onvictions, that repeal is inevitable, _every thing depends_ on the
TIME and MANNER of effecting it. There is a inestimable value attending
every year of continued protection that can yet be gained. Even a
comparatively short period might be of infinite importance in completing
those great improvements now in progress, which will raise the available
fertility of so large a portion of our soil, but which must instantly
stop, if protection be suddenly withdrawn. It is not in our power to see
far into futurity, but every delay is precious, as enabling us better to
meet the demands of public necessity, and to stand a competition with
foreign soils, if that competition must ultimately be entered upon
without legislative aid. How infinite, too, the difference of any change
produced WITH A PANIC, and WITHOUT ONE! There may be various
arrangements, moreover, which, if boldly and equitably made, might
possibly go to place our protection on a footing nearly as firm, and not
so likely to be assailed. On all this, however, we suspend our judgment
for the present, remarking merely that we are not prepared to quit our
present amount and plan of protection without DEMONSTRATION that we
cannot fairly or prudently retain it.

In the meantime let us hope and struggle for the best, for the
maintenance either of the present law, or of a scale substantially
equivalent. If that fails us, let us aim at the _next best_ arrangement;
and by a firm and temperate course, we need not at least despair of
averting that overwhelming confusion and wide destruction of property
that would inevitably follow from the nostrums of desperate and
designing men, devised and conducted with an equal absence of wisdom and
of honesty.

A single word of earnest admonition in conclusion. The next few months
or weeks must decide one important practical question, which we think
has been unfolding itself silently before the minds of considerate men
for the last few years, and which, whether they will or no, men of all
opinions must weigh well, with the deliberation due to their own safety
and self-interest, and with that freedom from personal pique or party
spirit which the emergency demands. We are far from pinning our faith to
individual characters, or thinking that the welfare of the state can be
wrapped up in the fortunes or progress of a single mind. But still the
question will recur, whether, in the existing state of the country, and
when all circumstances are ba