A sketch of the politics, relations, and statistics, of the Western World / and of those characteristics of European policy which most immediately affect its interests: intended to demonstrate the necessity of a grand American confederation and alliance

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Chapter I

JLN order to enter upon our subject fully prepared, it is necessary to take a view of the actual situation of such parts of the world as are directly concerned in the interests and matters we are about to consider, and of the probable results from existing political circumstances connected with American affairs.

I shall attempt this in the following rapid sketch : protesting at the same time against our assumption of the smallest right to interfere in the concerns of other natioris, and reciprocally against their having any right to meddle with ours. The design of a Grand American Confederacy does not contradict this principle ; it is most emphatically our business, and moreover, our attention to it has been invited by the other nations of this continent. It is no business of ours what policy other nations think proper to adopt, provided it does not operate upon us; and still less does it concern us what domestic arrangements they choose to make, or what forms of government they choose to retain. We have nothing to do with these things. No government can exist contrary to the will of the great majority of the people ; and that majority has the exclusive right to decide upon the point. It is in vain to talk of military force keeping down the majority of a people ; this is the pretext of those who are disposed to submit ; the numbers would be too enormously disproportionate, if the people were to resist it; the military would be a feather in the scale, they never could compose the tithe of the population, and the body of the soldiery is taken from the mass of the people, only the officers being of the privileged class. I think so well of the strength of the great mass of the population in any country as to believe that the government could not exist for an hour after the body of the people should be so far disgusted with it as to overcome the natural disposition for quiet, and the equally natural indisposition to disturb the existing order of things. Therefore all subsisting governments have the sanction of the approbation of the majority of those who recognize them, and on our own principles we have no right to interfere. These positions are so true that I challenge all history for a single example of successful insurrection which was not instigated by a member or members of what is called the higher order of society, or of that class which has influence enough to excite the body of the people. I do not mean that the originators of insurrections have always been titled noblemen; but even Spartacus, slave as he was in Rome, is recorded to have been a noble Scythian, and evidently had high mental powers, or at least great knowledge of war ; but I mean that the chiefs in civil disturbances which have obtained their purposes have invariably been men of talent, of superior acquirements, of high consideration among the people, and have, with very few exceptions, belonged to the privileged class, to which the people were accustomed to look up, when there was such a class in their country.

We claim for ourselves the right of deciding upon our form of government, and of regulating our internal affairs as we please; and on our own principles again, we have no right to dictate to other nations upon these points : if we have the right, they have it equally ; and from its exercise would ensue perpetual hostilities, in which force and chance would determine the party whose opinions should give the law to the rest. There is no exception to the general rule, but the single case when the form of government or the dissensions among a neighbouring people affect the tranquillity of a nation; then the molested nation has the same right to insist upon a change, or to enter and force it, that an individual has to force a neighbour to extinguish a fire in his premises which threatens to destroy the adjacent property. It is not my intention therefore to discuss any policy of other nations which does not directly bear upon our interests, or which they have not intrusively pressed, officially, or by their popular clamour, upon us for our adoption.

Chapter II. E

NGLAND has prohibited the slave trade to her subjects, after having fully stocked her own colonies, and thereby created a production in her West Indian possessions, exceeding her demand for it so much that she is obliged to resort to various expedients to keep out of her home market any kind of competition in the different articles which their climate and soil afford. But she is not contented with having prohibited the importation into her own colonies after their being fully supplied, as she had a perfect right to do; she now goes about canting and preaching to all other nations, telling them what a burning shame it is to traffic in slaves, and to hold any human beings in bondage. This she has no right to do : she regulated her own dominions, and no body ought to dispute her authority there ; but every one must dispute her the privilege of interfering with the arrangements of others. She talks of her glory being concerned in it. What has the rest of the world to do with her glory *? Besides it certainly consists at least as much with her interest as with her reputation, now that she has as many slaves as she can work, to exhort the Africans, who do not thank her for her interference, and who continue the traffic in spite of her entreaties and of the force which she applies to repress it, and to lecture the governments of Europe and America upon the enormity of dealing in human flesh and of retaining the slaves they have in servitude. I must not be misunderstood as advocating that detestable trade ; but I insist that each nation has a right to judge upon it, and on all other subjects, according to its own sense of morality, and that it is an impertinence in any nation to read homilies to the rest : such homilies come with a very bad grace from England, the largest slave holder on earth ; it savours of the ridiculous to suppose mankind such gulls as to listen to her representations, when they know that she did not cease to import negroes into her colonies until they were overflowing, and that she holds them as inflexibly as any other nation, whose negro slaves by the bye are now exactly in the same condition as the bulk of her own immediate population was only a very few centuries since, working for their masters five or six days in the week, and having the other one or two (lays for themselves; with these differences only, that the English slave was neither fed nor clothed by his lord who possessed the power of life and death over him, and exercised it not very sparingly, if her history is correct.

With all these reasons for her taking the beam out of her own eye before she meddled with the motes in the eyes of her neighbours, England has gone through the world, her " saints^^ threatening present and future punishment, and her statesmen negociating against slavery; she has induced some powers to assent to her proposition for search and for the mixed commission, by which the claims she sets up for searching vessels during war — a pretence which never would be acceded to by any nation able to resist her force — will be established directly or indirectly in peace also, if they are ever sanctioned; or at least they will be brought forward by her upon all occasions as a precedent. She has not hesitated to accuse the United States, in decent terms by her diplomacy, but in pretty unrestrained language by her presses, of a disposition to oppose the suppression of the slave trade.

Now whatever credit is attached to national exertions for suppression of this traffic belongs of right to us; because we were the first nation which passed laws interdicting it to our citizens, the only persons whom we had a right to interfere with in the matter, as her own subjects were the only persons whose conduct England had a right to regulate : we were also the first nation to declare the slave trade piracy in our citizens. England, taking up the thing after we did, exhibits a disposition, and has had some success in the attempt, to push us out of our precedence in so laudable a career, to deprive us of the reputation attendant upon such precedence, and to induce the world to consider her as the great champion in the cause ; in order to effect these objects, she clamours about it loudly, and burthens her diplomacy with expedients for usurping or for inducing concessions from other nations of utter novelties in national law, and of points which no governments can abandon without relinquishing, in some measure, to a foreign sovereignty, their own independence. She interferes with us in our rightful claim upon the commendation of the world for commencing an opposition to the trade and for giving an example, as well as for persevering in wise and just measures to suppress it; measures equally correct in themselves and respectful to the privileges of the other members of the great political society of the world. She does this by operations indefensible in themselves, which never could be tolerated if they were not enveloped in appeals to the humanity and the best feelings of our nature.

But what is her object, or at any rate what will be the result of her course /? Her West Indian islands and her East Indian possessions do or can produce almost all the staples which form the wealth and the commercial advantages of

South America and of our own southern states ; rice, indigo, cotton, coffee, sugar, dye woods, incorruptible timber for ornament or ship building, chocolate, cochineal, precious stones, and a vast variety of other articles, are produced or can be cultivated in those islands or in her vast dominions in the east, as well as in those countries which enjoy a similar climate and soil. Her own islands, as we have before said, are fully stocked with hands, and her East Indian territories abound in population; she has moved heaven and earth to prevent the other nations which own West Indian islands from acquiring additional labour of the only kind that is adapted to the climate ; and they, not having pursued the same plan as herself, of replenishing the islands with hands, will not be able to compete with hers in raising the same productions. — By these means she infallibly must acquire a monopoly of the articles produced in the West Indies, all the result of her operations relative to the slave trade.

But it will be said the southern part of North America, and all South America, will still enter into competition with her in these articles — my answer is deduced from what follows.

England has been for centuries engaged in creating manufactures of every kind in her bosom; she has laboured assiduously, and by dint of bounties, prohibitions, restrictions, rewards, and penalties, she has succeeded in creating capital, knowledge, skill, artizans, labourers, machinery, and productiveness, unexampled in the annals of history: her system was a model of wisdom on the subject, for she has elevated all her manufactures together, giving bounties to each as it was invented or introduced, witness the silk, glass, &c. &c. : she has formed an agriculture capable of feeding her population in ordinary seasons, of supplying them with many materials for their manufactures, such as wool, flax, &c. &c. &c. ; and she takes from her own soil most of the metals and minerals they require, she takes them at small cost in consequence of the immense improvement her system has produced in all sorts of machinery. To give only a single item of the enormous power of production that she possesses, her steam machinery is estimated at the power of

200,000,000 men : other details are found in most books of reference, and are well known to those who take the trouble to read these pages, or may be known with little trouble to any person who will examine the subject : general, and well known results are all that are required to support my positions. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that England can clothe all Europe and America, and furnish them vyith nearly every article of manufacture, by only putting her present establishments into activity With this capability of underselling all nations even in their own markets, unless she is kept out of them by commercial regulations and duties, the consequence of her hitherto inflexible system, she now comes before the world with declarations of the injustice of restraining commerce, with arguments to prove how erroneous are all kinds of regulating duties, and with exhortations to join with her in rendering commerce perfectly free by striking off from it every shackle and every impediment. She also urges the abolition of all discriminating duties upon shipping, while she has 2,542,000 tons of commercial sea vessels, being nearly double of the tonnage belonging to any other country*. — That is, now that she is ripe for the measure, now that she is able to undersell and undernavigate (if I may be allowed the expression) every body else, and to flood every market with her staples, she proposes to them to submit to these new doctrines and their consequences; while they cannot introduce a half dozen articles into h^r ports at prices which would allow them to compete with what she produces ; it being recollected that a necessary consequence of such a free trade (if she ever permits it in her own case for her domestic consumption) will be the release from excise of the commodities liable to be affected. Now this is so barefaced an attempt at imposition, that it can hardly be possible the rest of the world will be duped by the plausible arguments she uses to persuade people out of their senses. If she could succeed, she would be able to bring

* See Huskisson's speech of the 12th of May 1826, referring to official reports of the 25th of December 1825. He gives the number of sea vessels at same date as 24,174. These sums do not include the military marine.

CHAPTER III. Ti

HE next power whose state I shall consider is France- " Beautiful France" is next to England in commerce and manufactures; in every thing else that can make a nation rich and glorious she is far before her rival. She stands at this moment renewing her enormous strength, and increasing it by vast additions, occupied almost solely in these patriotic pursuits, and in reconciling herself to the rest of Europe, after the misfortunes of her revolution, at which none is more shocked than herself; after her triumphant and magnificent career under the consular and imperial regimes, when in the intoxication of success she too much disregarded the pride and the feelings of other nations, not to provoke a general array against her of those who suffered reluctantly the weight of her sceptre, which was of iron although gilded; and after the exhaustion nearly of thirty years' war, which, however successful, nevertheless drained her of men, and subjected her to various internal restrictions, in spite of the wisdom which fostered with parental care every species of industry, and called forth by wealth, honours, and by every inducement which could rouse the faculties of the mind, all the talents of human intellect, in order to promote the prosperity of the French people. Having experienced the recoil of her own artillery, and having been over powered, not ingloriously, by the concentrated force of a whole continent, she has been obliged during eleven years to aim at conciliating those whom previously she either subdued or attacked; she has been obliged by every dictate of policy and common sense to reconcile herself to Europe and to the world.

With these views, while her manufactures have gone on increasing, supported by an excellent agriculture, prolific in every means of enjoyment and wealth, while her exhausted marine, commercial and military, is recovering the position to which it is entitled by her innumerable staples, her vast resources, and her important station in the political world, — while every domestic advantage has been sedulously cherished and every thing has prospered with her, she has watched the phases of politics, and her acute and skilful negociators have appeared, openly or inofficially, in every bureau where politics were discussed. France is peculiarly circumstanced ; indeed her situation is a perfect anomaly in history. She is very rich, very strong in resources, her finances are the best conditioned in Europe, she is brave enough to do any thing, she is pretty well governed, and she is upon good terms with her neighbours; and yet she is obliged to resort to many expedients, and to observe the utmost caution in order to persuade the world, and even herself, that she has forgotten the roads to the capitals of the other members of the European family, and has also forgotten that they all found the way to Paris — facts which neither they nor she can really forget, but of which, on all sides, they endeavour to conceal their recollection by excessive civility, proper and necessary to all. It is therefore a fortunate thing for France, as matters did take the turn which we have witnessed, that Napoleon was a victim upon whom her offences against the rest of Europe might be visited, and upon whom the animosity of those whom her power oppressed might be, and has been, concentrated.

I say this without in the least changing my opinion of that great man; indeed the wish he expressed that his sacrifice might be of benefit to France and reconcile her to Europe, seems to be satisfied; without some definite object whereupon to concentrate the feelings of Europe, she would have continued for more than one generation to be as much hated by her neighbours as she was envied by them in the day of her ascendancy. Her present sovereign appears to be a good man, and well advised j and after all it is the chief merit of a monarch to have the tact for choosing able counsellors, and the good sense to take their advice, whether he be endowed with great talents himself or not. He is somewhat bound up however in his foreign relations, by the consciousness that he is indebted, for the restoration of the crown to his race, to the other sovereigns of the continent, and by his family connections with several of them : the latter sentiment is particularly manifest in his conduct with regard to South America; for it is most evident that nothing can be more beneficial to France in her manufacturing and commercial relations than the liberation of the cidevant Spanish colonies, and the opening of those ports so long almost hermetically sealed ; most of her manufactures are particularly adapted to the taste and inclinations of the Hispano- Americans, and their productions are peculiarly acceptable to the French population. In spite of these inducements for her recognition of their independence, the king has not yet been able to take a step so obnoxious to his cousin of Spain ; and has therefore been compelled to pursue an intermediate and equivocal course, not satisfactory to either party, and which may possibly terminate in the loss of nearly all commercial intercourse with South America, possibly by making France tributary to England for the South American productions, and thus by making her contribute, however unwillingly, to the advancement and to the establishment of the English system. This, it may be urged, will be changed in the course of a few years : but I answer (and I shall have to repeat and expatiate further upon it hereafter), commerce does not so readily, as has been pretended, obey the lead of its interest and seek the connections which are most to its real advantage ; affection or inclination go for a great deal in deciding the course of commerce ; and when it has taken a specific channel, formed its credits, acquaintances, and correspondences, it is diverted from its accustomed route with great reluctance and great difficulty. Therefore when England shall have secured the good will of the South Americans by her political course, purchased it by lavish expenditure of money in va-

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rious shapes, among which are her great loans to the governments and to individuals, fixed her influence by means of the settlement of numbers of her subjects in the mining and other establishments, and arranged correspondences which will require only a letter to supply goods of any description ; when all these operations, daily going on, are completed, France will find it next to an impossibility to acquire the footing and commerce with the South Americans, which at this instant are perfectly within her power.

Thus will the present ostensible policy of France injure herself and promote the designs of her great rival. But if she should change it, and come forward at the congress of Tacubaya, as is not improbable, with a frank and open recognition of the independence of the southern continent, then, unless the United States shall adopt the policy which appears to be called for by every dictate of expediency, France will be another obstacle to our interests.

Chapter IV. S

'PAIN has not a marine, nor enterprize, nor manufactures, nor capital, to enter into the contest for the commerce of South America with the two above mentioned powers, or with ourselves : she has also so bitterly exasperated the people formerly attached to her, by her inexorable policy, and by the relentless and sanguinary warfare which she has carried on against them, that they are forever alienated from her in feeling as much as they are by their polities. If Spain had conducted this war with only ordinary humanity, if she had even made war as England did upon us during our revolutionary contest, though that was bad enough, she would have regained a portion of kindly feeling toward^ her into every market, besides her own manufactures, all the staples of the East and of the West Indies, at lower prices than any other power could afford to supply them, thus securing to herself an absolute monopoly of manufactures and of every species of commerce, carrying trade and all — and yet there are some persons in the United States who advocate our subscribing to the new doctrines.

Nevertheless there are some countries, particularly of South America, which abound in raw materials, and which want manufactured articles, not having yet created establishments to answer the demand, where the new doctrines may be acceded to at present : they will see their error, and will change their system ; but nations are slow in making such changes, because many interests are involved in supporting the actual state of things ; and therefore fifty or more years may elapse, as they have done here, before the necessary alteiations are made : meanwhilp. other commercial or manufacturing nations lose all the profits of their commerce, and England reaps all the fruits.

If England can persuade the South American states to adopt her new system, she secures their markets for her manufactures : she does more ; they have very few ships, and on the Atlantic if not on the Pacific coast are essentially indisposed to maritime operations ; it will require at least another generation to alter their temper in this respect; she therefore will secure their carrying trade, and her manufactures will purchase their produce. How will she stand then'? We have shewn that, by her ex post facto cant about slavery, she is enabled to afford the West Indian productions cheaper than any other power, she can throw into Europe, or wherever there is a demand, unlimited quantities of colonial produce from her East Indian possessions; that she may command absolutely the South American trade, and thus she will be the factor and the carrier of every article of the sort, and will enjoy an unrestricted monopoly of them.

Such are the two leading points of the present English policy, and such will be the results of her success, if she is able to accomplish her designs. With these views, conceived in the maturest reflection, she has poured out blood C and treasure to gain an influence in South America, and with these views is she labouring to form treaties there, besieging every one of their governments with her agents, to negociate or to intrigue. It is true that these projects will be resisted, but I do not see how they are to be resisted effectually with regard to colonial produce, if England gets command of the South American market, as she will do if she is not met by the system which it is the object of these sheets to advocate, because it is a fact, which is not worth while to conceal, that she can navigate cheaper than any other power. Obsta principiis, is a maxim that will endure for ever; if England is not resisted in her first attempts, the introduction of her whole plan can hardly be prevented. We have seen that the guarda costas of Spain could not keep her manufactures out of South America formerly, nor secure to the mother country the monopoly to which she pretended, and to which the then excellfincp of her chief fabrics entitled her — if any thing could give title to such a monopoly, which I am not going to concede. We have seen that the splendid and mighty power of Napoleon in vain drove English commerce and English productions from Europe; they returned by a thousand indirect means — they insinuated themselves even into France by a thousand obscure filtrations. We have seen that marks, and stamps, and signatures, of our own manufacturers cannot keep her goods out of our market, for she does not hesitate to counterfeit them, while she punishes with death similar offences against her own people, as if moral crime was not the same everywhere. She gains access to all countries by the advantage of cheapness, profiting of the selfishness which induces men to disregard the condition of their countrymen, provided their own wants or luxuries are satisfied. She has always complained of the interdictions and domestic monopolies of other nations as public injuries, which she or any other foreign nation had certainly no right to complain of, whatever those liable to them might have, while she herself has been the most rigorous prohibiter and monopolist : she has not hesitated even to go to war or to instigate foreign wars, in order to force her productions into the markets she desired. All these things had taken

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place before she found herself in a situation to pretend to act upon her novel doctrines. If such has been heretofore the case, while no one disputed the policy of fostering the commerce and manufactures of nations by protecting duties and interdictions, what may we not expect when an acute people and an interest, powerful from the influence of wealth as well as from many other considerations, now advocate, with all the force of logic, negociation, temptations, and inducements, the adoption of a system not more clearly opposite to the real interest of the rest of the world than the course which she formerly pursued.

It is not an objection to my argument to say, that she has not yet acted upon her new system* with respect to her own dominions: I do not believe that she ever will herself adopt it in extenso; she will always persevere in her old plan of protecting such of her manufactures, and such parts of her commerce, as require nursing : but she argues vehemently with all other nations upon the impropriety of their pursuing the same course ; and if, in order to induce them to come into her views, she should offer to put them upon a footing of perfect equality and of unrestricted commerce with herself, it would be a mere deception ; because to place them upon a real equality, she must divide with them equally her capital, her mechanics, her mechanical habits, propensities, and information, results of the education and customs of ages; and she must share with them her vast shipping, her sailors, and her maritime disposition. This is impossible ; therefore it is also impossible that any bargain based upon abolitioit of discriminating duties or free importation can be otherwise than to her advantage, and to the injury of every one else.

Nor are the consequences of her plans favourable to the happiness of the human race, or to the general improvement of mankind; it tends directly to drive men back into barbarism :

* It is a new system in English politics. Adam Smith was not an Englishman ; moreover he was a philosopher, and unfortunately his theory appeared a few centuries too late : the diverse tempers of nations or of their rulers had already rendered its adoption impossible, without deep injury to the interests and welfare of millions ; England exports such theories, she does not use them.

foreign commerce is necessary to civilization, and manufactures are necessary to the well being of a country — without the former a people must remain stationary, devoid of information relative to the improvements of the rest of the world, and all experience shews that a nation without commerce sinks into rudeness — to argue about it is in vain; men have always done so, and men now are formed of the same materials as they have been since the creation, — the same causes will therefore produce the same effects. Again, without manufactories within her territory a nation is at the mercy of any government which chooses to wage war upon her, and the population may be reduced, by a simple blockade, to the greatest distress for want of articles rendered indispensable by actual necessity or by inveterate habit, and even for want of weapons of defence ; the experience of our late war enables us to speak feelingly upon this subject. The system of England goes directly toward constituting her the only commercial power and the only manufacturer in the world; of course to reduce mankind to ignorance, impotency, and barbarism; and she stands by with fallacious arguments, with a tremendous armed power, marine and army, sword in hand, to enforce conviction and compliance with her views.