burdens. This kind of blindness is not by any means uncommon, it is owing to what may be called a general mental law. It has often been pointed out, as characteristic of the mass of men that they are little able to conceive a general law apart from the particular application of it with which they are familiar; just as they cannot disassociate the general term or maxim from the special examples which meet them in daily experience. As Emerson aptly puts it, "Most men do not realize a principle except as its light falls upon a fact." Thus the farmer and laborer will attribute their misfortunes to some inscrutable law of nature, rather than to a law enacted at Washington which practically forbids ocean vessels supplying them with their needs, or to that other law, enacted in the railway office at New York, that mercilessly taxes the product which they seek to deliver to their consumers. It is the indirectness of the burdens which has thus made their real cause unperceived.

The protectionist, dealing with immediate material results, ignoring fundamental causes and final results, only darkens counsel and conceals principle with figures and words. I believe that sound political economy is identical with sound political ethics, and that the application of these principles to the question comports with humanity and justice; that when the ethical side of the subject comes to be heard, studied, and understood, when the sense of right comes to be appealed to rather than the

pocket, there will be a clearer perception of the question. When man's avarice and cupidity are uppermost he naturally resorts to compromises and expedients. In this frame of mind he is apt to magnify the importance of immediate results, and correspondingly to underrate the importance of those which are more remote. Industrial emancipation can never be secured merely through measurement by dollars and cents; it is only when a sense of justice is aroused and becomes active that we realize the necessity of equal individual right as the only basis for wholesome industry and permanent liberty. When we come therefore to understand thoroughly that there is involved in the question of protection the alternative of freedom or slavery-not merely slavery of a separate class or race, but a slavery that reaches to each of us, rendering our burdens unequal and our rights insecure, we shall begin to perceive that there are involved in the question wrongs which can neither be compromised nor concealed behind the dollar. In England the question of the repeal of the Corn Laws was attended by a discussion perhaps as intelligent, active, and far-reaching as was ever applied to an economic subject. As long as the cause depended only upon appeals to self-interest, even though this interest was assumed to be governed by the higher intelligence based on a limited franchise, reform seemed impossible. The landed interest which opposed the reform was governed by a stiffnecked conservatism and blinded by selfishness. The

whole movement would probably have failed had it not been that the Irish famine came to awake the conscience of the nation to the enormous wrong which lay concealed behind the medieval establishment. It is not impossible that with us the evils of protection will grow to vaster proportions than they have yet reached before we come thoroughly to realize their cause. But of one thing I think we may be certain, that we are moving in the direction of a crisis; and that if we will not learn by intel ligent examination to solve the question, we shall somewhere in its progress be taught a solution through necessity. Nevertheless, I believe there are multiplying evidences which go to show that we are approaching a solution by intelligent methods. As I have pointed out three stages in the development of the railway question, so I think it may be said that, in the progress of the tariff question three periods may also be distinguished. The first began immediately after the war, when in consequence of the enormous debt an unprecedented activity was created, and the public, influenced by a sense of material convenience, were not inclined to consider ultimate results. The next period began when, in consequence of the misdistribution which the tariff accomplished in its field, as the railway did in the transportation field, there grew up organizations which expressed themselves in direct retort-in strikes, and in disturbances of one kind and another, between labor and capital. Out of this condition, as

was natural, theories of all kinds were born. We are beginning to arrive at the third period of the development of the subject, where a dispassionate interest in the question and a discussion of its underlying principles may be expected. This stage of the question can hardly be said to have begun. Up to the present, it has only shown itself to be inevitable. Here, too, as in the case of the railway manager, the protectionist himself, realizing this fact, assumes, that it is a matter belonging exclusively to him and which he alone is to reform. He has had the advantage hitherto, in whatever discussion has taken place, of choosing the methods in which the earlier stages of the contest have been carried on. In these methods results are considered, statistics dealt with, and primal principles neglected. The force of events however, with considerable rapidity is stimulating active thought towards primal principles, and we may hope, therefore, that we are on the threshold of a permanent change. It is not to be expected that the present Congress, or even the next, will come to a thorough consideration of the whole question, but the beginning is at least assured. It is quite probable that the ground chosen by the protectionist will gradually be shifted to a place of higher vantage for his opponent. Upon this new ground there will be opportunities afforded for a wider discussion, for the setting forth of arguments founded upon the fundamental principles of industrial liberty -arguments which the protectionist can neither meet

nor answer.

CHAPTER IX

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT

In order accurately to understand political liberty as a right to which every citizen is equally entitled, we must consider it separately from any assumed equality of those faculties which are called the mental, the moral, and the social. It is often assumed that these are faculties to which, in some indefinite way, each citizen has the same right to equality as that right by which he holds his political freedom. I think it may be shown not only that political equality does not imply any equality of these faculties in different individuals, but that, on the contrary, it does imply the necessity of a distinct recognition and furtherance of their inequality. It may also be shown that meddling with these faculties in the endeavor to reduce them to uniformity is one of the chief characteristics of paternal government, and that such endeavor arises from confusion

1 It must be owned that even the Declaration of Independence is somewhat uncertain upon this point, in setting forth, as it does, that "all men are created equal." It would certainly have been more definite and would have saved a great deal of misconception to have used instead of the term “equal," "with equal political right." The words, however, which follow, with certain unalienable rights," such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," may possibly be construed as limiting the former clause.

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