When, therefore, some were suspended and others were left, what is the irresistible inference, after the declarations of the President, except that these persons were suspended for cause either affecting their personal integrity or their official administration? Upon the ground, then, of personal justice, if no other, we are entitled to know whether wrong has been done by the accusations that have been filed in the Departments, so that we may protect those who are unable to defend themselves from injustice and defamation.

But there is another reason, and to me a still more convincing reason, why we should be advised in the case of these suspensions what are the papers, the official documents, and the reports on the files of the departments affecting the administration of these offices, and that is this: under the tenure-of-office act, every official suspended is reinstated by the provisions of section 1768 of the Revised Statutes, if the Senate adjourns without confirming the designated person, and continues to exercise and discharge the duties of that office, until he is again suspended by the President. Therefore, in acting upon these cases we have a double duty to perform; in the first place, to decide whether the person suspended was properly suspended, and in the next place, whether he is a competent person to be restored to office under and by virtue of the operation of the statute under which he was suspended. If he is not a competent person then he ought not to be restored, and we cannot determine whether he is competent and qualified and fit to discharge the duties of that office until we have the official declarations and statements upon which the action of the President was based.

Since this debate began, there are indications that the President has become convinced that his position is untenable, and that he has concluded to yield to the reasonable requests of the Senate and relieve suspended officials from the otherwise inevitable imputations upon their conduct and character. I find the following correspondence in one of the metropolitan journals, which if authentic relieves the relation between the President and the Senate of the principal restraint:

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE, UNITED STATES

SENATE, March, 17, 1886. DEAR SIR: Will you please advise the Committee on Finance whether or not there are any papers or charges on file reflecting

against the official or moral character of late collector of internal revenue for the first district of, suspended?

If there are any such papers or charges will you please communicate their nature and character to the committe? Very truly, yours,

JUSTIN S. MORRILL.

Hon. DANIEL MANNING,
Secretary of the Treasury.

MARCH 19, 1886.

SIR: Your communication on behalf of · the Finance Committee of the Senate, dated March 17, 1886, asking whether or not there are any papers or charges on file reflecting against the official or moral character of late collector of internal revenue for the first district of, suspended, is received.

In reply thereto I have the honor to state that, so far as this inquiry relates to a suspension from office, I feel bound by the

rules laid down in the President's recent ject of such suspensions. message to the Senate upon the general sub

But in order that I may surely act within the requirements of the statute relating to the furnishing by this Department of information to the Senate, I beg leave to remind the committee that the office referred to has no fixed term attached to it, and to further state that the President is satisfied that a change in the incumbency of said office will result in an improvement of the public service, and that the policy of the present administration will be better carried out by such change.

Except as the same may be involved in these considerations, no papers containing charges reflecting upon the official or moral character of the suspended officer mentioned in your communication are in the custody of this Department.

Respectfully, yours,

D. MANNING, Secretary. HON. JUSTIN S. MORRILL, Chairm'n of the Senate Com. on Finance.

But whether this be true or not, this is not the forum in which this controversy is to be ultimately decided. The Executive is not on trial before the Senate; the Senate is not on trial before the Executive; but both, as to the sincerity of their professions and the consistency of their actions, are on trial before that greater, wiser, and more powerful tribunal-the enlightened conscience of the people, from whose verdict there is neither exculpation nor appeal.

46

and to reduce the internal revenue taxes, and some provisions of that bill showed that the remedies he would apply were at variance with those recommended by the President. The President sought to prevent the continuation of the surplus revenue by resorting to changes in the customs duties only.

The Tariff Speech of Samuel J. Randall. Delivered in the House of Representatives, May 18, 1888.

He opened by referring to the President's recent message, in which the Executive advised Congress that the surplus in the Treasury by the 30th of June, at the end of the current fiscal year, would be expected to reach the sum of $140,000,000, including prior accumulations; or more closely stated, the sum of $113,000,000, apart from prior accumulations, over and above all authorized expenditures, including the sinking fund for the current year.

He then quoted from the President's message defining his position on the tariff and internal revenue questions, and said that, from the utterances of the President, he understands the Executive to be adverse to any reduction of the internal taxes, as that mode of taxation afforded, in the opinion of the President, "no just complaint, and that nothing is so well able to bear the burden without hardship to any portion of the people."

The President further said that the tariff law was a vicious and illegal source of inequitable tax, and ought to be revised and modified, and the President had urged upon Congress the immediate consideration of this matter to the exclusion of all others. The President had asserted in substance that the reduction necessary should be made by additions to the free list, and by the lowering of the rates of duty.

In the presence of such language, emanating from the Executive, authorized by the direction of the Constitution to communicate and from time to time give to Congress information on the state of the Union, and recommend such measures as he should judge necessary, it was imperatively required of the representatives of the people to give fair, intelligent, and prompt attention to the suggestions made. He had done so.

He had introduced and had referred to

The remedy he (Randall) proposed was through the repeal of internal revenue taxes as well as by a full revision of the tariff, as promised to the people by the Democratic Convention of 1884. The reduction provided for in his bill aggregated $77,000,000 on internal taxes.

Those taxes had always been the last to be levied, and the first to be repealed when no longer necessary.

Jefferson had given the death-blow to excise taxes, that most vicious of all taxes, and among the things he received the thanks of the Legislature of his native State for doing, was for having the internal taxes abolished. The first tax also to be repealed after the War of 1812 had been the excise tax, which was recommended by Madison, and was the first law enacted under the administration of Monroe. The Democratic Convention of 1884 declared that internal revenue was a war tax, and this declaration, taken in connection with the other declarations of the platform, clearly established the fact that the opinion of the Convention was that some of the internal revenue taxes should first go, and that they should all go whenever a sufficient sum was realized, from custom-house taxes to meet the expenses of the Government economically administered.

The country was practically in such a condition now, and the true response to those declarations warranted the repeal of the internal revenue taxes to the extent proposed by his bill. He favored now, as he had always done, a total repeal of the internal revenue taxes.

In the bill which he introduced he proposed to sweep all these taxes from the statute-books, except a tax of fifty cents on whiskey, and he would transfer the collection of that tax to the customs officials if that was found to be practicable.

With Albert Gallatin, he regarded excise taxes as offensive to the genius of the people, tolerated only as a measure of emergency, and as soon as the occasion for them had passed away they should cease to exist.

Gallatin and Jefferson had secured the repeal of the internal taxes, and relieved the people from their annoyances and the hordes of officials clothed with dangerous power. If this internal revenue system was abolished to-day we would have no surplus revenue to scare the country, while the administration of public affairs would be rendered purer and better. His bill proposed a revision of the tariff on the principle believed to be in harmony with the authorized declarations of the Democratic party in their last convention.

and the foreign producer came into this market, where the prices were fixed, and the duties were what he paid for the privilege of coming into the market. Another erroneous proposition was that duties on articles produced in this country were a tax or bounty which the consumer paid to the manufacturer, by means of which the manufacturer derived large profits. If this were true, it was not easy to see what justification there was for the committee bill any more than for the present tariff law. But that it was erroneous seemed apparent on a closer examination of the laws of trade. Adam Smith long ago had laid down the proposition that larger profits in one industry than in another could not long prevail in the same country. The United States formed

He quoted from Edward Atkinson that since the end of the Civil War, and yet more since the so-called panic of 1873, there had been greater progress in the common welfare among the people of the United States than ever before. The statements of Mr. Atkinson would seem to settle the question as to whether we should adhere to the benevolent policy of protecting home manufactures. It demonstrated unmistakably the truth that, to increase wages, products must be increased, for in the end wages were but the laborer's share of products.

While a dollar might buy more in another country than here, a day's labor here would obtain more of the comforts of life than anywhere else. Under free trade this advantage to labor disappeared. It was impossible it should be otherwise. If the tariff itself did not give higher wages to the laborer, it did preserve from foreign competition the industries from which the laborer received his wages. He wished to refer to a few fundamental propositions which had been maintained throughout this debate, and which appeared to exercise and control influence over the opinion of men.

First. That the duties were always added to the price to the consumer.

On articles not produced in this country, this doubtless was true as a general rule, and measurably true on articles in part produced in this country, but not in sufficient quantities to supply the home market. But on all commodities produced in sufficient quantities to supply the home market, a different principle controlled. In these things competition determined the price,

that one class of consumers would pay a perpetual tax to another?

Suppose last year we had manufactured $1,000,000,000 worth of products less than we actually did, and had gone abroad to supply our deficiency, expecting to pay for the goods with our agricultural productswe had sold Europe last year all of the wheat and corn the continent_could takewho could tell what prices Europe would have paid if we had thrown upon her markets $1,000,000,000 worth of agricultural products in excess of the quantity we had sold. The farmer and manufacturer in this country must depend almost exclusively upon our home market.

Any other policy would mean ruin and bankruptcy to the country. The greater the producing power of the people the more independent and wealthy would the country be.

Mr. Randall next entered into an explanation of the principles upon which his bill had been constructed. He said that in fixing the duties the rates had been adjusted as nearly as possible to cover the difference in the margin of cost of production here and abroad. In working out the details of the bill it had been his purpose to lower duties wherever possible.

Between the extreme free trader on one hand and a prohibitory tariff on the other there were intermediate positions. One of them was to fix a revenue line on imports just high enough to realize a sufficient revenue for the needs of the Government. Another was to make the tariff sufficiently high to cover the difference of cost of production in this country and other countries. To lower the rate of duty when that line was passed must be to increase the revenue. To raise the rate of duty when the line of maximum revenue was reached would result in a decrease of duty.

Any computation that did not take these facts into account would be utterly worthless. It might safely be assumed that when

Otherwise it might be assumed that the duties were quite high enough. And when the duties were high enough to permit the existence of trusts to raise the prices of the commodity, the duty should be reduced as closely as possible to the line. He stated distinctly that if it could be made to appear in any case that the measure he proposed conferred more protection than was needed to cover the cost of production, he was ready to lower it. If in any instance the rate was too low to cover that cost, he was ready to raise it.

Monopolies existed without the tariff. The standard oil trust, the whiskey trust, and the cotton-seed oil trust, and others that he could mention—the greatest trusts in the whole country-were not protected by the tariff. He was for the protection of labor, not in one State merely, but in all States.

He was for the protection and maintenance of that system that allows to labor a larger proportionate share of its products than was realized in any other country or under any other system.

The late Secretary Manning had signalized his accession to the control of the Treasury Department by a more thorough examination of the economic questions of the day than had been made by any of his predecessors. His reports and public utterances were marvels of honest, conscientious, and effective labor.

He had strongly uged the necessity for the substitution of specific for ad valorem duties The Custom House officers charged with the collection of the revenues had given valuable and emphatic testimony in favor of the change. The present Secretary of the Treasury had taken the same grounds. (At this point Mr. Randall quoted extensively from Secretary Fairchild's utterances on the subject. He then proceeded with his description of the objects of his own bill.) Certain provisions of the metal schedules, he said, had been very sharply assailed, and he devoted some time to answering the speakers who had attacked his measure.

He then proceeded to a criticism of the committee bill as follows:

A declared purpose of this bill is to secure 'free raw materials to stimulate manufactories."

In execution of this idea, the bill places on the free list a large number of articles which are really manufactured articles, such as salt, sawed and dressed lumber, glue, various oils and chemicals, china, clay, etc. These constitute the products of large and useful industries throughout the United States in which many millions of capital are invested, and employing many thousands of working people. At the same time the bill leaves or puts upon the dutiable list, lead, iron, zinc and nickel ores, and coal, which might be called raw materials. Further than this, the bill not only makes so-called "raw materials" free, but places on the free list the manufactured products of these materials. Thus the manufacture of such articles is made impossible in this country, except by reducing American labor to a worse condition than that of labor in Europe. It goes even further, and places or leaves dutiable certain so-called raw materials, such as iron ore, lead, coal, paper, paints, etc., while placing on the free list articles made from these materials, such as hoop iron and cotton ties, tin plates, machinery, books and pamphlets, etc.

In other words, the bill leaves or makes dutiable the raw material and puts on the free list the articles manufactured from it; thus not only placing an insurmountable barrier in the way of making such articles here, but actually protecting the foreign manufacturer and laborer against our own, and imposing for their benefit a burden upon the consumer in this country. Again, the bill places lower rates on some manufactured articles than on the raw materials used in making them. For instance, type metal, 15 per cent.; pig lead, 44 per cent.; carpets, 30 per cent.; yarns used in their manufacture, 40 per cent.

In some cases, the difference between the duty imposed by the bill on the so called raw materials and the articles made from them is so small as to destroy these industries, except upon the condition of levelling

the wages of home labor to that of Europe. This was so in the case of pig lead and red lead, which is made from it, and of pig iron and steel blooms and steel rails.

Such legislation would leave the ore in the mines, or the pig lead in the smelting works, or the pig iron to rust at the furnaces, while foreigners would supply our markets with these manufactured products. In a large number of articles throughout the schedules the reductions proposed by the bill are so large that the effect must be to destroy or restrict home production and increase enormously foreign importations, thus largely increasing customs revenue in stead of reducing it, as claimed by the advocates of the bill. Particular mention in this connection is made of earthen and chinaware, glass, leaf tobacco, manufactures of cotton, flax, hemp, and jute, carpets, brushes, leather, gloves, manufactures of India rubber, and pipes.

Mr. Randall asserted that instead of the bill reducing customs revenues $64,000,000, as was claimed, it would be fair to estimate that its effect would be to largely increase the revenue, instead of reducing it, while the amount of material wealth it would destroy is incalculable.

Those supporting the bill, he said, hold themselves out as the champions of the farmer, while they take from him the protection duties on his wool, hemp, flax, meats, vegetables, etc. And what do they give him in return. They profess to give the manufacturer better rates than he now has. If this be so, how is the farmer to be benefited, or where does he get compensation for the loss of his protective duties?

Much has been said about removing taxes on necessaries and imposing them upon luxuries. What does this bill propose? It gives olive oil to the epicure and taxes castor oil 95 per cent.; it gives free tin plates to the Standard Oil Company and to the great meat-canning monopolies, and imposes a duty of 100 per cent. on rice; it gives the sugar trust free bone-black and proposes prohibitory duties on grocery grades of sugar; it imposes a duty of 40 per cent. on the "poor man's" blanket and only 30 per cent. on the Axminster carpet of the rich; it admits free of duty the fine animals imported by the gentlemen of the turf, makes free the paintings and statuary of the railway millionaire and coal baron.

Mr. Randall said he yielded to no man on his side of the House in his desire for continued Democratic control in the administration of the Federal Government. He did not believe the adoption of the committee's bill would make such result certain, and added:

"I cannot be coerced into any particular action upon economic questions by the direc

tion of party caucus. The period of the political caucus has departed never to return, and yet we should confer and have unity, if it is possible.

"In these matters I speak only for myself. My convictions on the tariff are strong, and founded, as I think, upon principle, and upon information and intelligent comprehension of the subject. When any one here enters upon the task of invoking caucus power or other modes of coercion, I can only say to him, if he acts with good purpose, that it will prove a fruitless undertaking; or if with ill motive, then I consign him to all the natural contempt which such self-constituted superciliousness deserves.'

In conclusion, Mr. Randall quoted from the earliest statesmen in support of his views upon the tariff, and said:

"If Jackson could say he was confirmed in his opinions by the opinions of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, how much more am I confirmed in my opinions by his great authority added to that of the founders and builders of the Democratic party? I warn the party that it is not safe to abandon principles so fundamental to our institutions and so necessary to the maintenance of our industrial system; principles which attest the wisdom of those who established them by the fruits they have borne, the full fruition of which, however, can only be realized in the extension of diversified industries to all parts of the country, not in the North and East alone, but in the South and West as well. A new era of industrial enterprise has already dawned upon the South; no section of the country possesses greater natural advantages than the South, with her genial climate, her limitless raw materials, her mines of coal and iron, with abundant labor ready to develop them. Considering what has been there achieved in a single decade, what may not a century bring forth from her under a system calculated to favor the highest industrial development? When I read the history of my country and consider the past and present, and reflect on what is before us, I cannot believe that the idea that went down in the convulsions of 1861 will ever again dominate the destinies of the Republic."

Tariff Speech of Major Wm. McKinley, Jr., Member of Congress from Ohio.

In the great tariff campaign of 1888 the two most distinguished Republican speakers latter was invited by the Chautauqua Society were Mr. Blaine and Major McKinley. The of Georgia to explain the doctrine of Protection, and did so in the following comprehensive speech:

FELLOW-CITIZENS: I make my acknowledgments to the Piedmont Society for the courtesy and cordiality of its invitation,