The war was closed under the most favourable auspices. The country was every where prosperous. Inestimable manufacturing establishments, in which probably 60,000,000 of dollars were invested, were spread over the face of the land, and were diffusing happiness among thousands of industrious people. No man, woman, or child, able and willing to work, was unemployed. With almost every possible variety of soil and climate—and likewise with the three greatest staples in the world—cotton, wool, and iron—the first to an extent commensurate with our utmost wants, and a capacity to produce the other two—a sound policy would have rendered us more independent probably of foreign supplies, for all the comforts of life, than any other nation whatever.

Peace, nevertheless, was fraught with destruction to the hopes and happiness of a considerable portion of the manufacturers. The double duties had been imposed with a limitation to one year after the close of the war. And a tariff as a substitute was prepared by the secretary of the treasury, with duties fixed at the minimum rates which he thought calculated to afford them protection. On many of them, these rates were insufficient. Yet had his tariff been adopted, it would probably have saved the country forty or fifty millions of dollars—and prevented a large portion of the deep distress that pervades the land, and which is driving legislative bodies to the desperate measure of suspending the course of justice.