DEAR SIR.

LETTER FIFTH.

A fortnight since, you stated, on the authority of Dr. Wynne, that pauperism in the State of New York had assumed proportions relatively greater than those of England or of Scotland, and "largely in advance" of even the downtrodden and unhappy Ireland-your percentage being as high as 7.40, or more than double that of all the British Islands. When these facts were first presented to your sanitary society, they appeared to the managers 66 so startling as to lead them to doubt their accuracy, but," as you now have told your readers, “after the most careful scrutiny, they have not only adopted them, but given them currency as authority in their report." This "condition of facts" is one that, as you think, " calls for investigation by the proper authorities" the alarming facts being presented for their consideration, that no less than forty-one per cent of the paupers are native born, and that the terrible disease of pauperism appears, "like the Canadian thistle, to have settled on our soil, and to have germinated with such vigor as," in your opinion, "to defy all half measures to eradicate it."

The pauper is necessarily a slave to those who feed and clothe him, and a slave, too, more abject, as a general rule, than are even the negroes of the South. White slavery thus grows steadily - furnishing good reason for the fears that you have here expressed. Equal cause for such alarm may be found, however, in the fact that the growth in the number and power of your millionaires keeps even pace therewith-growing inequality of condition here furnishing conclusive proof of decline in civilization and in freedom. How is it that such effects are being produced? Here is a great question, the solution of which may, as I think you will agree with me, be found in the following frightful facts, which have just now been given to the world, and which reveal a state of things well calculated to carry the alarm of which you speak, into the breast of every man who takes an interest in our future.

In your city there are 560 tenement houses, containing, by actual enumeration, 10,933 families, or about 65 persons each; 193 with 111 each; 71 others, with 140 each; and, finally, 29, that, as we are told, are the most profitable, and that have a total population of no less than 5449 souls, or 187 to each. What are the accommodations therein provided for the wretched occupants, is shown in the following picture:

"One of the largest and most recently built of the New York 'barracks' has apartments for 126 families. It was built especially for this use. It stands on a lot 50 by 250 feet, is entered at the sides from alleys eight feet wide, and, by reason of the vicinity of another barrack of equal height, the rooms are so darkened that on a cloudy day it is impossible to read or sew in them without artificial light. It has not one room which can in any way be thoroughly ventilated. The vaults and sewers which are to carry off the filth of the 126 families have grated openings in the alleys, and doorways in the cellars, through which the noisome and deadly miasmata penetrate and poison the dank air of the house and the The water-closets for the whole vast establishment are a range of stalls

courts.

without doors, and accessible not only from the building, but even from the street. Comfort is here out of the question; common decency has been rendered impossible; and the horrible brutalities of the passenger-ship are day after day repeated, -but on a larger scale. And yet, this is a fair specimen. And for such hideous and necessarily demoralizing habitations,-for two rooms, stench, indecency, and gloom, the poor family pays-and the rich builder receives-thirty-five per cent annually on the cost of the apartments!" "

We have here the type of the system that is now more and more obtaining throughout the country. One financial convulsion follows another, each in its turn closing mills, mines, and furnaces, and thus destroying internal commerce. With every step in that direction, our people are more compelled to seek the cities, and thereby augmenting the power of the rich to demand enormous rents, usurious interest, and enormous prices for lots-their fortunes growing rapidly, while reducing thousands, and tens of thousands, to a state of pauperism and destitution.

Is it, however, among the occupants of tenement houses, alone, that we are to find the facts which indicate the decline to which I have referred a decline which must be arrested, if we desire not to find the end of our great republic is anarchy and despotism? Look around you, and you will see that while our population is growing at the rate of a million a-year, there is a daily diminution in the demand for skilled labor to be applied to the conversion of raw materials into finished commodities. a daily diminution of that confidence in the future which is required for producing applications of capital to the development of our great natural resources a daily increase in the necessity for looking to trade as the only means of obtaining a support and a consequent increase in the proportions borne by mere middlemen to producers, causing increased demand for shops, and stores, and offices, in great cities, and enabling landlords to demand the enormous rents which now are paid. The poor tenant slaves and starves, and finds himself at length driven to bankruptcy because his profits, after his rent is paid, are not enough to enable him to feed and clothe his wife and children -he and they being then driven to seek refuge in a "tenement house," there to pay a rent that enables its rich owner to double his capital in almost The rich are thus made richer, while pauperevery other year. ism and crime advance with the gigantic strides you have described. Is it, however, in your city alone that facts like these present themselves to view? That such is not the case, is shown in the following accurate sketch of the Philadelphia movement in the same direction, given, a few days since, by your neighbors of the Tribune:

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Poverty has reached higher places in society than the habitually destitute. Want of employment with many, and reduced wages with others, all growing out of the warfare of the government on the industry of the country, have made the present season one of peculiar hardship and suffering. Honest labor goes without its loaf, because no one can afford to employ it. Persons formerly able to support themselves decently, are now crowding for relief to our benevolent institutions. The visitors of the latter say there is more suffering now than ever before known. Clothing, food, and fuel are daily given in large amounts, and yet the cry of distress continues. The soup-houses have been compelled to reopen, and the charitable are taxed to the utmost. These suffering thousands are the victims of the scandalous misgovernment which has palsied the energies of so many branches of industry. They would gladly earn their bread, if permitted to do so."

All this is strictly true, and it would, as I think, be equally so if said of any other city of the Union -the whole presenting a picture of enforced idleness such as is not, at this moment, to be paralleled in any country claiming to rank as civilized. Pass next, if you please, outward from our cities, and look to the towns and villages of your own and other States marking the fact, that the power of local combination is steadily diminishing, and that a majority of them have either become stationary, or have retrograded. Go almost where you may, you will find that the internal commerce of the country is gradually declining that the services of mechanics are meeting less and less demand. that the dependence on great cities is increasing in the same proportion that those cities are themselves becoming more dependent upon Liverpool and Manchester and that, as a necessary consequence, pauperism and crime are everywhere assuming proportions so gigantic as well to warrant you in the assertion that their growth is now so vigorous as to bid defiance to "all half measures of eradication."

How may they be eradicated? This is a great question; but to find the answer to it, we must first inquire to what it is that such a growth is due. Doing this, we find that the facts of the present day are in strict accordance with those observed in the years which followed the terrible free-trade crises of 1818-20 and 1837-40, as well as with those observed in Ireland, India, and all other countries subject to the British free-trade system. Looking next to the periods which followed the passage of the protective acts of 1828 and 1842, we find directly the reverse of this-pauperism then steadily declining, and the morals of the community improving as the societary movement became more regular. Turning thence toward Northern and Central Europe - toward that portion of the Eastern world which steadily resists the exhaustive British systemwe find phenomena corresponding precisely with those observed in our own protective periods-the demand for human service becoming more and more regular in France and Germany, and the reward of labor growing with a steadiness that has rarely, if ever, been exceeded.-Such being the facts, is it not clear, my dear sir, that it is to the readoption of the protective policy we must look for effectual “ measures of eradi. cation." Believe me, nothing short of this will do.

The readers of the Journal of Commerce have lately been assured "that our institutions nurture the evils in question." Were that really the case, the evil would be so radical in character, that nothing short of revolution could produce the change desired. That, happily, it is not so, you will, I think, be well assured, when you shall have reflected that all our institutions find their foundation in local development, tending to the creation of thriving towns and villages in the neighborhood of our vast deposits of coal and lead, copper, zinc, and iron-there making a market for the products of agriculture, and giving occasion to the improvement of our great water powers, to be used in the conversion of food and wool into cloth, and food, coal, and ore, into knives and axes, steam-engines and railroad bars. What now is the object for whose attainment our people seek protection? Is it not this very localization in which alone our institutions find their base? That such is the case is beyond all question, and therefore is it, that confidence in those

institutions grows in every period of protection - pauperism and crime then declining in their proportions with each successive hour.

What, on the contrary, are the tendencies of the British free-trade system? Do not, under it, towns and villages decline, while great cities grow in size? Under it, does not internal commerce die away? Do not crises become more frequent and more severe? Does not paralysis take the place of that healthy action which is indicative of strong and vigorous life? Do not pauperism and immorality grow with the growth you have so well described? Does not confidence in the utility and permanence of our institutions diminish with each successive year? To all these questions, the answers must be in the affirmative-such phenomena having presented themselves at the close of every free-trade period, and the only difference between the present and the past being, that the current one has been so much longer, and that the disease has, therefore, become by far more virulent.

Looking at all these facts, is it not clear, my dear sir —

That the cause of disease is not to be found in the character of our institutions?

That, on the contrary, it is to be found in the pursuit of a policy that is at war with those institutions, and threatens their destruction?

That the remedy of which you are in search, is to be found in the readoption of the policy of protection, under which the country so much prospered in the periods closing with 1834 and 1847?

That in default of the adoption of this remedy, our institutions must decay and disappear?

That every real friend of freedom should aid in the effort to rescue his countrymen from the grasp of foreign traders in which they are now held?

That every movement in that direction must tend toward diminution in the quantity of wretchedness and crime? And, therefore,

That all who oppose such action-teaching British free-trade doctrines are thereby making themselves responsible, before God and inan, for the demoralization above described?

Repeating, once again, my offer to place your replies to these questions within the reach of a million and a half of protectionist readers, I remain, my dear sir,

W. C. BRYANT, ESQ.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

HENRY C. CAREY.

PHILADELPHIA, January 31, 1860.

LETTER SIXTH.

DEAR SIR. Pauperism, slavery, and crime, as you have seen, follow everywhere in the train of the British free-trade system, of which you have been so long the earnest advocate. On the contrary, they diminish everywhere, and at all periods, when, in accordance with the advice of the most eminent European economists, that system is effectually resisted. We, ourselves, are now in the fourteenth year of a freetrade period the result exhibiting itself, as you yourself so recently have shown, in a growth of all that has at length most seriously alarmed the very men to whose unceasing efforts that growth is due. That they should be so is not extraordinary, but their alarm would be much increased were they now to study carefully the condition of affairs at the end of the peaceful and quiet period of protection which closed with 1847, and then contrast with it the state at which we have arrived - following up the examination by asking themselves the question. Whither are we tending?-and seeking to find an answer to it. The picture that would then present itself to view, would so much shock them, that they would shrink back horrified at the idea of the fearful amount of responsibility they, thus far, had incurred.

That the facts are such as you have described them, cannot be denied. Do they, however, flow necessarily from submission to the British system, miscalled by its advocates the free-trade one— e-that one which seeks to limit all the nations of the world, outside of England, to the use of the plough and the harrow, and to a single market, that of England, for an outlet for their products? That they do so, you will, I am sure, be ready to admit, after having reflected that men become rich, free, strong, and moral, in the ratio of their power to associate and combine together, and that the object of the British system, for more than a century past, has been that of preventing combination, by frustrating every attempt at the production of that diversification of pursuits, without which the power of association can have little or no existence.

What was the system before the Revolution, and what were the mea sures recommended as being those most likely to promote the retention of the colonists in their then existing state of dependence, are fully shown in an English work on the then American Colonies, of much ability, published in London at the time when Franklin was urging upon his countrymen the diversification of their pursuits, as the only road towards real independence, and from which the following is an extract:

"The population, from being spread round a great extent of frontier, would increase without giving the least cause of jealousy to Britain; land would not only be plentiful, but plentiful where our people wanted it, whereas, at present, the population of our colonies, especially the central ones, is confined; they have spread over all the space between the sea and the mountains, the consequence of which is, that land is becoming scarce, that which is good having all been planted. The people, therefore, find themselves too numerous for the agriculture, which is the first step to becoming manufacturers, that step which Britain has so much reason to dreau "