Take for elucidation, of American commerce and production, any one year, when nature was unobstructed by the clash of arms, and it will unfold, not only the suicidal nature of your policy, but the great fountain out of which has flown American wealth and prosperity. Take, for example, the year 1859, the year preceding the tory rise and the American fall, and it will elucidate the point in question.

The whole agricultural exports—the only reliable foundation of our national prosperity—of that year were, in round numbers, just $199,000,000, of that sum $161,000,000 was cotton, and $21,000,000 tobacco, leaving but $17,000,000 as the whole export of our cereals and provisions of that year. This whole sum of Northern exports would not now pay Ohio’s share of the interest on the national debt. How then is she to pay taxes and support life when the currency of the country, now blown into a froth, shall again have settled down to a solidity? She can not pay; nor can any other State not upheld by arbitrary laws, robbing other people for her benefit.

In two years out of three, and probably three out of four, the Baltic and Black Sea, with their cereals and provisions, can undersell us in the markets of Western Europe, consequently a reliance on a direct trade of our northern productions with countries beyond our own, would be so uncertain as to leave us two years out of three, and probably three out of four, in a condition almost as helpless as if we had raised nothing above our own consumptive wants.

Under such conditions one half of the Northwest would probably relapse into a wilderness—into that condition into which it would undoubtedly have remained had your policy began with the history of the nation. But our conditions have been of a very different character, and until disturbed by madmen, were, I have not a doubt, the best regulated for the production of national prosperity that any where existed upon the face of the world.

The Northwest was the cereal garden of the South. We fed the negro while he raised cotton; thus our productions went into the bale, and with it, or of it, were exported to Europe, and there sold for money. This sent a stream of gold across the ocean, which spread over all our country, nourishing our corn-producing fields of the North, as well as the cotton fields of the southern plantations. This was the fountain of our prosperity. It brought the best market in the world to our western doors, and among its consequences forced out a stream of emigration from abroad which set into our country to head the golden tide which, by American labor alone, under American regulations, preceded it. But now, this stream is already more than half dried up, and still diminishing in its volume.

What, then, unless some specialty, as a foreign famine or European war, comes to our relief, is to be our future? Our old channels of commerce broken up—our great American staple vastly reduced in its volume—our corn without a market in the world—a mountain of debt bearing down upon us—a tax on every thing around us, on all we eat, and drink, and wear—and a revenue stamp demanded wherever a stamp can be made to stick;—our people, like their prosperity, by force of institutions, on the decline, and Europe, both internally and externally, exerting a moving influence on our nation! Does not the fate of Mexico already look down upon us? and will not some future Napoleon send to us some future Maximilian to collect interests on United States bonds, as well as the present one now does on the bonds of Mexico? Is any result more certain, if your present wild and senseless policy be continued and pursued?

Europe, with reference to humanity, is the great positive pole of the world. Her waves radiate from a center, and have swept, and will continue to sweep around the earth, unless, in the combination of elements, new barriers be formed that will break her surges and roll back her billows. This has been done in America, and, by its power, forced the dominion of European kings from American shores. It was done by the unity of two elements directly opposite in their natures—the Caucasian and the negro; the one as subordinate, and the other as supreme. But the moment this unity has been severed, the ramparts of the state have weakened, and foreign waves have again broken in upon us.

What, then, shall we do in the advancement of our own greatness, or in the defense of our own rights and liberties? Shall we, like stupid toads, lend a suppliant ear to the siren songs of distant royalty, and extinguish ourselves in an apish effort to duplicate some other people? Or shall we not rise, in the dignity of our Revolutionary independence, and conform our society to the requisitions of nature at home. This, if you be wise, you will do—you will, with some modifications of past systems, re-establish negro slavery; and, instead of giving your country away—retreating before new tides, and beckoning for new invasions in the name of immigrations—you will re-open the slave-trade, and bring your laborers from the coast of Africa. Then you will have a laboring power of your own—a power which you can transmit, with your lands, to your children—and so protect the generations which are to follow you, against that dependence with which the youth of the present age are sorely oppressed.

Then you will have your social laws based on nature’s laws, and each man, with his species, in his appropriate condition, enjoying the highest measure of civil liberty that nature and good government can, by possibility, afford. Then will America be free, and her sons, in reality, independent. Then will they roll back the tide of foreign insolence, presumption and dictation. Then will they have a national character; and, standing to their arms as soldiers, drilled to the military art, protect their rights, their laws, and their liberties against whomsoever may dare to intrude.

Very respectfully, yours,