ounces of meat, eight lb. of flour, seven pints of ale, and a quarter of a pint of brandy per week; the cost of which articles, free from excise and customs' duties, was two shillings and four-threefourths, but with those taxes seven shillings and seven pence, being a weekly tax of five shillings and two pence, or yearly of thirteen pounds, thirteen shillings and six pence, while his wages amounted to only eleven shillings. These were articles almost of necessary consumption to the labouring man."

After making an assertion, which probably no other man living ever made, that the labouring man in this country is more heavily taxed than in England, "Libertas" resorts to a statistical table to prove it. Finding it a difficult matter, and yet starting as he did, with the determination it should so appear by his statistics, he estimates the tax upon each individual, (working man) in consequence of the tariff, at twelve dollars and fifty cents; that would be $56,000,000 per annum for the whole country, taking his estimate of four persons to a family, which is only two or three times as much as the whole revenue of the coun→ try from the tariff. Then comes the coal tax of two dollars and forty cents, which I have proved existed only in his own brain. And these two fictitious sums only amount to one half the aggregate he wishes to make out. But with undaunted resolution, he leaps the grand conclusion, and adds fifteen dollars and forty cents as the an

nual average loss of every working man in the United States on bad bills; or $60,000,000 a year, as the aggregate loss to the country, allowing four persons to a family; or over six hundred millions of dollars in ten years. This happens to amount to about four times as much as all the bank circulation in the United States in 1836, when it was larger than it had ever been before, or than it has ever been since: (See Com. Dic. article Banks)and nearly twice as much as all the banking capital of the United States ever amounted to since the organization of the government ! This is financiering with a vengeance!

Our author's bill of taxes on the American working man, reminds me of the story told of Joseph Buonaparte and his Yankee landlord. It happened some years ago, while the ex-king of Spain was travelling with his suite, through one of the New-England states, he passed a night at a country, inn. The ingenious host considering such a guest no ordinary windfall, determined at once to make a speculation, and so the next morning after puzzling his brain all night about the best manner of presenting the bill, at last he came to the conclusion not to be very minute in his items, and he boldly wrote down $100. When the bill was presented, the servant considering it an unusual charge, thought he would hand it to his master for settlement. The landlord was called in, whom the whilome king thus addressed : “Dis is a remarkable bill, Monsieur-one hundred

dollar for one night! Mon Dieu-please make out de particulars." The host nothing abashed, withdrew to accomplish the work. He made out all the items he could either remember or invent; many of them imaginary, and all extravagant; but still he could not with all his yankee invention, make them amount to more than fifty dollars. But a hundred dollars he must have; so he made up the deficit by one grand coup-de-main. And it ran thus:

The bill of a working man's taxes in America, as figured out by "Libertas," is equally reasonable, and his "loss on bills" is the "fuss generally" that helps him out of the scrape.

III. The last point to be proved against the author of this book, IS, THAT HE HAS NO REGARD

FOR THE TRUTH WHEN IT COMES IN COLLISION

WITH HIS PASSIONS.-His false assertions, peurile statistics, and laughable blunders, I can often attribute to other motives than the desire to utter 20

VOL. I.

falsehoods. I know that national prejudice, the violence of passions, and great credulity, may cause even a sincere man to err widely from the truth. Over all these, which he seems to possess in no ordinary degree, I can throw the mantle of charity. But when he indulges in the bold assertions, that "the amount of common education given in England greatly exceeds that of America"-that the working man in the United States has heavier burdens to bear, and enjoys fewer of the comforts of life than the labouring man of England—that the "Voluntary schools provided education for the great mass of the people of England, till within the last century-that there is no oppression of the poor in Great Britain, &c.," I cannot believe he designed or desired to tell the truth. Under the violence of passion, he has descended to the meanness of what cannot be other than conscious and intentional falsehood. With many other malicious and libellous charges against myself and my country, I pass over his aspersion of the people of Connecticut, of whom he says: "To talk of such men knowing anything of the meaning of liberty, is to make a mockery of that cherished word." When an attack worth noticing is made against that people they will answer it themselves. And in reply to his still viler aspersion of Massachusetts, I will only quote the words of her great orator : "Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts. She needs none. There she is, go and behold her for yourselves.

แ

There is her history-the world knows it by heart."

In my letter to Mr. Greely, when this book first appeared, I said that in my reply to it I would make the author's charges recoil upon his own head. The public will judge whether I have redeemed my pledge. From such a man I had no reason to expect the courtesy of a gentleman, although I might hope to escape the brutality of the blackguard.