If cheapness is a blessing in food, it is a blessing in clothing and in everything else. The rule admits of no exception. It is as advantageous for any of us to save a pound on the price of his coat as a penny on the price of his loaf. Bread is, no doubt, the most important article of the workingman's consumption, but at the same time it is no less a fact that the raising of food is the most important part of the production of the labouring-classes. Without home labour, all capital in this country would be annihilated, or at least would depart from it. Labour depends entirely upon wages, and wages upon the market price of the article produced. If from the introduction of foreign labour, in the shape of products, the price of any article is forced down below the cost of production, then wages begin to fall, and in the end production is extinguished. Why is it that foreign countries have imposed heavy duties upon our exported articles of manufacture? Simply for this object--that their own manufacturers, who give employment to large numbers of their population, may not be undersold by ours, nor those means of employment annihilated. In acting thus, these governments perform a paternal duty to the people--shielding them against the competition of an older manufacturing power, and preparing them hereafter, when skill and capital are acquired, to enter neutral markets, with a fair chance of ultimately overcoming the other. It stands to reason that, with an equal degree of energy on the part of its inhabitants, the country which is the least heavily burdened must distance others in all branches of industry, where nature does not oppose a barrier, or place it at a disadvantage. The mineral wealth of England, and our priority in manufacturing invention, gave us for a long time an advantage over all other nations. America was not advanced enough to enter into the lists of manufacturing competition; the distracted state of the Continent, and the perpetual presence or apprehension of war, effectually prevented the European states from attempting to rival Britain. But since that time vast changes have taken place. The mineral resources of other countries have been developed. Some idea of the manufacturing power which America now possesses may be formed from the enormous increase of her domestic production of iron and coal. In 1829, the amount of iron manufactured in the United States was 90,000 tons; in 1848, it had risen to 800,000 tons. The coal raised in 1829 was 37,000 tons; in 1849 it was 3,200,000 tons. In the article of cotton, which is our great manufacturing staple, America has the inestimable advantage of growing the raw material--an advantage which never can be counterbalanced, as, even if we were to obtain our supplies from some other quarter, the expenses of freightage must still continue to be great. In fact, to all appearance, our supremacy in the conversion of cotton is already doomed. That branch of industry