tariff and the tax bills are probably to go over to December.

The importer. whether foreign or American, can complain of no injustice in this provision; for as American manufacturers cannot go into these national warehouses for free storage the system is a direct discrimination against them. A further and a more injurious discrimination against the American manufacturer is found

Not only as a simple duty, but because it accords with my own conviction of right and justice to the laboring classes do I most earnestly protest against the postponement of the subject of protection as involved in that of the tariff. There is now no more important subject before the American people; and, whether my remarks be considered in season or out of season, I have no apology to offer for obtrud

own position was taken upon this question at a very early period, and as I study it in all its bearings and inform myself more completely in regard to its importance, as my means and opportunities are from year to year enlarged, my early convictions are strengthened, and I am confirmed in the opinion that in no other way can Congress so well serve the mechanic and laborer and at the same time contribute so much to the wealth and greatness of our country as by vouchsafing complete protection to our skill, our land, and our labor.

40@67 cents per day. "The difference in the cost of living in the two countries is not so great as is commonly represented. The luxuries of life are much higher here, but for actual necessaries the prices are about the same.'

In Germany farm laborers are paid thirty-two cents a day for men aud sixteen cents for women during the harvest season. They work twelve hours, with one hour rest at midday. Their dress and food are of the coarsest description. Two pounds of black rye bread, one quarter of a pound of cheese, and half a pint of potato whisky, or its equivalent in wine or beer, form their diet. Three times a week they are allowed half a pound of meat. Mechanics receive from forty-eight to fifty-four cents per day. Meat costs from ten to fourteen cents a pound; flour, eleven cents a pound; and potatoes seventy cents for two hundred pounds. The price of labor has only risen two per cent. in ten years. The greatest burden, however, is the heavy taxes laid upon every class. These taxes fall heaviest upon the working classes and lightest upon the rich. Ministers, teachers, and Government officers pay nothing, and labor and industry bear the whole burden. In Prussia the laws are more equitable, but all persons are taxed at least three per cent. on their incomes, while a workman without property pays annually thirty-four cents or about one day's wages.

The condition of Irish laborers hardly needs description. Labor is a mere drug throughout Ireland, and is usually of the poorest kind. Wages are fearfully low-for men, on the average, one shilling a day; for women sixpence; and for children fourpence, or nothing. Skilled workmen receive less than ten shillings a week, about three dollars of our money. The houses, dress, and food of the majority are of the most wretched description.

By this is seen at a glance the difference in the cost of production, and how generous we are to the foreign manufacturer when we put up for him a fire-proof warehouse in which to store his goods produced at starvation wages, while we exclude our own manufactures from such benefits, although they are produced at rates of wages always at the highest point warranted by the market.

The difference in the cost of production is never made up by the tariff. The tariff is intended to, but rarely ever represents the full difference paid to mechanics and laborers in America and Europe. The whole cost of the American article is borne at once, while the foreign competitor is enabled to put his goods into competition at the mere foreign cost of production, the duty only being required to be paid at the moment of sale and removal from the bonded warehouse. The question involves the free discussion of the tariff and the tax bills.

The postponement of the tax bill, from which something of relief had been hoped, leaves the question in all its bearing to the future.

Sir, so full of anxiety am I upon this subject that I am willing to unite my political fortunes with any party honestly making the advocacy of American labor its leading principle. This is not said in any demagogical spirit. The business of my district depends so much upon what is done here, and upon the activity of the business of my district depends so much of my own comfort, that I may be open to the charge of pleading under the spur of private interest, though God knows I would willingly sacrifice myself if I could set this matter right for many suffering, breaking hearts at home.

The shifting policy of this Government upon the subject of the tariff produces all the fluctuations that disturb our domestic industries. A state of affairs that stimulates the production of our staples is followed by legislation tending to cripple our manufactures, and the vigorous arm of the mechanic and laborer is paralyzed. If the tariff of 1842 had been let alone this nation, instead of numbering less than forty would have numbered over fifty million of souls to day; and the district I represent, instead of less than two hundred thousand could have boasted over half a million. Its latent wealth is equal to the employment of over a million of men. In behalf of the thousands who are there now, and idle half the time, I propose to speak this day; and if what I have to say is to have no effect, my efforts shall not therefore be spared hereafter. But I shall continue to caution the friends of protection in Congress to work together, and to withhold their aid from other projects whose friends, favoring piecemeal legislation, are always ready to take a little off here and a

little off there until we shall have our tariff cut and carved down to the destructive law of 1846, not the least objectionable feature of which was the warehousing system now under discussion.

Sir, I am not unmindful of the efforts of the advocates of labor here. When I study their speeches I am amazed that all are not convinced and that any difference of opinion should exist as to the true policy of the Government. My colleague, [Mr. KELLEY,] Representative of the fourth congressional district of Pennsylvania, and by virtue of the variety and value of his services here, representative and advocate of the whole Commonwealth, has on many occasions presented to the House the wants and claims of American labor and enterprise in a manner and with an effect that might well dispense with any service which I can hope to render to those interests. My other colleague, [Mr. MORRELL,] to whose courtesy I am indebted for the floor, has also found opportunities for giving us the results of an unusually large experience in departments of productive industry, which involve a practical acquaint

ance with the whole range of industries that interlock in that central one which he has long and successfully conducted. Nor have there

ever been lacking other educated representa tives of Pennsylvania; gentlemen qualified both by study and practice in all the varieties of business interests which give to the State a representative character among the sister States of the Union, who, each in his own speciality, and all together, might well be trusted to fill up the circle of representative duty here and suffer no incompleteness by the lack of any contribution from me. Indeed, I would gladly escape the unequal trial of this general service, but there are reasons why my mite should be thrown in with their abundance-considerations which constrain me and amply justify my attempt to reënforce them, even by pressing to the front, though I may not claim equal rank among my peers in the performance of a duty charged alike by our respective constituencies upon us all.

The attention of Congress has been so long and so closely held to the consideration of questions either purely political or so remotely connected with the economic exigencies of the times that it will require some effort to secure the tone of mind and direction of thought demanded by the subjects involved in the great labor question pressing upon us now for a wise and happy solution.

We have a tariff of import duties to arrange in conformity with the sound principles and policy of international trade, the details of which, difficult enough in themselves, are besides greatly complicated by a necessary adjustment to the onerous system of internal duties which our national debt and current expenditure imposes upon our productive industry. In no circumstances, indeed, can a sound system of foreign trade be established without regard to domnestic industry, for the prosperity of a country, even if entirely free from national debt, and the resulting burdens upon its industries, needs some protection, some guardianship, some general policy; aye, some favoring and fostering care; for, if every mechanic and every merchant must consider his business relations and rivalries, or the demand and supply of his neighborhood, much more must a nation shape its industrial policy to the state and requirements of its home demand and supplies, and to the foreign interferences with its own capabilities and opportunities.

It is conceded that labor is the primary source of all wealth; wealth being nothing else in its broadest and deepest meaning than the measure of man's power over nature; power over nature, for man finds the earth and all its agencies in resistance to his dominion, and hence the significance of the original command given to the representative of the race, "to subdue the earth." This is the mission and commission appointed and enjoined; and labor, in its widest meaning, labor of muscle and mind, labor natural and artificial, the work of human hands, and the help of natural forces subdued to human service; labor of every kind which man commands is the agent by which the dominion of the earth is achieved, and this dominion is wealth. The wealth, or, in other words, the welfare of a nation, arising thus out of its labor, that labor must be the primary and principal care of human societies if they would not abandon their fortunes to chance or to the control of adverse interests and warring policies; and if there be any such opposition of interests among nations as exists everywhere among individuals, Governments, like private men, must consider and provide against them. Out of this dependence upon the prosperity of labor and its national competitions arise the necessity and the justification of defense, protection, and earnest guardianship. Householders lock their doors against intruders, and if they admit a stranger to the business of their domestic concerns it is under the restraint of their own authority. Farmers build fences to protect their fields from stray cattle, and Governments construct forts and navies for the defense of their territories against invasion, and all men record their title papers for the security of their rights of property. Thus defensive means and measures are so far from being uncommon or

unwarrantable that they are universal in the concerus of individual life; and that aggregate of individuals which we call a nation has a clear authority for taking a like care of its general interests; and this all the stronger that the interests of the individual are all at risk in those of the community.

any product of skill in England of which she has the natural or acquired monopoly in her home market. Free trade as opposed to protection that is, free trade as a distinctive economical principle-never had an inch of foothold in England, nor, though constantly so claimed, has it kept company with liberalism and progressiveness in the reforms of the last quarter of a century. Free trade has nothing in its spirit or aims which entitle it to fellowship with the movement in modern societies looking to and laboring for the amelioration of human conditions. The landed aristocracy of England resisted the repeal of the corn laws, indeed; and in this case English conservatism was arrayed against the form which free trade took there; but in our own country the plant

Let us for a moment look at the doctrine of protection in the aspect usually presented by the enemy. Experience is against them, if the experience of all prosperous nations be admitted to be sound and true. The facts which confront them are that no nation which to-day holds a high and respectable rank in wealth and power on the earth has, during its stage of growth, followed the policy of free trade either in form or effect. European, especially British, literature and speculative philosophy are loaded down to the water's edge with argumentation against the doctrine of protection; but the policy of the British islands had no such freight aboard while they rode the tide of successful experiment. I need not enter into the proof of this assertion, for no one disputes it. But the utility as well as the principles of protection are denied by those who would confute its theory. English freetraders have the boldness to say now that the maritime supremacy of Great Britain was achieved not by aid of her navigation laws, but in spite of them; and that England made herself "the workshop of the world" in like manner, in spite of the protection of domestic industry, which she maintained for five centuries, from the time when Flanders was Europe's workshop and England was selling her raw materials and buying back the skilled labor of the Continent until the time when she became an importer of raw materials and a vender of the labor and skill and of the power and products of natural forces to all the world. Now, somehow English manufactures did grow to overtopping proportions under her system of protection, prohibition, and bounties, not only absolutely, but relatively, to the early supremacy of India and the southwestern half of Europe. And the only ground for affirming that the policy under which this wonderful success was secured was not the cause and the means is simply that it was--no, that it isunphilosophical; a conclusion that would be just as valid if one were to affirm that the adhesive inflammation which accompanies the restoration of a broken bone is unhealthy, and the splints and bandages only so much impediment and incumbrance, because they are not necessary in the sound condition of a limb. But free-traders are not only poetical in respect to principles; they are habitually and utterly untrue as to facts.

They point to the abridged schedules and the diminished rates of duty of the British tariff as a demonstration of their theory. They say in so many words that the English system is now what they are pleased to call free trade. Our answer is that it is not now and never has been free trade in principle or purpose, in any sense opposed to protection, rightly understood.

Protection is only and simply defense. The Esquimaux need no defense for their production of walrus beef, their reindeer or seal-skin trade. New York needs no defense for its daily newspapers, nor Massachusetts for its ice. Neither the principle of free trade nor of protection touches these commodities in these circumstances. Nor do they any more apply to

nineteenth century and of this progressive Republic were not protectionists, but out and out free-traders. This opposition of the conservatisms in the United States and in Great Britain means something else than the assumed natural sympathy of free trade for progressiveness.

I have said that free trade, as an economic principle, has never existed in England. I go further, and say that free trade has never taken the shape and action of a principle anywhere, that an advocate dare quote its results, or supposed results, in the experience of the nation adopting it. Something of it exists as a sentiment in portions of our agricultural population where manufactures have as yet scarcely taken existence, and even there it is an opinion imported from that region of this country and from that foreign nation with which it is a mere matter of policy. Among us it has one way or other worked itself into some consideration through the agency of debating societies, off-hand editorials, and foreign treatises on political economy got up in the infected districts. The Democratic party, too, not sincerely nor advisedly, but through its unnatural alliance with the slave party of the South for twenty years before the rebellion, leaned away from the leadings of Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson toward this heresy along with its other apostacies, which together have plunged it into ruin. The building of a furnace, mill, or factory in a purely agricultural community, where the free-trade sentiment had obtained a foothold, by enhancing the value of property in the locality, stimulating the agricultural as well as all other pursuits, creating a market for the surplus labor, and by raising the value of that labor, speedily explodes the doctrine, and adds to the ranks sturdy advocates of protection.

I know that England is constantly, and it may be in many cases innocently, quoted as showing a great revolution in doctrine and practice in this matter. She is quoted as an instance of the triumph of the doctrine and of the benefit of its practical adoption. But her policy has not to this day entitled itself to the use or application of the term. It may be loosely taken to describe her present practice in reference to her foreign trade so far, but so far only, as that practice really extends; but this policy in no degree discloses the spirit or aim of her commercial system, even to the extent of its seeming application. It is not free trade that she wants, but cheap raw material and cheap provisions. Until within the last five and twenty years her system stood firmly upon protection, effected through fines, penalties, prohibitions, and import duties, high enough always to secure for her the monopoly of her home market and those of all her colonial dependencies.

This system of protection embraced food as well as fabrics, and until the towns mastered the country and the millocracy overtopped the landed aristocracy, the concession had to be made by the manufacturers and traders to the land owners. The revolution in policy, when it was effected, was really made to secure free, that is cheap, raw material, of which food is greatly more important than even any or all the substances which she works into her manufactures.

The articles which may be called food and drink imported into the United Kingdom in 1864, amounted to four hundred and thirtynine million dollars, being thirty-three per cent, of the total value of all the British imports of that year. But when the exports of foreign goods are subtracted the food retained rises to thirty-six and a half per cent. of all commodities imported and consumed.

To show how far British free trade aims at cheap raw material for consumption and reproduction we have the striking fact that of her total imports in 1864, which amounted to two hundred and seventy-five millions pounds sterling, the manufactures amounted to no more than seventeen million pounds, or but six and three quarter per cent. of the total foreign imports.

The edifice of her industrial prosperity having been built up under protection to a height that overtopped all the nations which at first surpassed her in her own and in foreign markets, her supremacy (which certainly was attained long before she relaxed a hair-breadth of her protective system of duties) secured, and all its powers exhausted in its complete victory, the next advance step to be taken in order to preserve and extend her dominion in foreign trade was to obtain food and raw material at the cheapest possible rates that wages might be low as well as the price of the foreign materials to be employed.

This aim and object, this endeavor, pushed to its utmost capability, with no other intent than the maintenance of her enormous foreign trade against the rivalry of the Continent, which has been long her terror as well as her danger, is glozed over with the fancy name of a principle which she and her disciples elsewhere so fondly call free trade, in order that her prosperity, falsely credited to it, may be used to break down the barriers of self-defense against her commercial encroachments upon the welfare of the nations whom she seeks to reduce to, and hold in, industrial vassalage.

That this is the spirit of her so-called freetrade policy is made further evident by her constant and ever-growing policy of shifting taxation from consumption to accumulation, or the clear savings of production. This is the true secret of a continuous resort to the income tax to cover deficits of revenue, and especially to meet all extraordinary demands upon the national exchequer.

Whoever looks along the progressive reductions and remissions of impost and excise duties which mark the history of English legislation, especially since the free-trade era and corn-law repeal of 1846, will find that the burden of these reductions was invariably shifted upon the income tax when that would answer, and upon it and spirits and malt when the demand was unusually large. Sir Stafford Northcote, now a member of the Cabinet, in his work on the Financial Policy of England," says, expressly, concerning the imposition of this tax in the year 1845, that "the Parliament deliberately adopted it, and that at the time when the tax was not proposed as a measure of urgency, as in 1798, or even in 1842, but it was calmly weighed in the balance against cheap sugar, cheap glass, cheap cotton, and the rest, and found to be a price worth paying for these countervailing benefits." This tax, always odious, and rightly described by Lord John Russel as "a tax in which inequality, vexation and fraud are inherent," and always proposed by the Government as a temporary measure, to tide the exchequer over the shallows of revenue, is nevertheless persistently maintained. Not only to meet such exigencies as the Irish famine year, the Crimean war, and revolts in India, but even when so small an item as the expense of the Abyssinian expedition somewhat increased the national expenditure we find the Minister of Finance proposing to add to the present levy twopence in the pound, rather than put three millions unprovided for upon any other objects of taxation, for upon any of these it would ultimately, if not directly, burden consumption, enhance wages, and in

crease the cost of production, all of which is forbidden by the necessity of providing cheap living for labor, and cheap materials and wages for manufacturing, This policy of putting all extraordinary and much of the ordinary expenses of Government upon the income tax for the purpose of exonerating the productive industry of the realm has every whit as good a claim to be called a free-trade principle as the successive reductions and remissions of impost charges have in the practice of England. Not only has the income tax been permanently maintained since 1842, but it has been made to yield an average of about forty million dollars per year, since 1846, or much more than the average annual amount of all the duties upon foreign goods remitted since the cheap labor and cheap raw material movement was introduced into English policy. To the same end and with the same purpose the duties upon legacies and successions are charged up continually higher and higher, that manufac turers might be still further and further relieved as continental rivalry pressed harder and harder upon England's foreign trade.

Here we see, and it seems to me worth the trouble of looking after, that that system of protection which by the imposition of import duties had been fairly strained to its last stretch of efficacy, and to the last moment and limit of its need, was repealed by statute only after it had been virtually repealed by its own complete success. And then that other form of protection, which consists in shifting taxation from industry to accumulated wealth, was substituted as necessary to the struggle with the cheap commodities of rival nations for the monopoly of the labor market of all such semibarbarous nations as can be induced, first to accept a false theory of industry and trade, and afterward the goods manufactured for their defenseless markets.

But I go further, and assert here, not only that England has never adopted free trade as a principle, but she has to this day never abandoned protection, even in form, much less in fact.

The free lists in her tariff schedules cover not an item or an article that in the slightest degree can compete with her domestic productions: articles of food and raw materials for her manufactures, so far as England produces any of these, excepted, the motives for which exceptions we have already shown, and shown, too, that they are so far from the principle of free trade that they are in essence and object protective of the manufacturing supremacy and foreign trade monopoly of the United Kingdom.

England now, and during the whole period since the formal installation of her pretended free trade in the statutes of the realm, has collected an average of twenty-two million pounds from customs. The estimate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer puts this item at one hundred and ten and a half million dollars for the coming year. I admit that this charge is in the main a,tax upon consumption or an excise duty collected at the custom-house, and not protective in effect. About six of these twentytwo million customs duties, however, are raised from manufactures levied as protective duties. But the amount collected from foreign imports which directly or indirectly compete with British protection is by no means the measure of the positive protection afforded to domestic in dustry. To the extent that duty rates prohibit or abridge importation they operate effectively. Indeed, it it is in this way that they are most effective, and the only unequivocal operation which they ever have, for a more increase of price upon imports charged with duties, when it does not diminish or prevent their introduction, may fail more or less to afford encouragement to home labor and capital. The duty often does fall wholly upon the foreign producer in diminuation of his profits without hindering him entirely from entering the mar ket for domestic labor. The value or force of protective or defensive duties leveled at though they fail to be levied upon imports is the true measure of their protective power.

Taking tobacco, sugar, and spirits in the United Kingdom, and the difference between the customs charged against such goods and of the excise duties charged upon the homemade articles, we find that the aggregate of these surcharges upon the foreign commodity amounts to ten million pounds sterling in round numbers; and if we add to these the duties made to stand guard over the home market against foreign beer, paper, cards, dice, vinegar, plate, hats, books, mill-boards, embroidery, musical instruments, linens, and a number of other articles which compete with similar articles of British manufacture, it is safe to say that the British Government, while it actually collects something over six millions sterling upon foreign manufactures, and manages besides to defend her home productions in her home markets by a scale of customs duties which prevent or diminish foreign importation by the threatened imposition, or, the barrier of preventive charges equivalent in protective force to more than twenty millions sterling, or one hundred million dollars per annum.

the average production of the manu

Is this free trade?

The pretense is an imposture.

The demonstration that protection, formal and actual, is thus maintained by the model freetrade nation under many disguises of names and methods of exaction with which I have ventured to detain the House, might seem, after being plainly produced, unnecessary. Unnecessary simply because it is obvious upon a moment's reflection that free trade, in the meaning claimed for her system, is in itself simply impossible. How in the name of common sense can it be supposed that any people whose dependence is so largely as that of Great Britain upon the full employment of her capital and labor could possibly give up to a phantom of theory the very substance of their industrial existence, to allow their labor and capital to be displaced at home, and all the work and profit of their necessary supplies to be transferred to any and every people who from local and special advantages should be able to underwork and undersell them? Can it be supposed that with a debt of four thousand million dollars resting upon the nation, and the neces sity for ordinary expenditure of three hundred and fifty million dollars per annum, to say nothing of the extraordinary, which, if not as coustant are quite as certain to occur, Great Britain could possibly allow France and Germany to seize her home markets and close her workshops? The defense to which they are compelled to resort is prettily phrased or styled || countervailing duties. Countervailing; what does that mean? Usually it is applied to the duty imposed upon such articles as spirits, manufactured sugar, manufactured tobacco, Imalt liquor, and such other articles as are selected to bear the great burden of the domestic excise. The home market for these articles thus relied upon for the greater part of the necessary revenue must be guarded against the like articles of foreign countries by countervailing duties; that is, the competing imports must be charged up to the mark of excluding them altogether, reducing them to comparative insignificance, or, at the least, throwing the whole weight of such duties upon the foreign producer. And what does this mean when pushed to its central idea? Why only this, that England can bear anything in the way of prices of commodities better than she can bear turning her labor idle or reducing its amount and at the same time striking her active capital and her foreign commerce with the resulting paralysis.

The intention and the necessity are exactly the same; that is, the reserving and securing to home labor and capital its opportunity of productive and profitable employment. Whoever says "no" to this proposition says that labor must everywhere be leveled to the lowest remuneration that is given to it anywhere; that it must be driven in the New World by the beg gary of the Old World to the low scale of wages which drives the millions of toilers of that Old World from their homes forever; or else it means that they shall be excluded from those departments of production which call into play all their higher powers, and exclude them from all those kinds of labor which an advanced civilization offers to the workingmen of modern times.

I have occupied the attention of the House with this theine so long and so earnestly for the purpose of overthrowing the force of the pattern, the model free-trade nation, and for the reason that it is so often and so confidently pressed upon us as an authority in theory and a demonstration in practice, and for the further reason that if the claims, pretenses, and example of Great Britain are fairly silenced we have hot another instance in the world's history to meet. I mean another instance where any apparent prosperity has attended an approach to free trade in foreign commerce.

Turkey bound herself by treaty with England to free trade three hundred years ago, when she feared no rivalry either in her own or in foreign commerce. A hundred and sixty years ago Portugal opened her ports and markets to the invasion of British products, under the temptation of a difference of duty in favor of her wines as against France; and India, now something more than fifty years subject to Great Britain, has had free trade forced upon her. And where do these people stand in the scale of nations now, and what is the state of their domestic affairs? Before their own folly or foreign force stripped them of self-protec tion they ranked as either first-rate Powers in Europe, or what is better, as self-supporting, independent, and prosperous. Now they are the wretched relics of decayed nationalities, having fallen under the disabilities of defenseless industry, blighted and blasted, and have become nuisances upon the face of the earth.

But, on the other hand, what peoples do we see rising into the front rank of European powers? Those, and those only, who have steadily, persistently, and wisely pursued the policy of fostering that home labor which is the only source of assured wealth. North Germany, Russia, and France are Europe today. Austria, that never entered the Zollverein or customs union of Germany, was defeated utterly and hopelessly in a campaign of a fortnight by her neighbor nations, who since 1825 have been doing their own work, just as our own southern States were conquered by the wealth and vigor of the trained industrials of the North.

Yes, sir, it is the treasure-chest quite as much as the camp that in these times expresses the force of embattled armies, and determines the result; determines it in favor of the muscles and mind educated together in the pursuits of a prosperous industry, whatever be the spirit or enthusiasm which it meets on the battle-field.

The argument for protection found in the example of England gains greatly increased force in its application to the condition and the necessities of the United States. The sitnation of the two countries at corresponding stages of their respective careers have such resemblance as fully warrants us in taking the economical history of the British islands, with its results for our example, and in so far as it has been successful for our guide under sim

Countervailing simply means" opposing with equal strength, balancing, obviating in effect." If import duties on this ground have the high-ilar circumstances. The people of this counest free-trade authority for their application where inland taxes raise prices upon the domestic producers of commodities, may they not also, and upon the very same ground, be applied where wages, or capital, or both are higher than among rival foreign producers?

try, in the main, are of the same race or races, and are of like generic type, for we mingle in our diversified nationalities only a larger portion of the best blood that has mixed its stray currents in theirs. No naturalist would pretend that in mental and physical constitution, or in

able imports to nineteen and a half per cent., the largest imports of dutiable goods, at these rates, which happened in 1860, amounted to only two hundred and sixty-eight millious. This was the year of our largest exports of breadstuffs, provisions, cotton, and other staples. Every possible circumstance was favorable to the trade of the year, yet it yielded one hundred and twenty-eight and eight tenths millions less to the Treasury, and brought one hundred and five millions less of foreign goods to our shores than was afforded by the fortyseven and one third per cent. tariif in operation in the fiscal year 1867.

I am dealing with facts, and I cannot so well in any other manner contradict or refute the specious doctrines of free-traders; such, for instance, as that which affirms that the lower the tariff rates the larger both the importation and the resulting revenue. A notion derived from the idea that protection means prohibition, or at least diminution of imports. to the extent of its degree, which is not true. Protection means nothing of the kind. It does not diminish foreign trade, but it selects it, and at the same time increases it by enabling the country to purchase the more in proportion to the freedom and security given to domestic industry. Why, Mr. Speaker, there is no country under the sun so well protected against rival industries as England. Her supremacy in production bars out all the manufacturers of the world, except about six per cent. of her total imports, and those imports have risen under this security from seven hundred and thirty-nine million dollars in value in 1854, to one thousand three hundred and fifteen millions in 1865, thus increasing seventy-eight per cent. in ten years; and this for the reason that her exports came still nearer to doubling in the same time. Nor has her customs revenue fallen off. It amounted to twenty-two million pounds in 1846, and yielded twenty-two and a half million in 1865, having been as high as twenty-four millions in 1863.

So much for the answer of history and fact to the plausible notion that lower duties increase imports and revenue, which might be true if the ability to buy foreign goods, was not affected by paralysis of domestic industry; but it is seen to be false when we look to the prosperity produced by full work, large wages, and activity of capital, all secured by protection of each, and all alike.

There is also another fallacy of the let-alone school of economists, specious enough on the surface, but hollow at the core. It is the assumption that the price of all imported commodities to the consumer must be increased by the amount of duty imposed upon them. But is the producer's selling price such a fixed and constant quantity that it can be taken for the basis of such a calculation? Let us see. The export price of English merchant bar iron in Liverpool was at five pounds ten shillings in August, 1832, and at ten pounds ten shillings in January, 1836, and it hovered about the latter rate untill 1840. The former price of five pounds ten shillings concurred with the operation of our tariff of 1828, and the increased price ruled during the reign of our compromise act. In April, 1843, our tariff of 1842 being in force, English merchant bar iron fell to five pounds. The tariff of 1842 being repealed it went up to nine pounds ten shillings in January,

1847.

These instances are enough for illustration. Now, who paid the duty on any such iron imported into the United States when our tariff rates were at the highest? The consumer? Manifestly no. The producer, capitalist, laborer, and trader, suffered it in abatement of their profits; sometimes even to the loss of all profits, and something of capital invested besides. Home production encour aged has the natural effect of holding the prices of foreign commodities in check, even when some considerable enhancement of price is the result. One thing is certain, that the foreign article never can go above the living price at which the domestic article can be afforded, for

competition among home producers will fix the maximum for the market, and hold it there, or prevent it from fluctuation, to the injury of the consumer.

A country absolutely subjected to foreigners for their supplies in every article must allow the vendor to fix his own price upon it, and if it has but one such market for purchasing it must also be shut up to that market for the sale of the commodities with which it purchases, and the foreigner thus fixes the price of the exports as well as of the imports. This is the bondage of trade. A slave, sir, is one who can deal with but one man. A country which must deal only in one market is as much

enslaved.

I have no doubt that an American consumer of tea or tropical spices must pay the whole duty imposed upon these articles at the customhouse, unless by a general abstinence the price is forced down upon the producer, and so a part or the whole of the charge be taken out of his profits. But who pays the duty when competition is open and a choice is free? How much must either party pay of such duty under the varying circumstances of the case? Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist, touches this subject incidentally, not exhaustively, as was his usage whenever engaged upon any point of economic doctrine as the main topic of discussion. He says:

"When the demand is equal to the quantity of goods at market, the consumer generally pays the duty; but when the markets happen to be overstocked a great proportion falls upon the merchant, and sometimes not only exhausts his profits, but breaks in upon his capital. I am apt to think. [he concludes] that a division of the duty between the seller and the buyer more often happens, than is commonly imagined, for it is not always possible to raise the price of a commodity in exact proportion to every additional imposition laid upon it."

These considerations are enough to dispose of the bold assumption that all taxes and duties are necessarily and certainly so much additional charge upon the consumer of commodi

ties.

Prices are determined by supply and demand; and it is plain, therefore, that domestic competition must have the effect of regulating the cost of foreign products when they are obliged to meet the rivalry of domestic goods in the markets which they invade. If there were no other reason of policy for maintaining such a check upon the foreign domination of our home markets, this would be a sufficient one. But dependence for supplies from abroad, for anything that can be produced at home, even as a mere matter of mercantile policy, is liable to the objection that they are thus surrendered to the government of causes, accidents, caprices, and interests, over which we have no control. In the war of 1812, blankets previously costing but six dollars per pair went up to twenty, and opium rose to one hundred and sixty dollars per pound, and common pins, of which we made none at the time, became absolutely unattainable. It is even worse when arms and ammunition are to be had only from the nation with which we happen to be at war. But I need not press this point so well put by General Jackson in his letter to Dr. Coleman, written during the pendency of legislation which resulted in the highly protective tariff act of 1824 and its amendment in 1828. But the opponent returns to the charge after all his sophistries of theory are exploded with such objections as this: the protective duty must somehow increase the price of the commodity, else why impose it? I answer, it certainly increases the underselling price resorted to for the purpose of breaking up the domestic production, with the opportunity reserved of increasing it to more than indemnifying rates when dominion of the market is obtained, as we have seen always occurred in the matter of English iron.

Mr. Madison, in his letter to Judge Cabell, October 30, 1828, puts this point thus:

"Should it happen, as has been suspected to be an

far to make an exception to the let-alone policy as to parry the evil by appropriate regulations of its foreign commerce."

Mr. Madison, forty years ago, spoke of the possibility of foreign combinatious to break down American industries, threatening to dispute the home market with them; but the report of a parliamentary commission appointed to consider the pressing evil of strikes among British workmen, makes Mr. Madison's hypothesis a matter of history. I ask attention to a somewhat lengthy extract for the reason that it covers the ground of an argument which I would be but too happy if I could sufficiently impress upon the people of this country who are so largely concerned and yet so little impressed by its facts and force. This parlia mentary committee says:

"The laboring classes (of England) generally, in the manufacturing districts of this country, and especially in the iron and coal districts, are very little aware of the extent to which they are often indebted for their being employed at all, to the immense losses which their employers voluntarily incur in bad times in order to destroy foreign competition and to gain and keep possession of foreign markets. Authentic instances are well known of employers having in such times carried on their works at a loss amounting in the aggregate to three or four hundred thousand pounds in the course of three or four years. If the efforts of those who encourage the combinations to restrict the amount of labor, and to produce strikes were to be successful for any length of time, the great accumulation of capital could no longer be made which enable a few of the most wealthy capitalists to overwhelm all foreign competition in times of great depression, and thus to clear the way for the whole trade to step in when prices revive, and to carry on a great business before foreign capital can again accumulate to such an extent as to be able to establish a competition in prices, with any chance of success. The large capitals of this country are the great instruments of warfare against the competing capital of foreign countries, and are the most essential instruments now remaining by which our manufacturing supremacy can be maintained; the other elements-cheap labor, abundance of raw material, means of communication, and skilled labor, being rapidly in process of being equalized."

This murderous policy Mr. Madison thought possible as a means of holding an extensive customer in commercial and industrial bondage. That phrase very truly describes the mercantile relation of the United States to Great Britain. Taking the year 1860 for an example, I find that the British exports to us that year, according to their own reports, stood at twentyone million six hundred sixty seven thousand and sixty-five pounds, while to all the world besides, other than her own provinces, the total of her exports were but seventy million five hundred and fifty-three thousand three hundred and twenty-seven pounds. Thus we are a fair one quarter of the world to her; an extensive customer, indeed, and well worth holding at any cost, by losses, bribery, or sophistry, or all together, as may be required.

But the real sacrifices of this cut-throat competition are next to nothing, for whenever by a wise policy we have enlarged our home products toward a self-supplying point a glut lappens in the English market in lack of so large a customer, and then it is no matter at what price the surplus is thrown upon our market, for the balance left is worth as much as the whole, including the excess, and the sacrifice of price, which at any rate must be borne, is amply repaid by the effectual breaking down of what the parliamentary committee called "the competing capital of foreign countries." A single instance will suffice: English common bar iron is quoted at New York during 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, at an average of seventy-five dollars per ton. In 1849 three hundred and eighteen thousand eight hundred and seventyfive tons of English iron were thrown upon our markets at less than the cost of production, and the New York price fell from the average of seventy-five dollars in the preceding four years to forty-one dollars and twenty-five cents in July and to thirty-three dollars in September, 1851. Here was a glut let loose upon us, as the prices indicate, with the unfailing result, that so soon as its work was done the indem

its great manufacturing capitalists, to strangle in the cradle the infant manufactures of an extensive customer or an anticipated rival, it would surely, in such a case, be incumbent on the suffering party so

find British bar in New York as early as November, 1853, at sixty-six dollars and twentyfive cents, and in November, 1854, at seventy