The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-05-03

stimulates to more general activity. This,
of course, is its immediate effect. By
drawing from one industry its superabun-
dant labor, and actively employing it in
another-in the manufacture of some fabric
or the production of some commodity that
comes entirely from abroad-you strength
en- the first named industry by enhancing
the market value of its product. while you
build up another industry whose product is
of equal value in Strengthening the general
prosperity. "Spain," said Napoleon as
First Consul, ''has twenty-five million
merinos wish France to have hundred
millions )" and he wanted the labor of
France diversified by manufacturing the
wool from these merinos into the best of
French fabrics. General Jackson struck
the same idea in his celebrated letter to
DR.. Coleman, in which he showed how one
industry would build up market for an
other, by detaching the superabundance of
its labor and adding it to the weaker in
dustry. ans O..
But the Dispatch asks why Virginia
does not need tariff, or tax, or sample
mechanic law, or supplementary law,
to protect her industry against competition
from the North?v We answer, in the first
place, that she is one and the same govern
ment with the North, and may have the
benefit, if she chooses, of precisely the
same tariff laws that diversity labor and
quicken the general industry in that par
ticular section. She has the same protec-
ton extended to her industry, and can
make the same defense against the assaults
of accumulated capital from abroad, that
New England or any other part of the
North does. What she needs she can
have, if she will only fling off her Bour-
bonism, diversity (as she is nobly doing in
this city, her industry, and develope the
multifarious resources of wealth within her
borders. She is only poor from her want
of local markets which this diversified la
Dor and industry will bring her.
She is rich, most wonderfully so, in all
the elements of manufacturing greatness !;
and if she will only encourage the policy of
the national government, which looks at
present, far more sharply to Virginia inter-
ests than to those of any part of the
North, she may find diversified and we'll
paid industries springing up throughout all
her understanding the ancient village
into the city, dotting her plains and river
banks with new and thriving towns, OPEN
ing up boundless stores of varied mineral
wealth, reinyigorating her exhausted soils,
whitening her majestic rivers with COM
merce, threading every valley and noun
tain pass with a splendid network of rail-
roads, and realizing degree of wealth and
prosperity she has never before dreamed of.
1t is idle to talk about her power to lay
tariffs and impose restrictions upon other
states. She has parted with the sovereign
attribute of doing this by the powers dele
gated by her to the Federal government !;
and as long as this sovereign attribute is
welded by the delegated authority in the
interests of the industries we have named,
Virginia has no occasion to complain. We
can see the point which the Dispatch fam
cies it can turn upon us here. But we
would say to our contemporary, that, SC
long as different nationalities seek to com.
pass commercial and manufacturing adj
vantages against either remote or neighbour
| ing states, so long will the necessity of
protection to domestic industries exist
England claims to have adopted and
proffered to other nations the princi.
pie of free trade. But, in point
of fact, she does no such thing. She raises,
for instance, about s25, 100000 on spirits.
This is an absolute discrimination against
our grain, as well as against our distiller,
In fact, it is easy to show that full one
third of what she raises by her free-trade
duties, is discrimination against foreign in.
dustry and trade. Her duties on tobacco
though not protective, since she has no to
bacco fields to deyelope, operate as re
straint upon our own local industry. lie
every nation of the earth adopt the SAM
principle of reciprocity that is operative
between the states of this Union, claiming
no advantage that they do not extend, and
shielding no industry that they do not en-
courage, and it will be timo to talk of in
tcrnational free-trade as principle vital t.
our prosperity and growth. But human
selfshness will never permit this and
therefore, we must protect ourselves b.
our own prohbitory policy, as counter
check to the aggressions of others.