ness of those who precipitated the war, one cannot help feeling that it was, after all that may be said about it, a necessity; nor can one help admiring the spirit and constancy which were displayed by the Southern people in prosecuting it. By no people under the sun were they excelled in bravery, and in devotion to what they considered their rights; by none were they ever equalled in the steadfast cheerfulness with which they endured protracted hardships and deprivations. I may go further: No people defeated in a cause which they had at heart ever behaved better than they did when the war was over. One hardly knows which most to admire, the good temper with which the most of them accepted their situation, humiliating as it was, or the magnanimity of the Government in the exercise of its authority. Costly as the war was, the country, and the whole country, was immensely the gainer by it. It put an end to slavery-the apple of discord between the sections. It cemented the Union with the blood of its enemies as well as with that of its friends. It ended in the mutual respect of those who were actively engaged in it. There was no exultation on the part of the victors, no feeling of degradation on the part of the vanquished. The bad spirit afterwards engendered was the work of those whose faces had not been seen upon the battlefield. Of the prominent and meritorious Union soldiers, I call to mind but one who seemed desirous of keeping alive the animosities of the war.

I have said something about the tariff, because it is

a subject that has always been interesting to me, and because it involves questions of the highest importance to the country. The United States is far in the lead of all nations in the enterprises, the industry, and versatile intelligence of the major part of its population; with coal and iron in close proximity, and in inexhaustible supply; with the finest and most extensive cotton-fields in the world; with fertile lands enough for the homes of hundreds of millions of people; with manufactories of almost all descriptions well established and skilfully managed; with unequalled commercial facilities, and with abundant capital and cheap money. That such a country should need protection in its home markets against the competition of nations thousands of miles distant to a greater extent than would be afforded by a revenue tariff, is a conclusion that I have been unable to reach, strong as has been, and is, my attachment to the party of whose economical-perhaps I ought to say political-policy, protection is the corner stone. the contrary, my conclusion has been, that what was needed by our manufacturers (to say nothing about our farmers, whose wants are becoming painfully pressing), and will become more and more needed as their productive power increases-was, wider markets for their manufactured goods;-the very markets of which they have, to a large extent, been deprived by the measures that have been thought necessary to secure for them the control of the markets at home. Inactive as most of our mills are (very few are being worked up to their

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full capacity), there is still overproduction, and manufacturers are combining to limit supplies and maintain high prices at the cost of consumers. Combinations for

these purposes are the necessary outgrowth of our protective tariff, and they will exist until import duties are levied for revenue only, and as largely as may be practicable upon luxuries. In our zeal to sustain home industry we have overlooked the importance of foreign markets, which cannot be open to us as long as we subject their productions to very high duties. Of the immense South American trade, which we ought to control, and should now control if wisdom had prevailed in our national councils, very little is left to us except that with Brazil, and that would be carried on with much difficulty if the European demand for our cereals and cotton should be seriously reduced. We buy of Brazil chiefly coffee, to the amount in round numbers of fifty millions of dollars, and sell to her chiefly lumber and flour to the amount of ten millions. The resulting balance we pay by what we send to Europe, the larger part of which goes to England, against which country our protective tariff is mainly aimed. Our trade with China and Japan is of the same one-sided character, and we continue the trade with these nations, one-sided as it is, because tea and coffee are articles which we must have and cannot produce. It is to England, which takes our wheat and flour and cotton and other articles free from duties, that we are very largely indebted for the means to pay the balances

due to the countries I have named, and to other countries in our unequal trade with them. England buys our breadstuffs because she cannot produce what she needs, and she will continue to buy as long as she can buy of us cheaper than she can buy of Russia, and no longer. As long as we maintain a tariff to protect our own manufacturers, we can have no reliable interest in international trade. Those who expect that our lost South American trade can be recovered, or that profitable trade with other nations can be established, as long as we maintain a tariff which is, against many important articles, substantially prohibitory, are expecting what will never be realized. The British manufacturers would be glad if they could have free trade with the United States, not because they can make goods at less cost than they can be made by United States manufacturers, but because they are willing to work at less profit. This free trade they know they cannot have, because they know that the United States Government is to be mainly supported, as it always has been, by import duties. They would be quite content if they were sure that our protective laws would be continued, so that they would never have to meet the competition of United States manufacturers in the markets which they now substantially control.

That the reduction of duties to the revenue standard would affect injuriously mechanical and manufacturing labor in the United States, is not believed by many who have carefully and disinterestedly considered the

subject. High duties are prejudicial to the laboring classes, by increasing the cost of goods with which they must be supplied. Wages are now higher in the United States than in other countries, but so is the expense of living. Steady employment is becoming as uncertain in the United States as in Europe, and strikes are more frequent and persistent here than in any other country. There has never been so much discontent among manufacturing laborers in the United States as there is now, when Protection, in the opinion of its friends, is doing its perfect work; when the duties on many articles are equal to the cost of the labor in producing similar articles by our own manufacturers. Wages depend upon demand and supply, and they will steadily decline in the United States in consequence of the foreign immigration. Humane considerations are not apt to influence the action of business men. There is free trade in labor, and our manufacturers will employ, if they do not import, cheap laborers from the other side of the Atlantic, until wages approach pretty near to the European standard. The outlook for laborers in the manufacturing districts of the United States, if no check is put upon immigration, and no new markets are opened for our manufactured goods, is the reverse of encouraging. With due respect for the opinions of protectionists, I cannot see how the country can continue to be highly prosperous, and peace and order can be maintained in the manufacturing districts, without the admission, free from duty, of the raw