political organizations, why not bring it about in the parties in being? Great reforms, they insisted, must be based upon great truths. Hampden did not inaugurate the English Revolution because of an exorbitant tax, but because the tax was unjust. He did not war against the payment of pounds, shillings, and pence, but against an act subverting popular right. It was in vain that the reformers assailed enormous taxes and high tariffs simply because they were enormous and high. The ready reply was: "Very well; how are we to pay the immense amount that the war has charged up against us without high taxes? So long as the government needs, honestly needs, vast sums of money annually, we must cheerfully submit to burdensome exactions. If there is peculation in the party in power, and peculators always find their way into the party in power,-punish, disgrace them; but the fact that taxes are high is no sufficient basis for the formation of a new party. On the contrary, the fact of high taxes, they being necessary in support of government and payment of debts, is creditable to the party in power, because showing its courage to do right against unreasonable clamour."

There was no answer to this statement of the case on the plan of ratiocination adopted by the reformers generally. The true answer to it was, that the taxes were not only high, but many of them were levied upon a principle in antagonism with freedom, subversive of just government. Such is the plan of high tariffs with the object of curtailing the people's right to competition in trade. No tax, in support of the government, the government being justly and honestly conducted, is wrongful, if levied according to the forms of law. To compel the people by force of law to support establishments which have no possible governmental attributes: neither legislative, executive, nor judicial: is of the essence of despotic power. So far as it goes, it is wholly destructive of free government. may be better than free government, if you please to think so. It may be corporationism, or companyism, or combinationism, or paternal government; but it is not free government. It is anything else but that.

If the reformers did not go to the root of the matter, it is to

be observed that there was some excuse for the postponement of the argument upon radical principles. It would have been unwise suddenly to repeal much of the extraordinary legislation enacted during the war, and which had been so long in existence that the affairs of the people had got to moving in channels which it were not well abruptly to change. The gross expensiveness to the people of the system condemned, and many accompanying practical ills, shown by the reformers, were sufficient to justify gradual change. By and by these facts. could be used as arguments against the unjust system. It might logically be claimed that such gross expensiveness and so many practical ills must of necessity have their source in injustice and wrong.

Though it is true the reformers did not generally take the high ground of argumentation here referred to against what Mr. Clay, with sublime irony, had called "Protection of American Industry," some of our thinkers did so. Among these, though he did not join the new party when it came to be formally organized, was Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, the celebrated abolitionist. Mr. William Cullen Bryant had long been eminent among this school of thinkers. Among public men Mr. Carl Schurz was the ablest and clearest expounder of reform ideas, but Mr. B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, was little behind him. Mr. David A. Wells, by many reports, essays, and articles, demonstrated the expensive operations of the vicious system. The Nation newspaper was a dignified and powerful advocate of reform, and, indeed, afterwards declined to support Mr. Greeley for President because of his well known views upon the tariff question. Mr. Manton Marble, the real founder of the New-York World newspaper; he who organized success for it; contributed many articles to his journal upon the subject, which Mr. Greeley nor any one else was able to answer. Colonel Grosvenor, long of The St. Louis Democrat, published a valuable volume upon Political Economy about the time of which we are treating. Not a few gentlemen of eminent ability delivered public lectures and addresses in behalf of revenue reform.

Other reforms to which we have briefly referred were advo

cated by those who proposed to form a new party. In this movement, Mr. Greeley at first took no part. Indeed, one of the leading ideas of its representative men was in direct antagonism to the teachings of his whole life. He had written more, spoken more, in behalf of "Protection" than any of his countrymen. He was the representative man, par excellence, in the United States, of the doctrine of "Protection." He had not only written more in advocacy of that doctrine than any American, but more also in attack of the opposing principle and of its eminent defenders. Some of his editorial assaults in connection with this subject upon Mr. Bryant, Mr. Wells, and other advocates of reform, were couched in such terms as must be forever lamented by all who believe that strength of argument is never weakened by dignified, even chivalric treatment of opponents who have been guilty of no unfairness.

It was natural, therefore, that Mr. Greeley should be opposed to the "revenue-reformers," as they were called, and the formation of a new party, with whose most distinguished representative men and journals, free trade was a cardinal doctrine. It was not until afterwards, when other questions of great and immediate importance had arisen for settlement, and he had with his own eyes seen the ills by which the South was being, as he thought, plucked, plundered, and impoverished, that he was persuaded of the necessity of the defeat of the Republican party, and the speedy inauguration of many vital reforms which could be safely entrusted only to a new organization, fresh from the people, and therefore quite sure to be brave honest, faithful, and capable.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A TOUR OF THE SOUTH.

Mr. Greeley Visits Texas-An Account of His Southern Tour-He Emphatically Assails "The Carpet-Baggers" as a Class-The Effect of the Tour Upon His Political Opinions.

EARLY in the Summer of 1871, Mr. Greeley visited Texas, for the purpose of delivering an agricultural address at the city of Houston. It is not possible that he would have made a journey of fifteen hundred miles for this purpose alone. He desired to see, with his own eyes, the actual situation of Southern politics, of Southern society, and to study the practical operations of existing laws and customs.

He was everywhere received with great hospitality and eclat. His presence at Houston brought thither a vast number of people, among them thousands who had for many years regarded him as the arch-enemy of the South among all the people of the North, but who had been led to reconsider their harsh judgments, chiefly on account of his early and persistent demand of universal amnesty for all political offenses.

It soon appeared from Mr. Greeley's utterances, both oral and through The Tribune, that he was most unfavourably impressed with the government of the South by "carpetbaggers," as those had come to be generally called who had recently migrated to the South from Northern States, and adopted politics as their trade. The war had devastated large portions of the South; had ruined great numbers of men who had always been accustomed to opulence and ease. Emancipation had made new systems of agriculture, and of labour generally, not only desirable but necessary. The political power gained by the blacks, lately slaves, tended to place the old politicians in retirement. It is, indeed, self-evident that there could not have been so great a disturbance, so radical a revolu

tion, without bringing about a state of things the wise and safe control of which would demand the best efforts of states manship. Millions of persons suddenly dispossessed of political power long exercised; millions suddenly possessed of power to which they had never been accustomed, no land ever passed through such a revolution without finding many difficult questions to be settled, many practical dangers to be avoided, many conflicts constantly arising.

We may now clearly see, though we may not all have been able to see it at the close of the war, and some may even not be able to perceive the truth before the close of the current century, that for the practical rehabilitation of the South two things were specially demanded. These were: universal amnesty for political offenses, and immigration. Most unfortunately only one of these demands of true statesmanship and political economy was supplied. Immigration, though so highly desirable by the South, failed to solve the Southern problem, which, aided by amnesty, it might have solved, and probably would have done.

It is always unwise to have an element of discontent in political society. The poorest possible use to which men can be put is to make martyrs of them. This is precisely what was done with thousands of men in every Southern State who were familiar with affairs, with the habits and customs of the people, and with the laws. There were thousands of such men in every one of those commonwealths who, the war over, "accepted the situation" with all candour and honesty. By their experience and knowledge they were better fitted for the conduct of public affairs than the emancipated blacks. For the same duty strangers in the land could not compare with them. It were barely possible that these would undertake to more certainly insure the new rights of the blacks, better to provide for their education, etc.; but for the general good, men who are native and to the manor born can better legislate than strangers.

I know of no one argument which is more conclusive of Horace Greeley's remarkable foresight and statesmanship than is to be found in the ills of that system of government which