and earnestly advocated the freedom and political equality of all men. When Grant was casting his first and only presidential vote for Buchanan, for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and for the approval of the DredScott decision, which declared that the black man had no rights the white man was bound to respect, Horace Greeley had devoted all the vigor of his ripened manhood to give freedom and citizenship to the powerless and despised race. In his own State he made canvass after canvass, against overwhelming numbers, to make suffrage free to all, and in abiding faith he fought the battle to the end, and gave it victory. But in the rich wreaths he had gathered for himself by his ceaseless efforts for the lowly and oppressed, there was no hate or resentment to dim the lustre of his achievements. Just when the black man had been secured in his freedom, the white men before me were, by that triumph, made strangers to their country. Then, when the resentments of war were omnipotent with rulers and people, above the black tempest of passion was one silver lining to the cloud. One voice had spoken amidst the anathemas of hate. It was the demand of Horace Greeley for universal amnesty and suffrage. It cost him many valued friends for a season, and made him ineligible to the high honors his party had decided to confer upon him; but he complained not as he labored patiently, earnestly, and hopefully, until the whole nation confessed his wisdom and bowed to his philanthropy. Thus have the oppressed of every race and clime ever found in him a friend. It has been miscalled humanity. It is his enlightened statesmanship and unfaltering courage in support of the right which have thus crowned our free institutions with their noblest triumphs. In times of sorest trial to the nation and to any portion of its people, he has met every question with dignity, ability and tolerance; and when called to the Chief Magistracy-as he soon shall be-he will himself,

in the discharge of the duties of the highest trust conferred upon man, perfect the amnesty he advocated in apparently hopeless effort when the conflict of arms had ceased. Then every citizen of the Republic will understand that at last there shall be honest government and peace.

Citizens of North Carolina, behold your State! It is a swift and terrible witness of the truth of what I have taught. The recital of the despotism and corruption I have given you is but the history of your Commonwealth. It was the cradle of liberty. In one of your southern counties the first formal declaration of independence ever made on this continent was given to the people. Your history is replete with illustrious names in the annals of the forum and of the field, and with the noblest achievements in war and peace. You were noted for the ability and purity of your representative men and of your local government. The honor and credit of your State were cherished as household gods. The evil days of sectional war came upon you, and you ridged the plains and hillsides of the South with the nameless graves of your sons. War ended, and the silver wings of peace were welcomed by the remnant of your warriors and by your people. But peace came not. All the desolation and bereavement of the strife paled before the unspeakable blight and degradation that remained in store for you. One of your own sons, who had in turn been traitor to every cause, climbed into your Gubernatorial chair by violence and fraud, and with him came a Legislature and other State officers conspicuous only for incapacity and villainy. The highway robber takes only what may be restored, but the Holden government robbed North Carolina of her honor and her credit-the proud patrimony of her people. Had they merely plundered the treasury of all they could extort from a prostrated and impoverished people they might have been charitably forgotten; but with excessive

taxes imposed, they have added millions upon millions to your indebtedness, without even the pretense of rendering an equivalent. They have multiplied officers in every county to oppress your citizens and devour their little substance. They have created disorder for the double purpose of intimidating your people and plundering the National Treasury. They have employed perjury to impose vexations and humiliating bonds upon many of your best men, to silence the popular resentment they so boldly provoked. True, a Legislature fresh from the people hurled the chief of these unexampled wrongs from his place, with the seal of infamy upon his head, but his scarred and blotted monuments will stand in your midst as generation after generation execrates his name. When you made an earnest effort to throw the safeguard of an amended Constitution around your people, you were forbidden to exercise the sovereignty accorded to the people of the States: but now the sword is no longer drawn over you, thanks to a Republican Congress, and your peaceable and complete regeneration is in your own hands. Many thousands of dollars have been practically stolen from the National Treasury to aid the enemies of order in this contest, but all the resources of desperate authority will be powerless to defeat you if you are faithful and vigilant. Millions of your brethren will watch and wait anxiously for your verdict in behalf of liberty and law, and other millions will wait with trembling for some gleam of hope for the perpetuation of despotism and anarchy. Encompassed as you are by such a cloud of witnesses, and with all that is sacred to the citizen, and all that promises honor and prosperity to your people at stake, let each man resolve that North Carolina shall be redeemed to honesty, free government and peace.

THE

MCKINLEY TARIFF ARRAIGNED.*

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN :—In response to the invitation of the Tariff Reform Club of this city, I appear tonight to answer the recent address by Governor McKinley, in which he attempted the impossible task of justifying the McKinley tariff law; and I shall proceed with directness to the purpose. I shall not deal in partisan platitudes, nor glittering generalities, nor special pleading of any sort, but in plain, incontrovertible facts.

Let us take our latitude fairly at the start so that all can intelligently judge results. I am here to arraign the so-called Republican protection to labor as presented in the McKinley tariff, as mingled robbery and fraud. It is a deliberate fraud in its pretense of protecting the labor of American workmen, and it is as deliberate robbery of the great masses of the people for the benefit of the few of favored classes. It has bastardized the honest protection of our fathers by subtle hypocrisy and insatiate greed, until it is to-day simply the festering maggots of monopoly. These are strong words; and I fully appreciate the fact that if I fail to justify them in answering Governor McKinley, I must justly forfeit public respect.

I followed the tall white plume of Henry Clay with all the idolatry of boyhood in his advocacy of his great American system half a century ago. I was then, have ever been, and am to-night, a Clay protectionist, but there

* Delivered in the Academy of Music, September 26, 1892.

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is no more similarity between the McKinley and Clay theories of protection than there is between the soaring eagle and the mousing owl. Clay protected labor when our manufacturing industries were in their infancy; McKinley protects capital when industries are fully established, breeds monopoly and trusts, limits our markets, oppresses labor by lessening employment and increased taxes on the necessaries of life, and his most conspicuous products are rapidly multiplying millionaires and tramps. The Clay protective tariff of 1842 levied a lower relative rate of protective taxes than the Mills bill that McKinley now calls a free-trade measure, and in his defence of protection to labor he never claimed the right to enact anything but a revenue tariff, with incidental protection for a very brief period, as he held that continued taxation for the benefit of any class was unjustifiable. He held free raw materials as one of the integral parts of protection to labor and continued taxes on some of them for a season only to develop them fully, and, when urging the passage of the compromise tariff, he said in his Senate speech of February 12, 1833: "Now give us time; Cease all fluctuations for nine years and the manufacturers in every branch will sustain themselves against foreign competition."

Then our manufactories were in their infancy. They were unable to cope with the established industries of centuries abroad. Washington recognized the need of incidental protection and under his administration tariff taxes of from fifteen to seventeen per cent were levied. During Clay's compromise tariff of 1833, the taxes averaged about thirty-two per cent, gradually reducing until less than twenty-six per cent in 1842. His protective tariff of 1842 ranged from twenty-eight to thirty-six per cent. The Mills bill, with judicious protective features, left tariff taxes at little more than forty per cent and the McKinley bill has increased these taxes from forty-six per cent in 1888 to over fifty per cent. Clay wanted tariff