Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1860-06-02
RRpUsSiCAN NOMINATIONS.
For President,
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, of Illinois.
For Vice President,
HANNIBAL HAMLIN, of Maine.
CHEAP PRODUCE.

dinariy cheap. The price of mutton, for in
stance, is two dollars per hundred; pork, three
dollars and seventy five cents per hundred (;
butter, two cents and half per pound eggs,
three to four cents the dozen, and potatoes four
cents bushel. These prices show disastrous
state of things, enough to postrate the energies
Of any country, either new or old. But where
has the money gomez
Our present system of trade with Europe
or rather manner of trade for we have no reg
ular or consistent system, only serves to render
us subordinate to the policy of older countries,
and is ruinous to our interests. 1t tends to
take all our money from US and leave nothing
in return. Our wheat, corn, cotton and other
produce that We ship to the countries of Europe,
orc not returned to us in the shape of money.
On the contrary, we receive so much more in
value of their manufactured articles that we
are obliged to send them enormous sums of
money, amounting to hundreds OF thousands
of d, liars by every steamer, in order to make
up the difference All our gold mines can
scarcely produce sufficient to meet the constant
drain. We are becoming like Mexico, the
mere money-purse of other nations; our gold
going to enrich them while we receive nothing
but perishable materials in return. The fab
ricks of England, the silks of France and the
toys of Germany, for which we pay our solid
gold, soon 20 to decay, perish and leave no trace
behind, while the gold once taken from us,
never returns to us again. 1t goes to stimulate
the industry the progress and wealth of other
countries, while we are left without enough to
pay even our farmers for their produce. The
people of other countries, stimulated by our
gold, do our manufacturing for us; take just
as much of our produce as they please and no
more, in part payment, and condemn our own
laborers to low wages, our farmers to low pri-
ces, and the country in general to stagnation
of its energies, to paralysis of its sinews and
muscles. Our slave power, supported by the
democracy, has sided with the policy of Eng
land against the interests Of iree-labor in the
North, has driven the artisan from his shop,
and is now bearing with crushing force upon the
farmer in his fields the tendency of its policy be-
ing to reduce agricultural labor every where to
the same low level that it occupies in the slave
states, and throw over the country at large the
same pail of stagnation and death that broods
over the tree-girdled and half titled swamps of
the South.
However much we may boast of our freedom,
we have not yet achieved our independence of
England so long as we remain subservient to
her policy of trade. To have no system of
trade is to have no national independence, no
national character. 1t is to expose ourselves
helpessly to foreign influences. Turkey itself,
is hardly more dependent upon the industrial
and commercial policy of England and France,
by which her power is being slowly but surely
destroyed, than are we of the United-States;
the extremes of dcspotism and liberty seeming
to meet in this case as they do in all others.
The despotism of Turkey and the democracy of
America alike lay open their respective coun-
tries to ruinous influences from foreign powers.
TO place our free labor of the North on the
same low level of the slave labor of the South
and the low priced labor Of Europe, would be
virtually to surrender the fruits and benefits of
our free institutions for it is the character of
these institutions to elevate the condition and
aspirations of the laborer, and thus render high
prices for labor necessary. The intelligent ar
tisan who is an important element in the So
tiety and government of a free state, cannot
maintain his position on such rewards as are
paid for labor in the cotton fields of the despot-
ic South and the workshops of aristocratic
England or imperial France Labor must either
have its proper reward among us or we must
cease to be free. And how is it that labor is to
be assured of its proper reward unless it is
through that protection which the government
can alone give it
But besides the character of our institutions,
the nature of our country renders high wages
more necessary than they are in old countries 1;
for it is well known that in countries newly
opened the wages are higher than they are else
where, since laborers are more scarce. And to
compel the United States, therefore, 10 COM
pete with the low wages of other quarters of
the world, would be about as unreasonable as
it would be to force old countries to have the
habits and qualities of new ones, or to mpell
Nature to give the same productions every
where.
Under the reign of the Democratic policy, Or
rather no-policy, what is now the actual condi-
ton of the country in an industrial point of
viewp We have given some of the prices of
agricultural products that rule in Iowa; and
let us see how the matter stands in New Eng
land 1t is well known that as general thing
farm here will pay but little more than the
expenses of its cultivation. The difficulty is
not that labor is too high it is that there is
not sufficiently active market for produce. If
manufactures were aroused from their dormant
condition and stimulated by protection, agri-
culture would Immediately feel the reviving in
fuence and our comparatively deserted fields
and workshops would resound again with the
hum Of active life. Our gold would be kept at
home as the circulating medium-the blood as
it were of the body-politic, giving life, energy
and solid growth to the nation. But as it is,
our farming interests are heavy, if not postrat-
ed; our workshops are uncertain, spasmodic
ad d,,ll ohs IN, (.