II.—Clearing Ground.

Protection has the weight of general acceptance. A short time ago universally accepted by civilised Governments, Great Britain is yet the only considerable nation that has discarded it, while her own Colonies, as soon as they have obtained the power, have shown a disposition to revert to it,

But the presumption in favour of any belief generally entertained has existed in favour of many beliefs now known to be entirely erroneous, and is especially weak in the case of a theory which enlists the support of powerful special interests, as Protection obviously does. The history of mankind everywhere shows the power of special interests, capable of organisation and action in securing the acceptance of the most monstrous doctrines. And we have but to look around us to see how easily a small special interest may exert greater influence in forming opinion and making laws than a large general interest, As what is everybody's business is nobody's business, so what is everybody's interest is nobody's interest, Two or three citizens of a seaside town see that the building of a custom-house or the dredging of a creek will put money in their pockets; a few silver miners conclude that it will be a good thing for them to have the Government stow away some millions of silver every month; a navy contractor wants the profits of repairing useless ironclads or building needless cruisers, and again and again such petty interests have their way against the larger interests of the whole people. What can be clearer than that a note directly issued by the Government is at least as good as a note based on a Government bond. Yet special interests have sufficed to institute and maintain a hybrid currency for which no other valid reason can be assigned than private profit.

Those who are pecuniarily interested in Protective tariffs find it easy to believe that Protection is good for the whole country The directness of their interest makes them active and efficient in spreading their views, and having control of large means—for the protected industries are those in which large capitals are engaged—and being ready on occasion, as a matter of business, to spend money in propagating their doctrines, they are able to exert great influence upon the organs of public opinion. Freetrade, on the contrary, offers no special advantage to any particular interest, and in the present state of social morality benefits or injuries which men share in common with their fellows are not felt as intensely as those which affect them specially.

I do not mean to say that the pecuniary interests which Protection enlists suffice to explain the manner in which its theories have spread, and the tenacity with which they are held. But it is plain that they do constitute a power of the kind most potent page break in forming opinion and influencing legislation, and that this fact weakens the presumption the wide acceptance of Protection might otherwise afford, and is a reason why those who believe in it merely because they have constantly heard it praised should examine the question for themselves.

Protection has, moreover, always found an effective ally in those national prejudices and hatreds which are in part the cause and in part the result of the wars that have made the annals of mankind a record of bloodshed and devastation, and which have everywhere been the means by which the masses have been induced to use their own power for their own enslavement.

For the first half-century of our national existence American Protectionists pointed to the Protective tariff of Great Britain as an example to be followed; but since that country, in 1846, discarded Protection, its American advocates have endeavoured to utilise national prejudice by constantly speaking of Protection as an American system, and of Freetrade as though it were a British invention. Just now they are especially active in endeavouring to utilise in the same way the enmity against everything British which long and bitter oppressions and insults have engendered in the Irish heart, and, in the language of a recent political platform, Irish Americans are called upon to "resist the introduction into America of the English theory of Freetrade, which has been so successfully used as a means to destroy the industries and oppress the people of Ireland."

Even if Freetrade did originate in Great Britain we would be as foolish in rejecting it on that account as we would be in refusing to speak our mother tongue because it is of British origin, or in going back to hand and water power because steam-engines were first introduced in Great Britain. But in truth Freetrade no more originated in Great Britain than did the habit of walking on the feet. Freetrade is the natural trade—the trade that goes on in the absence of artificial restrictions. It is Protection that had to be invented. But, instead of being invented in the United States, it was in full force in great Britain long before the United States were thought of. It would be nearer the truth to say that Protection originated in Great Britain, for if the system did not originate there, it was fully developed there, and it is from that country that it has been derived by us. Nor yet did the reaction against it originate in Great Britain, but in France, among a school of eminent, men headed by Quesnay, who were Adam Smith's predecessors and in many things his teachers. These French economists were what neither Smith nor any subsequent British economist or statesman has been—true Freetraders. They wished to sweep away not merely Protective tariff taxes, but all taxes, direct and indirect, save a single tax upon land values. This logical conclusion of Freetrade principles the so-called British Freetraders have shirked, and it meets as bitter opposition from the Cobden Club as from American Protectionists. The only sense in which we can speak of "British Freetrade" is the same sense in which we speak of a Certain imitation metal as "German silver." "British Freetrade" is spurious Freetrade. Great Britain does not really enjoy Freetrade. To say nothing of internal taxes, inconsistent with true Freetrade, she still maintains a cordon of custom-house officers, coastguards, and baggage-searchers, and still collects over a hundred million dollars of her revenue from import duties. To be sure, her tariff is "for revenue only," but a tariff for revenue only is not Freetrade. The ruling classes of Great Britain have adopted only so much Freetrade as suits their class interests, and the battle for Freetrade has yet to be fought there.

On the other hand, nothing can be more absurd than to talk of Protection as an American system. It had been fully developed in Europe before the American Colonics were planted, and during our Colonial period England maintained a more thorough system of Protection than anywhere now exists—a system which aimed at building up English industries not merely by Protective duties, but by the repression of like industries in Ireland and the Colonies, and wherever else throughout the world English power could be exerted. What we got of Protection was the wrong side of it, in regulations designed to prevent American industries from competing with those of the Mother Country, and to give to her a monopoly of the American trade.

The irritation produced in the growing Colonies by these restrictions was the main cause of the revolution which made them an independent nation. Protectionist ideas were doubtless at that time latent among our people, for they permeated the mental atmosphere of the civilised world, but so far from there being any disposition to embody them in a national policy, the American representatives in negotiating the treaty of peace endeavoured to secure complete freedom of trade between the United States and Great Britain. This was refused by England, then and for a long time afterward completely dominated by Protective ideas. But during the period following the revolution in which the American Union existed under the Articles of Confederation, no tariff hampered importations into the American States.

The adoption of the Constitution made a federal tariff possible, and to give the Federal Government an independent revenue, a tariff was soon imposed; but although Protection had then begun to find advocates in the United States, as compared with what the British tariff was then, or our tariff is now, this first American tariff was almost nominal. And in the Federal Constitution State tariffs were prohibited—a step which page break has resulted in giving the greatest extension to the principle of Freetrade that it has had in modern times. Nothing could more clearly show how far the American people were then from accepting the theories of Protection which have since been popularised among them, for the national idea had not then acquired the force it has since gained, and had Protection then been looked upon as necessary, the various States would not easily have given up the power of imposing tariffs of their own.

Nor could Protection have reached its present height in the United States but for the civil war. While attention was concent rated on the struggle, and mothers were sending their sons to the battlefield, the protected interests took advantage of the patriotism that objected to no taxation to secure for themselves protective taxes such as had never before been dreamed of, taxes which they have managed to still keep in force, and even in many cases to increase.

The truth is that Protection is no more American than is the distinction made in our army and navy between commissioned officers and enlisted men. This distinction is historically a survival of that made in I aristocratic Europe between the noble and the peasant, and has been copied by us in the same spirit of imitation that has led us to copy other undemocratic customs and institutions. Though we preserve this aristocratic distinction after it has been abandoned in some European countries, it is in no sense American. It neither originated with us nor does it consort with our distinctive ideas and institutions. So it is with Protection. Whatever be its economic merits there can be no doubt that it conflicts with those ideas of natural right and personal freedom which received national expression in the establishment of the American Republic, and which we have been accustomed to regard as distinctively American. What more incongruous than the administering of customhouse oaths and the searching of trunks and hand-bags under the shadow of the statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World?"

As for the assertion that "the English theory of Freetrade" has been used to "destroy the industries and oppress the people of Ireland," the truth is that it was "the English theory of Protection" that was so used. The restrictions which British Protection imposed upon the American Colonies wove trivial as compared with those imposed upon Ireland. The successful resistance of the Colonies aroused in Ireland the same spirit, and led to the great movement of Irish Volunteers who, with cannon bearing the inscription "Freetrade or—1" forced the repeal of those restrictions and won for awhile Irish legislative independence.

Whether Irish industries that were unquestionably hampered and throttled by British Protection could now be benefited by Irish Protection, like the question whether Protection benefits the United States, is only to be settled by a determination of the effects of Protection upon the country that imposes it. But without going into that, it is evident that the Freetrade between Great Britain and Ireland which has existed since the Union in 1801, has not been the cause of the backwardness of Irish industry. There is one part of Ireland which has enjoyed comparative prosperity, and in which important industries have grown up—some of them, such as the building of iron ships, for which no pretence of natural advantages can be made. If the very men who are now trying to persuade Irish-American voters that Ireland had been impoverished by "British Freetrade" were privately asked the cause of the greater prosperity of Ulster over other parts of Ireland they would probably give the answer made familiar by religious bigotry that Ulster is enterprising and prosperous because it is Protectant, while the rest of Ireland is sluggish and poor because it is Catholic. But it is not worth while to attempt to disprove this stupid assertion. The true reason is plain. It is that the land tenure in Ulster has been such as to leave there a far larger proportion of the wealth produced than in other parts of Ireland, and that the mass of the people have not been so remorselessly hunted and ground. In Presbyterian Skye there exists the same general poverty, the same primitive conditions of industry, as in Catholic Connemara, and to talk about the want of a Protective tariff or religious opinions being the cause of the backwardness of industry among a people who are steadily stripped of all they can make above a bare living, is like attributing the sinking of a ship with a hole in her bottom to the want of a figure-head or to the colour she happens to be painted.

What, however, in the United States at least, has tended more than any appeals to national dislike to dispose the masses in favour of Protection has been the difference of attitude towards the working classes assumed by the contending politics. The strength of Protection in its beginnings in this country was in those sections where labour had the largest opportunities and was held in the highest esteem; while that of Freetrade has been greatest in the section in which, up to the civil War, slavery prevailed. The political party which successfully challenged the aggressions of the slave power also declared for a high Protective tariff, while the men who tried to rend the Union, in order to establish a nation based upon the right of capital to own labour, prohibited Protection in the constitution they formed. The explanation of these facts is that in one section of the country there were many industries that could be protected, while in the other section there were few. But in many minds the effect has been to associate Protection with respect for labour, and Freetrade with its enslavement.

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Irrespective of this, shere has been much in the presentation of the two theories to dispose the working classes towards Protection and against Freetrade. Working men generally feel that they do not get a fair reward for their labour. They know that what prevents them from successfully demanding higher wages is the competition of others anxious for work, and they are naturally disposed to favour the doctrine or party that proposes to sheild them from competition. Protectionists at least profess regard for the labourer, a desire to use the power of Government to raise and maintain wages, and as presented in politics this is the avowed aim and end of Protection. Protection is popularly urged as the protection of American labour.

On the other hand, the opponents of Protection have, for the most part, not only professed no special interest in the well-being of the working classes, and no desire to raise wages, but have denied the justice of such attempts declaring it no part of the province of Government. The doctrine of Freetrade has been entwined with teachings that throw upon natural laws responsibility for the results of human injustice, and foster a callous indifference to the sufferings of the labouring classes. On the same grounds on which they have condemned legislative interference with trade, Freetrade economists have condemned interference with hours of labour, with the rate of wages, and even with the employment of women and children, and have united Protectionism and trades unionism in the same denunciation, proclaiming supply and demand to be the only true and rightful regulator of the price of labour as of the price of pig iron. While protesting against restrictions upon the production of wealth, they have ignored monstrous injustice in distribution, and have treated as fair and normal that competition in which human beings, deprived of their natural rights and opportunities, are compelled by biting want to bid against each other.

All this is true; but it is also true that the interests of labour are more than a matter of soft words such as we address to a horse when we want to catch him that we may put a bit in his mouth and a saddle on his back. Let me ask those who on this account are disposed to regard Protection as favourable and Freetrade as hostile to the aspirations of labour, to think whether it can be true that what labour needs is Protection.

There is something in the very name of Protection that ought to make working men cautious of accepting anything presented to them under it. The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretence of tyranny—the plea of monarchy of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slaveowners justified slavery as protecting the slaves. British misrule in Ireland is upheld on the ground that it is for the protection of the Irish. But whether under a monarchy or under a republic there never has been an instance in the history of the world in which the protection of the labouring masses has not meant their oppression The protection which those who have got the law-making power into their hands have given to labour has, at best, always been the protection that man gives to cattle. He protects them that he may use and eat them.

There runs through Protectionist professions of concern for labour a tone of condescending patronage more insulting to men who feel the true dignity of labour than frankly expressed contempt could be an assumption that pauperism is the natural condition of labour, to which it must everywhere fall unless benevolently protected It is never intimated that the landowner or the capitalist needs Protection. They, it is always assumed, can take care of themselves. It is only the poor, helpless working man who must be provided with employment lest he starve.

What is labour that it should so need Protection? Is not labour the creator of capital, the producer of all wealth It is not the men who labour that feed and clothe all other orders of men? Is it not true, as has been said, that the three great orders of society are "workingmen, beggarmen, and thieves?" How, then, does it come that workingmen alone should need Protection? When the first man came upon the earth who was there to protect him or to provide him with employment? Yet he managed to get a living and raise a family.

When we consider that labour is the producer of all wealth is it not evident that the impoverishment and dependence of labour are abnormal conditions resulting from restrictions and usurpations, and that instead of accepting Protection, what labour should demand is freedom? That those who advocate any extension of freedom choose to go no further than suits their own special purpose is no reason why freedom should be distrusted. For years it was held that the assertion of our declaration of independence that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, applied only to white men, and to mere political rights. Hut this in no wise vitiated the principle.

And so, that freedom of trade has been advocated by those who have no sympathy with labour should not prejudice us against it. The road to the industrial as to the political emancipation of the masses must be that of freedom.