the ferociOus
yes of the msjority of the Southern States, aided
BY the sham Democracy of the North, from 1928 to
1882. and from le42 to lo46. No chapter in his
tory is more magnificent than the results of the
policy during those years. 1t con be proven that
every article protected was reduced in price, and
that individual and national indebtedness was
largely reduced or wiped out during the tarlf
wears, and that our foreign commerce was increased
by the inevitable laws Of general national pros
perity. But the rue-or-ruin doctrine of the
Southern plantation Democrats dominated over
all facts, over all warnings The operations
of the Protective Tariff not destroyed necessarily at
the instant the Free Trade Tariff was adopted, were,
with degree Of desperate ignorance or efron'ery
that we do not know how to characterize assumed as
part al parcel of the workings Of the latter by Mr.
Walker. Hence Mr. Walker coolly adopted the
struggles Of the dying giant of Protection for the
iufantine kicks of the pigmy of Free Trade. Such
argument was of course allsuficient for the De-
mocracy. The giant being dead, however, and even
the splendid accident Of the gold discoveries having
failed to .top the gap we finally have the result.
OF course, there will be any amount Of nonsense
talked against extravaganza speculation, Wall
street and so forth. The bankruptcies of the day,
the stoppsge of specie payments, the destruction
of manufactures the arrest of ship building, the
debts to EDglard-ssy four hundred millions-each
and all grow out of one cause.-the abrogaton Of
the Tariff of lS42, largely due to Mr.. Secretary
Walker, personal and political bankrupt himself,
q man denounced by some of bis former associates
a. fit fellow TO Mayor Wood, and indeed altogether