THE AMER CAN TARIFF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 263, 23 October 1862, Page 6

THE AMER CAN TARIFF.

(From the Times, July 11.)

vie popular organs of opinion in the Northern States oi America are in ecstacies at the mischievous character of the " Revised Tariff." To compensate its extreme inconvenience to themselves they are able to find a truly Christian consolation in the circumstance that it is still more injurious, as they hope to Engla d and all Europe. The fact that they 'will henceforth have to pay at least half as much again for everything they import, and that, consequently they will often have to do without it altogether, afflicts them but little, for somebody ilse on this side is starving 'or want of employment. The hard necessity of finding ready money to pay soldiers and contractors compels them to tax every tiling that can be taxed, and as their means are only limited, to buy everything iv less quantity, and of worse qnaiity than heretofore ; but, •' Thank God, the European pioduceris damaged &i much as ourselves." So, when the American wears his body linen to rags, and can no longer walk down Broadway iv the splendour of glossy "■ pants •" when he finds himself poisoned by his French'wine at what was once a wholesome price; when bis razor scrapes without cutting, and his tools break in his hands; when the locomotive runs off a bad rail • when the boiler bursts its sheeting, as bad as it is dear, and scalds a score or two good citizens: when the bolts and other iron work of a large trellis bridge give way, and send a trainful into the gulf ■bsJow ; when the sick man finds his drugs worthless, if not absolutely poisonous; when the scissors refuse to cut, and the thimble to save the finger-er-d; when the thrifty housekeeper deplores the many breakages she cannot afford to replace ; when the " help " ca~nnot renew her Sunday's best, and her mistress must walk abroad in la«t year's finery; when the printer must work with bad metal and bad ink—the sufferer is always to cheer himself with the pleasant thought that what he cannot have nobody else is making, and that, if he has not the thing, somebody else has not the bread. That is the new American gospel. It is as much as if a man whose house was burnt down by his own careiessnets thanked heaven that his neighbours had heen half-drowned by the engines, as well as scorched by the flames, This is a vein of sentiment which has long ceased on this sice the Atlantic. We no more think of deliberately wishing other nations to be half-starved and brutalised by want than we should think of scalping, flaying alive, poisoning- weils, or other antique barbarities. While soldiers encounter soldiers in the etern appeal to arms, we only commiserate with a deep and universal sympathy the innumerable guiltless sufferers—the widows and orphans, the destitute and forsaken ; and, besides them, the many who are ruined by straitened trade, by heavy taxes, ;nd by the diversion of industry and capital into unproductive channels. Supposing-, as is too likely, that the' " Revised Tarifi " will neatly reduce the importation of American corn and flour into this country, it will be no pleasure, even to the Lancashire parents who see their children pine, to know that the fanners in Michigan and Illinois are burning the crops which it will not pay to send to market, and have no money for proper cU thing, good implements, or the most ordinary comforts of life. Of what possible advantage can it be to us in this island that somebody, whom we have never heard of, is in rags in the Middle of North America, that his iatuily is shirtless and stockingkss, and lhat he is himself fretting his very soul out iv vain attempts to patch up his wretched agricultural implements and machinery ? Nobody on this side reads without the profoundesi. emotion the narrative of American suffering such as that we published yosterday, whether on the Federal or the Confederate side. In that land of unbounded pienty and inexhaustible skill, it is pitiable to read of armies losing 2000 a day by sickness and fatigue of strong and brave young men stationed for monti;s in reeking swamps under a burning sun, and living on a scanty allowance of bad biscuits, worse coffee, and an occasional piece of hard salt beet. In this Old World we are become such lovers of order, of regulation, of science, of good management, and of coi fort., even in war, that we have all a sort of comrade's feeling fuithese causeless miseri s. We are vexed and annoyed at a war of false movements, bad positions, strange surprises, unseen foes, attacks in the flank and rear, and such utter insecurity that depots, hospitals, landing stages, loaded schooners, and passenger trains two or three miles from head quarters, are the first objects of attack We look for Tactics, for battlfs, and for results, and, instead of them, we find confusion withont end. Perhaps what we all wish is that the North and South should shake hands over any .arrangement likely to be lasting. So our wishes even for the soldiers and politicians are not so bad. But, as for the men of peace—the artisans and labourers at home, the manufacturers and shopmen, the women and children—we have only one wLh for them, and that, is that they may, if possible, be reinstated in their forme? peace and pient}-, with rather better security for its permanence than they have under the existing race of American statesmen. There is something ridiculous, even to ghastliness, in the spectacle of the Americans dancing in the fetters they have imposed on their own trade, parading their own sores and mutilations, and praying to all their gods that the rest of the world may be in worse case than they are themselves. They are now offering a." Te Deum " because they hope they have shut out half the world, insulated themselves from Europe, brought famine to seveial millions of British, French, wad German firesides, and made the Atlantic ten times as wide to all practical purposes. We pass over the absurdity that they still*hope to send us their " breadstuffs," which we cannot do without, even while they expect to receive nothing in return. Of course, we cannot buy their bread withont money, and cannot get money without earning it by some"trade or manufacture. So the American ideal of Europe as a vast poorhouse, in which the inmates shall have their daily loaves without doing a stroke of work, is not likely to be realised, unless indeed the Americans in pure malice and wickedness should send us twenty ox- thirty million quarters of com every year, and refuse to take a dollar for them. No doubt this would answer the desired purpose of degrading us into paupers, but the Americans are not in a condition to try so grand an experiment in the science of political and social economy. Indeed, the people who Talk-of sending us corn and taking nothing in return, are not the persons most concerned in the project—the corngrowers themselves. The "Revised Tariff" strikes its first and hardest blow at the Southern and Western States. It tells the American agriculturists in the vast interior that they shall henceforth buy and sell at prices dictated by the manufacturers of New York an d the Atlantic States. It tells them that they shall sell their corn, cottons, sugar, and all their produce, at the New York prices; and at New York prices also, pay for every article they wear on their bodies,' or use in their houses, their faring, their * o kshops or on their railways. It rivets a collar on every American neck, with " New York" thereon inscribed, and a chain on every American hand and foot, to fret the skin till it reaches the bone. We grieve for them as well as, for ourselves, for we see that much of this is inevitable, and that war can only be paid for by taxation. But we beg to assure our American contemporaries that, when they exnit in the communication of their own miseries to all Europe, we" see in their ecsUcies only the aberrations oi amind and nature so thoroughly perverted that it can exclaim, "Evil be r thou ray good.* > , .. . . =.."'..•',