Hon. David A. Wells speaks thus of the principal causes which led to the American Revolution, and of the men who were leaders in it: By the statute of 1650 the export and import trade of the English colonies was restricted to English or colony-built ships; but by the statute of 1663 nothing was allowed to be imported into a British plantation except in an English-built ship "whereof the master and three-fourths of the crew are English." # The enactment of arbitary laws on the part of Great Britain to prevent her American colonists from freely participating in the carrying trade and commerce of the ocean was, however, a sore grievance, and ultimately, as is well known, constituted one of the prime causes of the American Revolution. They were, furthermore, from the very first either openly or secretly resisted and evaded, and under their influence the colonists became a nation of law-breakers. Nine-tenths of their merchants were smugglers. One-quarter of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence were bred to commerce, to the command of ships, and to contraband trade. Hancock, Trumbull (Brother Jonathan), and Hamilton were all known to be cognizant of contraband transactions and approved of them. Hancock was the prince of contraband traders, and with John Adams as his counsel was appointed for trial before the admiralty court in Boston, at the exact hour of the shedding of blood at Lexington, in a suit for $500,000 penalties, alleged to have been incurred by him as a smuggler. Every evasion of such statutes was therefore, in their view, a blow in favor of libcrty. Hence, also, the origin of that count in the indictment against the king of Great Britain, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, "of cutting off our trade with all parts of the world." Such were the views of the men who a hundred years ago were accounted the wisest of American patriots and statesmen. But nowadays to adopt the principles of Han cock, Trumbull, and Hamilton, to advocate the free ownership and employment of ships, and to oppose the enactment of statutes the avowed purpose of which is to restrict or prevent the freedom of international trade and commerce is to invite the accusation of being enemies to the industry of the country and in league with foreign nations to impoverish our own people. Mr. Wells adds: In the treaty of commerce entered into between France and the United States in 1778 the commissioners of the two nations, Franklin, Deane, Lee, and Gerard, evidently determined to attempt to inaugurate a more generous policy and establish a precedent for freer and better commercial relations between different countries than had hitherto prevailed. It was accordingly agreed in the treaty in question to avoid "all those burdensome prejudices which are usually sources of debate, embarrassment, and discontent," and to take as the "basis of their agreement the most perfect equality and reciprocity." And they further stated the principle which they had adopted as a guide in their negotiations to be that of "founding the advantages of commerce solely upon reciprocal utility and the just rules of free intercourse." was an In the face of facts like these it is absurd to pretend that there ever American policy" that restricted trade and commerce or that looked to the closing of our markets against foreign products. All that was ever claimed was such an adjustment of duties, imposed for revenue, as would afford incidental protection to home manufacturers. In 1815 Mr. Clay, who is constantly paraded before the country by the protectionists as their great champion, in the debate on the tariff then proposed to be increased in order to raise the money to pay off the war debt, only urged a tax on imports of 25 per cent. instead of 20 per cent. "In three years," he said "we could judge of the ability of our es tablishments to furnish these articles as cheaply as they were obtained form abroad, and could then legislate with the lights of experience." He believed that "three years would be sufficient to place our manufactures on this desirable footing." Nearly seventy years have elapsed since then, yet 47 per cent. average tariff tax is maintained in time of profound peace, almost at the highest war rates, with over $100,000,000 of surplus annually flowing into the Treasury beyond even the present extravagant, not to say wasteful, expenditures, and all efforts to reduce these taxes to something like a revenue standard are denounced by protectionists as ruinous to American industries. Mr. Clay had no such ideas as are now maintained by Senators on the other side of this Chamber. In the great debate in the Senate in 1842, while defending the compromise tariff in 1832, under which all duties were brought to a uniform rate of 20 per cent., Mr. Clay said: If the compromise act had not been adopted the whole system of protection would have been swept by the board by the preponderating influence of the illustrious man then at the head of the Government (General Jackson) at the very next session after its enactment. Yet General Jackson is sometimes quoted as a protectionist. As to the compromise, he had already said that it was his purpose, as long as he should remain in the Senate, to maintain that the original principles of the act should be carried out faithfully and honestly; and if in providing for an adequate revenue for an economical administration of the Government they could at the same time afford incidental protection, he would be happy if both of these objects could be accomplished. Again, he said: As far as he could go, he would; and that was not to lay duties for protection alone, but in laying duties for revenue to supply the Government with means, to so lay them as to afford incidental protection. He would, therefore, say to the friends of protection, lay aside all attempts beyond this standard and look to what is attainable and practicable. The position taken by Mr. Clay is precisely the ground occupied by Mr. Cleveland, as all who read his message understand; yet Mr. Clay is lauded as the great apostle of protection, and Mr. Cleveland is denounced as an enemy of his country, working in the interests of foreign nations. No argument is needed to show that the message of the President and the bill passed by the House are both eminently conservative. Following the recommendations of the message, the bill, while seeking to reduce the dangerous surplus so rapidly accumulating in the Treas ury, seeks, mainly by cheapening raw material, to give our manufacturers a chance to cheapen their products, and thus reach a portion of the foreign markets, and at the same time reduce the cost to home consumers. "It deals with a condition, not a theory." It continues protection at rates much higher than the just claims of the manufacturers or the interest of the consumers calls for, but it recognizes the artificial and unnatural conditions on which our manufacturing establishments have been built up, and it carefully avoids such reductions as would give them even a semblance of just cause for complaint. I will not go into the details of the measure now. It is sufficient to say that, if it becomes a law, the manufacturers will have protection against the right of our people to buy similar foreign-made goods of over 40 per cent., because that is what protection means and all it accomplishes, while all the wages they pay to their operatives does not exceed 25 per cent. on an average of the value of the home-made product, as shown by the census reports furnished by the manufacturers themselves, and as proved by the official tables heretofore referred to as part of the speech of Senator Coke. The temptation is very great to comment upon the provisions of the Senate bill in detail, in the light of past legislation and of the conces sions made by men of all parties as to the necessity of tariff reduction, especially to show how, in the woolen and cotton and other schedules, there is an unwarranted attempt made not only to increase the rate of taxation over existing law, but to do it in the form of compound and specific duties, so as to conceal the increases so artfully devised; but that would extend this statement to an unwarrantable length. I admit that it is too long already. The flagrant injustice of the proposition will, I hope, be fully exposed when the discussion of the items is taken up in the Senate. The proposals in the Senate bill in regard to the cotton schedule, I only propose to say now, are simply outrageous, and can not be defended upon any principle of common decency. No Senator will profess that manufactures, especially cotton manufactures, need any more protection now than they did ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago. Improvements in machinery have cheapened production, and diminished the number of operatives needed in these factories until Mr. Atkinson and all the authorities even in New England agree that one operative will produce as much now as five could with the machinery of twenty years since, which means a proportionate increase of protection to machinery. Yet as early as 1868 the Hon. N. P. Banks, then a member of the House of Representatives, laid before Congress a proposition from the New England manufacturers consenting to a reduction on woolen and cotton goods of over 25 per cent. The Record of May 7, 1868, will show that Mr. Banks, after giving in detail the reductions to which the manufacturers agreed, said: These papers which I hold in my hand bear the official signatures of the authorized representatives of one hundred and twelve manufacturing corporations and firms of New England, in which they themselves suggest and consent to reduction of duties upon an extended and complete list of articles of foreign manufacture which come actively and directly in competition with the industries in which they are engaged, rising from 10 to 20, 30, 40, and 50 per cent. upon the present schedule of duties upon such importations. More than a hundred and twelve corporations and firms of cotton and woolen manufacturers alone, of their own choice, and after repeated conferences, in which all the interests of the textile fabrics of this country were considered, high and low, made this proposition. * As it was with the cotton manufacturers, so it was with the woolen manufacturers. They consented to and in a certain sense recommended, as of their own accord, a reduction of duties of from 23 to 25 per cent. Mr. HOOKER. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him why these interests asked a diminution of the tariff? Mr. BANKS. Because their attention had been called to the subject. It was their duty to make known to the Government what they desired. They found when they brought their representative men together from all parts of the country that the duties could be reduced and they could still pursue their vocations with more or less success, and like bonest and honorable citizens they made that declaration to the Government. And so did the wool-growers from California to New England. They assembled in the State of New York for the same purpose, and after long and anxious conference one with another and with the woolen manufacturers they agreed, as did the silk manufacturers, to what extent they would recommend a reduction of the duty. Yet in the face of these propositions and the changes that have occurred to cheapen the production by improved machinery, after the insertion of provisions-inserted I had almost said clandestinely, in the conference report of 1883-increasing the rate on the leading cotton products in which New England was specially interested, it is now proposed to still further largely increase taxation in the interest of a few New England manufacturers; and what is true in regard to them may be said with equal propriety in regard to all the increases proposed in the Senate bill; for, so far as the leading schedules are concerned-in short, it is a bill to increase taxation in the interest of combinations of wealth rather than to reduce it in the interest of the people. The bill, it is true, deals without mercy with the sugar schedule, mainly because nine-tenths of the money collected from the sugar tax is paid into the Treasury, and none of it reaches the pockets of the New England monopolists. When we reduced the sugar tax in 1883 the clamor of all of these combinations then was that we were destroying an industry that employed a large number of American laborers, principally colored men, for whose welfare they expressed great solicitude. Then, as now, the Democrats agreed only to reductions which would not cripple or destroy home products. It is true that when a sugar plantation is once destroyed it is almost impossible ever to restore it. The plant costs nearly $100 an acre, and takes years to bring it back to a profitable condition after it is once abandoned. It differs from the land upon which hemp, tobacco, and other crops of that sort are produced. They can be changed to something else without loss; whereas the sugar and rice plantations, when once abandoned, can not be used for any other pur pose without a sacrifice of all that had been expended upon them to fit them for sugar and rice production. Therefore the Democratic party, while they cut these two products heavier than any other, wisely did it in such a way as not to seriously cripple or destroy the labor or the capital engaged in those products. Now, perhaps to punish the people of the South or to raise the clamor that they are patriotically giving the people cheap sugar, the Republican majority have taken care to add the taxes on sugar which they have reduced because they could not pocket them or turn them over to the protectionists, as nine-tenths went into the Treasury, to the products of which the monopolists pocket four-fifths and the Government gets one-fifth, and they call that protecting American labor! I am, however, glad that the Senate committee has gone to the ex treme of protection, restriction, and destruction that it has. It makes the issue squarely before the people of the country, whether all the people are for all time to come to be treated as serfs of a few manu. facturers, or whether they are to secure through a revenue tariff some thing like equal rights in the legislation of the country hereafter. The temptation is very great also to show the indignant protests heretofore made, particularly in 1883, by leading Republican Senators, notably Senators Plumb, Ingalls, and Allison, against the tax on lumber, salt, and other things which the committee propose to perpetuate. That, however, can be done hereafter. But I ought not to fail to state that the low revenue tariff of 1846 produced more general prosperity and progress in the development of all our industry than any protective system since devised has ever done. So satisfactory was its operation that when the parties met and adopted their platforms in 1856 neither party ventured to find any objection to it, and when the further reduction below 20 per cent. was made in 1857, it received the almost unanimous approval of the representatives from New England, nearly all of whom were opposed to the then administration; yet the taxation then imposed was less than half that now conceded by the so-called free-trade Mills bill, and very little over one-third of what is demanded by the bill of the Senate committee. On the 24th and 25th of March, 1870, Senator Allison, then a prominent member of the Ways and Means Committee of the House, spoke of that tariff as follows: The tariff of 1846, although confessedly and professedly a tariff for revenue, was, so far as regards all the great interests of the country, as perfect a tariff as any that we have ever had. If any interest was depressed under the tariff of 1846, it was the iron interest. I do not believe that this interest, as, compared with other interests, had sufficient advantage under that tariff; yet when we compare the growth of the country from 1840 to 1850 with the growth of the country from 1850 to 1860-the latter decade being entirely under the tariff of 1846 or the amended and greatly reduced tariff of 1857-we find that the increase in our wealth between 1850 and 1860 was equivalent to 126 per cent., while it was only 64 per cent. between 1840 and 1850, four years of which decade were under the tariff of 1842, known as a high protective tariff, but the average rate of which was about 70 per cent. below the existing rate, or 27 per |