marble and stone quarries and other natural products which labor so enriches, which furnish so much employment for labor, are without it of not much value. If you examine carefully, every article of use or ornament is largely indebted to labor. I said in the commencement that labor received greater advantages than any other specific class, why does it? Because from the commencement of the building of a railroad, or of a factory, of a wooden ship or iron steamer, the laborers are generally paid each week, being secured for their labor by a lien upon what they are building. While those who employ them only begin to realize in railroads rarely in less than one year, taking all the risks of competition, losses by collisions, accidents, defalcations of officers, clerks, or other employees. Manufacturers or other traders who employ large numbers, are compelled to sell on credit, taking all the risks of payment which must necessarily continue to increase, as profits grow small. The risk of labor strikes complicates all improvements which must constantly give a demand for labor, and renders it most difficult for those who desire to undertake such improvements, to determine how low they can do it. Under the high protective tariff of 1842 our country was rapidly recovering from a condition of almost hopeless bankruptcy, which Clay's twenty per cent. tariff had reduced us to, into a condition of thrift and solvency, every body finding remunerative employment, and profitable manufacturing; until the Democratic party under Polk, who came into power professing to be an advocate of the protective tariff of 1842, the same as was made and sustained by the Whigs, introduced in one year after he took his seat another tariff bill, reducing the duties largely on importations, permitting England and other nations who could produce cheaper than ourselves to take our market away from us, and close our manufacturing establishments, and deprive the laborers who were employed in them from obtaining remunerative labor. From the promises received at the time of the nominations of Polk and Dallas, it was hardly to be suspected that they were only made to gain power, but the Senate was a

tie, and the casting vote of the Vice-President determined the question, and to the surprise of all protective Pennsylvanians who thought they knew George M. Dallas, he cast his vcte against the protective tariff of '42, a tariff which had rescued our country from insolvency, and put her in a condition of advancement and encouragement in all departments of trade, giving assurance to the Nation, that protection to American Industry, was the only thing necessary to make us ultimately the leading nation of the world. Although Gen. Taylor a Whig was elected President in 1848 and lived but a short time, and Filmore Vice-President disappointed the party, and Pearce was elected in 1852 and Buchanan in 1856, the low tariff cf 1846 remaining was the cause of the severest panic in business ever experienced in our country. The Democrats have sometimes asked the question why did not the free trade tariff of 1846, cause a disruption in business before 1857? The answer is, that gold was discovered in California in 1848-9, which enabled us to pay our indebtedness to Europe, the balance of trade being largely against us, and so delayed the panic, until gold began to fail, when the threatened collapse came. No opportunity for changing the tariff of '46 was given to the Whig or Republican party, until Mr. Lincoln was elected in 1860. The operation of that low tariff, for so long a period fourteen years, impoverished our Nation, because it compelled us to purchase of other nations who could supply us with many manufactures at much less rates than we could produce them, their labor costing them from one-third to one-half of ours. When Mr. Buchanan retired from the Presidency, and we were in want of means to prosecute the war, we found our credit so depressed that we were asked exorbitant interest, and only succeeded in a loan by paying twelve per cent., although our National debt had been nearly extinguished. The Republican party came into power after the Democratic party had been in possession of our Government nearly all the time for 32 years. To assume such momentous responsibility as confronted them, in a Nation of such magnitude, at a time of such doubtful

credit, with twelve per cent. to start with, what would it be as loan demands became larger, and larger? With the entire South soon to be in opposition, the Democratic party of the free states in sympathy, many of its members aiding and abetting them, how were we to raise the means to put armies in the field, and a navy on our coast, and protect ourselves at home from all aggressions? The Republican party understanding the importance of production at home, saw the necessity of changing the tariff from a low one, such as admitted the production of other countries, to come in conflict with ours, to a higher one, such as would prevent importations of what we might be able to produce by manufacture and otherwise. As the War continued, our indebtedness increased, so that a gold dollar at the commencement, which could purchase no more than a one dollar bank note, could purchase $2.85 in paper. When a fifty per cent. protective duty laid upon any article of import, amounted to a protective duty of 1.421⁄2 per cent., which might be called if not prohibitory, nearly so. Now the Democratic party desires free trade, although Mr. Cleveland in his Message says they do not, but you must read the papers if you wish to know what occasionally crops out in some Southern papers, which they do not think we in the North will ever behold. They do not call it free trade, but a duty for revenue, but it is a very low duty which will pay the expenses of the Government, a twenty per cent. or less duty such as Mr. Morrison struggled so hard to secure last year, and which cnly Mr. Randall with all of his Democratic prestige at that time, and the entire Republican party, were enabled to prevent. They believe and say, that protection is unconstitutional. They tell the farmer he wants a larger market for his cereals &c.; the laborers that they pay too much for what they consume; the manufacturers that all they want is cheaper raw materials; and the steel and iron. producers, if they had ores and all raw materials used by them free of duty, they might extend their business indefinitely, and successfully, and so on in all departments of trade. They

wonder why the people will confine themselves to one little country like ours, when the world is opening its arms to welcome and embrace us, and offers us its immense territories to revel and luxuriate in, in return for a country's trade of only a little more than a century old. Mr. Carey who was the greatest political economist of the country, in his "Harmony of Interests" shows, "that the consumption of all the necessaries of life was diminished and made more difficult by the periods of low duties; that all industries, manufacturing, banking, transportation, and farming, were alike prostrated by them; and that in each instance they were bitter disappointments, to the very Democrats who had enacted them." All the countries of the world of any importance to us such as Germany, France, Italy, and Russia, have a tariff for protection to their interests. France paid her War debt to Germany, through her industries which were protected. England was strongly protective in her infancy, and enriched herself under that system, and only pretended to adopt free trade at a time when she was master of the world in production, thinking, and hoping, she could induce America, to send her its cotton and cereals, and become purchasers of her manufacturers to supply their wants. At that time the world was depending upon her, she was supplying it quite largely with her manufactures, and hoped as she set the example, she might induce other nations to open their markets, and she continue to enrich herself through their impoverishment.

How could we make our steel rails unless we protected ourselves by a duty covering the difference between English labor and ours, and how could our country have grown so rapidly, not only in population, but in wealth, unless under a protective system which enabled us to carry the country through the war and liquidate more than a $3,000,000,000 debt. Mr. Samson S. Lloyd for many years a prominent member of Parliament in England writes in relation to the effect of protection in Europe and America as follows: "Inquiries confirm private information which reaches me from time to time both

from Germany and the United States to the effect that protection does not materially increase the price of necessary food and clothing in the protected country, while (with the United States at least) wages in the protected country are much higher than in England. But meanwhile our manufacturing supremacy and agricultural prosperity may be irretrievably ruined. I never remember a time in my 45 years commercial experience when trade in this country was so generally depressed and unprofitable as it now is." This was in May, 1886,from an Englishman, showing the condition that England was in through her free trade. The recent message of the President proposing to reduce duties on all foreign imports to a minimum, regardless of the productive business of our own country, caters to a cabal who less than a quarter of a century ago endeavored to destroy this beautiful country, and to adopt a system which would have enriched England at that time, and will, if they succeed now be largely to the disadvantage of what were once called the Free States, yes, and the Southern States also, in their infancy in manufacturing. The surplus seems to be the great trouble with the Democrats. When we came into power in 1861 we did not find any surplus, if we had we should have known what to do with it. Build ships for a navy, as we should now do, get rid of our indebtedness, and remove all direct taxes from the people.

Before the war we had never established ourselves in manufacturing. Now observe our steel, iron, coal, lumber, agricultural implements, carriages, cotton and wool manufactures, crockery, steam engines, cars, also our great crops of cereals, cotton, beef, pork, and other products, and railroads penetrating almost every part of our immense territory. We should all be free traders if we were one nation. We as a nation are such, with no discrimination between the States, on land, ocean or lake.

While we have more than doubled our population in the last thirty years, we have doubled our hay in ten years, our steel and iron as well as our cereals in fifteen years, and established