The extensive cultivation of cotton can, perhaps, hardly be expected but from the previous establishment of domestic manufactories of the article, and the surest encouragement and vent for the others would result from similar establishments in respect to them.
If, then, it satisfactorily appears that it is the interest of the United States generally to encourage manufactures, it merits particular attention that there are circumstances which render the present a critical moment for entering with zeal upon the important business. The effort can not fail to be materially seconded by a considerable and increasing influx of money in consequence of foreign speculations in the funds and by the disorders which exist in different parts of Europe.
The first circumstance not only facilitates the execution of manufacturing enterprises, but it indicates them as a necessary means to turn the thing itself to advantage and to prevent its being eventually an evil. If useful employment be not found for the money of foreigners, brought to the country to be invested in purchases of the public debt, it will quickly be reexported to defray the expense of an extraordinary consumption of foreign luxuries, and distressing drains of our specie may hereafter be experienced to pay the interest and redeem the principal of the purchased debt.
This useful employment, too, ought to be of a nature to produce solid and permanent improvements. If the money merely serves to give a temporary spring to foreign commerce, as it can not procure new and lasting outlets for the products of the country, there will be no real or durable advantage gained. As far as it shall find its way in agricultural meliorations, in opening canals, and in similar improvements, it will be productive of substantial utility. But there is reason to doubt whether in such channels it is likely to find sufficient employment, and still more whether many of those who possess it would be as readily attracted to objects of this nature as to manufacturing pursuits, which bear greater analogy to those to which they are accustomed and to the spirit generated by them.
To open the one field as well as the other will at least secure a better prospect of useful employment for whatever accession of money there has been or may be.
There is at the present juncture a certain fermentation of mind, a certain activity of speculation and enterprise, which if properly directed may be made subservient to useful purposes, but which if left entirely to itself may be attended with pernicious effects. The disturbed state of Europe, inclining its citizens to emigration, the requisite workmen will be more easily acquired than at any other time; and the effect of multiplying the opportunities of employment to those who emigrate may be an increase of the number and extent of valuable acquisitions to the population, arts, and industry of the country.
To find pleasure in the calamities of other nations would be criminal, but to benefit ourselves by opening an asylum to those who suffer in consequence of them is as justifiable as it is politic.
A full view having now been taken of the inducements to the promotion of manufactures in the United States, accompanied with an examination of the principal objections which are commonly urged in opposition, it is proper in the next place to consider the means by which it may be effected as introductory to a specification of the
