New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1861-02-12
nr.nwnsc HOT AVID CoLn.

For many years every argument thaI cOuid De
offered in favor Of return to that benign sys-
TEN Of policy which looks toward bringing the
consumer and the producer together, has been
net by our free-trade neghbcrs with the nsser-
ton that large public revenues must certainly be
regarded as evidence of general prosperity, pre-.
GLIDING the necessity for change Quite useless
has it been to call their attention to the fact
that large portion of those revenues resulted
from the importation Of merchandise for which
we had not paid-that we were building up
foreign debt at the rate OF thirty or forty mil
lions year-that with each successive year the
interest on that debt was becoming more and
more oppressiye-that credit so prodigaly used
must, and that at no distant day, almost wholly
dsappear-that while we were exporting gold at
the rate of millions per month, our farmer' our
miners, and our manufacturers were paying
for the use of little money treble quadruple,
and quintuple the usual rates of interest-that
financial if not even political, crisis must be the
consequence Of persistence in such course Of
action. The crisis did, however come at last,
bringing with It ruin to merchants and traders,
ship and railroad owners, aud bankruptcy to the
public treasury, thereby placing those who had
80 long advocated the ree.trade system in stu
alton closely resembling that in which they them
selves bad previously placed the whole class of
men engaged in furnishing our people with coal,
cloth, and iron.
The lesson thus taught in 1857 was a very sad
one, and it might have been hoped that we
should profit by it. Such however, has not
proved 10 be the case-the Government having
though compelled from week TO week to resort
to shifts and cOntryances, in regard to both re-
sources and expenditures, such as are scarcely
to be paralleled in any country Of Europe, the
free-trade Turkish Empire almost alone ex
cepted As consequence Of this, We have now
another and yet more fearful crisis, the public
credit having so far disappeared that the Ma
tional Treasury now finds itself compelled to ask
Of the States that they should indOrse its notes,
and thereby enable it, perhaps, to borrow lit
tie money at something less than the fearful rate
of one per cent per month Such is the point
fourteenth year Of the British free-trade system
Let that system be maintained, and where shall
we find ourselves five years hence
Experience having thus far clearly demon
strated its dsorgnnizing and destructive char
acter, we had hoped to find at least portion Of
It's advocates among ourselves, cooperating with
us in the effort to obtain a change by means
IF the tariff bill passed at the last session
through the House, and now before the Senate
Not so, however. After having for so many
,ears given the then apparent prosperity as
eason for avoiding change, the facts that "the
. public treasury is empty, and the national
credit impaired" are now given by our Cham
yer of Commerce, in q memorial to Congress, in |
roof of the necessity for maintaining the system
Inder which the treasury has been depleted, and
he public credit so for ruined A finer exam
lie than this of blowing hot and cold with the
anne breath has rarely, we think, been exhibited
Leaving the Chamber. however, to settle the