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only, if they will follow her example, unquestionably the best thing for England;" and that will not be disputed.

Other nations, however, seem to prefer to profit by the earlier English example, displayed for seventy years after Smith's Wealth of Nations appeared, and free trade, like the favorite English plum-pudding, is now called for by nobody but themselves, and is getting so cold as to be unpalatable even at home. Yet it is proposed by the amateur statesmen of our urban free-trade clubs, guiltless of any drop of perspiration in the paths of industry, to arrest American development by copying this foreign example, and thus bring our home labor and all of its rewards down to the European and Asiatic level. Nevertheless, I have faith that we shall abide in the track of the principles and politics which elevate and give character to American citizens, surrounding them with the daily presence and beauty of the useful arts, which so largely add to the power and dignity of any people in the great family of nations. To limit the industrial forces of an active, inventive, and ingenious people to agriculture alone, excluding manufactures and the mechanic arts, would be little better than in time of war to restrict an army to infantry alone, to the exclusion of cavalry and artillery. Great battles are not often so won.

A diversity of pursuits makes a great nation possible in peace, and greater in war. General competence, habits of selfreliance, and higher culture are thus more surely obtained. The improvement in one occupation is contagious, and spreads to all others. Philosophy, politics, and liberty all go up higher, and the happiness and dignity of mankind are promoted.

Having no timber or lumber good enough for ships, it is all brought, like their royal timber, from any place in the world but home. The steel used at Sheffield for cutlery is made from iron imported from Sweden and Norway; and no fine or merino wool consumed is of home growth. Not a little of the best machinery now alive in England had its birth on this side of the Atlantic, and must be credited to American genius.

The title of the British Islands to all the raw material, and to exclusive and hereditary mechanical skill among men, is widely contested, and the world will not fold its arms unresistingly to any such pretentious domination. The power of steam, though marvelously developed by English cleverness, is an auxiliary force belonging of right to the whole human race, as much as gravity or electricity, wherever its service may be called for, and its abode can no more be exclusively monopolized than that of the Promethean fire stolen from Heaven.

The first steam-engine is supposed to have been employed at Manchester in 1790, where there are now, it is stated, in daily use within a circuit of ten miles more than fifty thousand boilers, yielding a total force equal to the power of one million horses, and the combined steam-power of Great Britain is represented to be equal to the manual labor of twice the number of males living on the globe. We greatly admire the prodigious enterprise of Great Britain, and it would be strange if, with our immensely greater coal-fields, it should let Americans sleep.

THE THEORY.

Free trade, as a theory, unembarrassed It is an axiom of British free-trade by contact with practical affairs, and dieconomy that for any branch of manufac- vorced from any idea of supplying other tures to rest on safe foundations it is in- equal and legitimate sources of revenue dispensable that both the raw material for the support of governments, appears and the skilled labor required should be wonderfully simple and seductive. Tearindigenous. This seems to be a rule in- ing down custom-houses, as a knock-down tended to fence out of the field all nations argument, is held to be scientific, but it is where either the raw material or the skilled not conclusive. Some schoolmen, innolabor called for is not native and abundant; cent of earning even a coat or a pair of but, if applied where the raw material is shoes by the sweat of the brow, and sage not indigenous, the British Islands would without experience, adopt the theory bebe stripped of a great share of their indus- cause it is an article of faith-saving withtry. Nor can any nation claim a class of out works-with a ready-made catechism men as born with a monopoly of skilled in imported text-books, and requires no endowments; these, at any rate, are not comprehensive investigation of the multicongenital," and trades must be taught form and ever-varying facts and exigenby long apprenticeships; but raw mate- cies in national affairs; but when the rials are usually planted by nature, and theory comes to be practically applied alike climate and soil fix and determine inflexi- to all times, places and conditions of men, ble boundaries. Cotton is not indigenous it obviously becomes political quackery, in the British Islands, though their ac- as untenable and preposterous as it would complished cotton manufactures have be to insist upon clothing all mankind in made it the leading article of commerce, garments of the same material, in summer leading their national policy. Hemp and or winter, and of equal cut and dimensilk, also, are the products of other lands.sions, whether for big men or little, on the

But if foreign countries send comparaIn 1880 Great Britain, upon tobacco and tively an unequal number of visitors tendcigars, mainly from the United States, ing to reimburse the abounding expendivalued at $6,586,520, collected $43,955,-tures of Americans abroad, they do send

us a far more numerous if not valuable company who come to stay, bringing both fortunes and affections, and adding, as they have added within the past two years, over a million and a quarter of brave hearts and willing hands to the productive forces of the country. Their tracks are all one way. None go back and none come here as drones, for such stay away to absorb honey already stored; but the "tenth legions," so to say, of all the conscripted armies of Europe, in health and fit for any service, are rushing to our shore on the "waves of the Atlantic, three thousand miles long," as volunteers for life. Were we to drop protection this western exodus would cease and the emigrants now here would be relegated to the same scale of wages from which they so anxiously attempted to escape.

"half-educated," while, perhaps, properly demanding themselves exclusive copyright protection for all of their own literary productions, whether ephemeral or abiding. It is right, they seem to think, to protect brains-and of these they claim the monopoly-but monstrous to protect muscles; right to protect the pen, but not the hoe nor the hammer.

Free trade would almost seem to be an aristocratic disease from which workingmen are exempt, and those that catch it are as proud of it as they would be of the gout-another aristocratic distinction.

It might be more modest for these "nebulous professors" of political economy to agree among themselves how to define and locate the leading idea of their “dismal science" whether in the value in exchange or value in use, in profits of capital or These facts are pregnant arguments an- wages, whether in the desire for wealth or nually reproduced, upholding the Ameri- aversion to labor, or in the creation, accucan policy of protection, and show that mulation, distribution and consumption of those who expect to earn their living-wealth, and whether rent is the recomtempted, it is true, by the highest rewards, pense for the work of nature or the conseand tempted by free schools for their chil-quence of a monopoly of property, before dren-know where to find the largest opportunities for the comforts of life, for happiness and intellectual progress; and know also that America is not and never intends to be a transatlantic Ireland nor an agricultural back lot of Europe.

COMMERCIAL RULES NOT A SCIENCE.

they ask a doubting world to accept the flickering and much disputed theory of free trade as an infallible truth about which they have themselves never ceased to wrangle. The weight of nations against it is as forty to one. It may be safe to say that when sea-serpents, mermaids, and centaurs find a place in natural history, free trade will obtain recognition as a science; but till then it must go uncrowned, wearing no august title, and be content with the thick-and-thin championship of

THE BRITISH POLICY EVERYWHERE RE

JECTED.

We have some worthy literary professors of free trade and some hacks who know their master's crib "of quick conception and easy delivery," as John Randolph would have described them, who, having the "Cobden Club." determined that the sun shall hereafter rise in the west, assume for their doctrines, like their English masters, the basis of absolute science, which they insist shall be everywhere accepted, regardless of all conditions, wants, or circumstances, as the latest revelation of economic truth; but free trade fails, shamefully fails, to stand the admitted tests of an exact science, as its results must ever be both an inconsistent quantity and incapable of prediction. It yields to the condition of nations and of the seasons, to war, to time, and constantly yields to facts. The blackboard compels universal assent to mathematics, and the laboratory offers the same service to chemistry; but any test or analysis of free trade yields nothing but polemical vagaries, and it may appropriately be consigned to the

witches' cauldron with

All of the principal British colonies from the rising to the setting of the sunIndia alone possibly excepted-are in open and successful revolt against the application of the free-trade tyranny of their mother country, and European States not only refuse to copy the loudly-heralded example, but they are retreating from it as though it were charged with dynamite. Even the London Times, the great "thunderer" of public opinion in Great Britain, does not refrain from giving a stunning blow to free trade when it indicates that it has proved a blunder, and reminds the world that it predicted it would so prove at the start. The ceremony of free trade, with only one party responding solitary and alone, turns out as dull and disconsolate as that of a wedding without a bride. The honeymoon of buying cheap and selling dear appears indefinitely postponed.

There does not seem to be any party coming to rescue England from her isolated predicament. Bismarck, while aiming to take care of the interests of his own coun

try, as do all ministers, on this question per- | haps represents the attitude of the greater part of the far-sighted statesmen of Europe, and he, in one of his recent parliamentary speeches, declared:

Without being a passionate protectionist, I am as a financier, however, a passionate imposer of duties, from the conviction that the taxes, the duties levied at the frontier, are almost exclusively borne by the foreigner, especially for manufactured articles, and that they have always an advantageous, retrospective, protectionist action.

Practically the nations of continental Europe acquiesce in this opinion, and are a unit in their flat refusal of British free trade. They prefer the example of America. Before self-confident men pronounce the whole world of tariff men, at home and abroad, "half-educated or half-witted," they would do well to see to it that the stupidity is not nearer home, or that they have not themselves cut adrift from the logic of their own brains, only to be wofully imposed upon by free-trade quackery, which treats man as a mere fact, no more important than any other fact, and ranks labor only as a commodity to be bought and sold in the cheapest or dearest markets.

So long as statesmen are expected to study the prosperity and advancement of the people for whose government and guidance they are made responsible, so long free-trade theories must be postponed to that Utopian era when the health, strength and skill, capital and labor of the whole human race shall be reduced or elevated to an entire equality, and when each individual shall dwell in an equal climate, upon an equal soil, freely pasture his herds and flocks where he pleases, and love his neighbor better than himself.

OUR FARMERS.

The test of profitable farming is the state of the account at the end of the year. Under free trade the evidence multiplies that the English farmer comes to the end of the year with no surplus, often in debt, bare and discontented. Their laborers rarely know the luxury of meat, not over sixteen ounces per week,* and never expect to own a rood of the soil.

But under the protective policy the American farmer holds and cultivates his own land, has a surplus at the end of the year for permanent investments or improvements, and educates and brings up his sons and daughters with the advantages and comforts of good society. There are more American houses with carpets than in any

In the British Almanac of 1881 it is stated that meat is eaten in Ireland by only 59 per cent. of the farm la

borers, and in quantity only four and oue-half ounces per week,

other country of the world. I believe it will not be disputed that the down-trodden tillers of the soil in Great Britain are not well fed; that they are coarsely underclad, and that for lack of common-school culture they would hardly be regarded as fit associates here for Americans who drive their teams afield, or for the young men who start in life as laborers upon farms. The claim that free trade is the true policy of the American farmer would seem to be, therefore, a very courageous falsehood.

It is an unfortunate tendency of the age that nearly one-half of the population of the globe is concentrated in cities, often badly governed, and sharply exposed to extravagance, pauperism, immorality, and all the crimes and vices which overtake mankind reared in hot-beds. I would neither undervalue the men of brilliant parts, nor blot out the material splendor of cities, but regret to see the rural districts depopulated for their unhealthy aggrandizement. Free trade builds up a few of these custom-house cities, where gain from foreign trade is the chief object sought, where mechanics, greater in numbers than any other class, often hang their heads, though Croesus rolls in Pactolian wealth, and Shylock wins his pound of flesh; but protection assembles artisans and skilled workmen in tidy villages and towns, details many squadrons of industry to other and distant localities, puts idle and playful waterfalls at work, opens, builds up, and illumines, as with an electric light, the whole interior of the country; and the farmer of Texas or of New England, of Iowa or of Wisconsin, is benefited by such reenforcements of consumers, whether they are by his side or across the river, at Atlanta or South Bend, at Paterson or at Providence. The farmers own and occupy more than nineteen-twentieths of our whole territory, and their interest is in harmony with the even-handed growth and prosperity of the whole country.

There is not a State whose interests would not be jeopardized by free trade, and I should like to dwell upon the salient facts as to Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Alabama, Illinois, and many other States, but I shall only refer to one. The State of Texas, surpassing empires in its vast domains, doubling its population within a decade, and expending over twenty million dollars within a year in the construction of additional railroads, with a promised expenditure within the next fifteen months of over twenty-seven millions more, has sent to market as raw material the past year 12,262, 052 pounds of hides, 20,671,639 pounds of wool, and 1,260,247 bales of cotton. Her mineral resources, though known to be immense, are as yet untouched. Her bullocks, in countless herds on their way to market, annually crowd and crop

the prairies from Denver to Chicago. But whole year almost profitless, whenever now possessed of a liberal system of rail- foreign countries are blessed with comroads, how long will the dashing spirit of paratively an equal abundance. The exthe Lone Star State-where precious mem- port of corn last year in October was ories still survive of Austin, of Houston, of 8,535,067 bushels, valued at $4,604,840, Rusk, and of Schleicher-be content to but the export of only 4,974,661 bushels send off unmanufactured her immense this year brings $3,605,813. An equal difbulk of precious raw materials, which ference appears in the increased value of should be doubled in value at home, and exports of flour. A much larger share of by the same process largely multiply her crops must be consumed nearer home, if population? With half as many in num- any sure and regular market is to be perber now as had the original thirteen, and manently secured. The foreign demand, soon to pass our largest States, wanting in- fitful and uncertain as it is, rarely exceeds definite quantities of future manufactures at one-twentieth of even the present home rehome, Texas should also prepare to supply quirements, and the losses from long the opening trade with Mexico, in all of its transportation, incident to products of magnitude and variety, and far more wor- great bulk, can never be successfully thy of ambition than in the golden days of avoided except by an adequate home deMontezuma. mand. No State can run and maintain railroads Farmers do not look for a market for unless the way-stations, active and grow-grain among farmers, but solely among ing settlements and towns, are numerous non-producing consumers, and these it is enough to offer a large, constant, and in-greatly to their interest to multiply rather creasing support. The through business than to diminish by forcing them to join of long lines of railroads is of great im- in producing or doubling crops for which portance to the termini, and gives the there may be an insufficient demand. roads some prestige, but the prosperity Every ship-load of wheat sent abroad tends and dividends mainly accrue from the local business of thrifty towns on the line of the roads. It is these, especially manufacturing towns, which make freight both ways, to and from, that free trade must ever fail to do, and while through freights, owing to inevitable competition, pay little or no profit, the local freights sustain the roads, and are and must be the basis of their chief future value. Without this efficient local support, cheap and rapid long transportation would be wholly impracticable.

to bring down foreign prices; and such far-off markets should be sought only when the surplus at home is excessive or when foreign prices are extraordinarily remunerative.

The wheat regions of the West, superb as they undoubtedly are, it is to be feared, have too little staying character to be prodigally squandered, and their natural fertility noticeably vanishes in the rear unless retained by costly fertilizers almost as rapidly as new fields open in front. Some of the Middle States as well as the New The Southern States, in the production England, though seeking fertilizers far and of cotton, have possibly already reached near, already look to the West for much of the maximum quantity that can be culti-their corn and bread; and there is written vated with greatest profit, unless the all over Eastern fields, as Western visitors demand of the world expands. A short may read, the old epitaph, "As we are crop now often brings producers a larger sum than a full crop. The amount of the surplus sent abroad determines the price of the whole crop. Production appears likely soon to outrun the demand. Texas alone has latent power to overstock the world. Is it not time, therefore, to curtail the crop, or to stop any large increase of it, while sure to obtain as much or more for it, and to turn unfruitful capital and labor into other and more profitable channels of industry? The untrodden fields, where capital and labor wait to be organized for the development of Southern manufactures and mining, offer unrivaled temptations to leaders among men in search of legitimate wealth.

now so you may be." It will take time for this threatened decadence, but not long in the life of nations. The wheat crop runs away from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, and sinks in other localities as it looms up in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Dakota. Six years of cropping in California, it is said, reduces the yield per acre nearly one-half.

There was in 1880 devoted to wheat culture over thirty-five million acres, or nearly double the acreage of 1875. In twenty-five years a hundred million people will more than overtake any present or prospective surplus, and we may yet need all of our present magnificent wheat-fields to give bread to our own people. Certainly The same facts are almost equally ap- we need not be in haste to slaughter and plicable to general agriculture, but more utterly exhaust the native fertility of our particularly to the great grain-growing re-fields on the cheap terms now presented. gions of the West. A great harvest England, with all her faults, is great, frequently tends to render the labor of the | but unfortunately has not room to support