This leads me naturally to the great subject of _American labor_, which has hardly been considered or discussed as carefully as it deserves. What is _American labor_? It is best described by saying, _it is not_ European labor. Nine tenths of the whole labor of this country is performed by those who cultivate the land they or their fathers own, or who, in their workshops, employ some little capital of their own, and mix it up with their manual toil. No such thing exists in other countries. Look at the different departments of industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or mechanical, and you will find that, in almost all, the laborers mix up some little capital with the work of their hands. The laborer of the United States is the United States. Strike out the laborers of the United States, including therein all who in some way or other belong to the industrious and working classes, and you reduce the population of the United States from sixteen millions to one million. The American laborer is expected to have a comfortable home, decent though frugal living, and to be able to clothe and educate his children, to qualify them to take part, as all are called to do, in the political affairs and government of their country. Can this be said of any European laborer? Does he take any share in the government of his country, or feel it an obligation to educate his children? In most parts of Europe, nine tenths of the laborers have no interest in the soil they cultivate, nor in the fabrics they produce; no hope, under any circumstances, of rising themselves, or of raising their children, above the condition of a day-laborer at wages; and only know the government under which they live by the sense of its burdens, which they have no voice in mitigating. To compare such a state of labor with the labor of this country, or to reason from that to ours, is preposterous. And yet the doctrine now is, not of individuals only, but of the administration, that the wages of American labor must be brought down to the level of those of Europe. I have said this is not the doctrine of a few individuals; and on that head I think injustice has been done to a Senator from Pennsylvania, who has been made to bear a large share of the responsibility of suggesting such a policy. If I mistake not, the same idea is thrown out in the President's message at the commencement of the last session, and in the treasury report. Hear what Mr. Woodbury says:-- "Should the States not speedily suspend more of their undertakings which are unproductive, but, by new loans or otherwise, find means to employ armies of laborers in consuming rather than raising crops, and should prices thus continue in many cases to be unnaturally inflated, as they have been of late years, in the face of a contracting currency, the effect of it on our finances would be still more to lessen exports, and, consequently, the prosperity and revenue of our foreign trade."