the great statesmen of that day, from Washington down, favored and approved the construction that Congress had the clear and undeniable power under the Constitution, and moreover that it was a solemn duty on the part of Congress to enact such tariff legislation as would give reasonable and adequate protection to the American manufacturer, artisan, laborer, and farmer. This view is strengthened by a reference to the great speech of Rufus Choate delivered in this body March 14, 1842, and from which I beg to quote as follows: He said:

And who in that assembly of men-many of whom sat in the convention which framed the Constitution, all of whom had partaken in the discussions which preceded its adoption-breathed a doubt on the competence of Congress to receive such petitions as these, and to grant their prayer? "I conceive" (said the most eloquent of the eloquent, Mr. Ames)," I conceive, sir, that the present Constitution was dictated by commercial necessity more than any other cause. The want of an efficient government to secure the manufacturing interest and to advance our commerce was long seen by men of judgment, and pointed out by patriots solicitous to promote our general welfare." But I have more to say before I have done, on the proceedings of that Congress, and leave them for the present. In the meanwhile I submit to you that the proof is complete that the people who adopted the Constitution, universally, and without a doubt, be lieved that it embodied this power. It was for that they received it with one wide acclaim, with tears of exultation, with ceremonies of auspicious significance, befitting the dawn of our age of pacific and industrial glory. Even those who feared its imperial character and its other powers, who thought they saw the States attracted to its center and absorbed by its rays, did not fear this power.

And now, sir, I wonder if, after all, the people were deluded into this belief? I wonder if that heroic and energetic generation of our fathers which had studied the controversies and had gone through the tasks of the Revolution which had framed the Confederation, proved its weakness, proved its defects; which had been trained by a long and dreary experience of the insufficiency of a nominal independence to build up a diffused and massive and national prosperity, if the trade laws of foreign government, the combinations of foreign capitalists, the necessities of foreign existence, are allowed to take from the native laborer his meal of meat, and from his children their school, and depress his standard of comfortable life; which had been trained by experience, by the discussions of its ablest minds, in an age of extraordinary mental discussions of its ablest minds, in an age of extraordinary mental activity, and yet of great raorality, sobriety, and subordination, peculiarly favorable to the task, trained thus to the work of constructing a new government, I wonder if such a generation were deceived after all.

I wonder if it was not living water, that which they supposed they saw gushing from the rock, and sparkling and swelling at their feet, but only a delusive imitation, struck out by the wand of an accursed enchantment. No, sir; no man who believes that the people of this country were fit to govern themselvesfit to frame a constitution, fit to judge on it, fit to administer it-no such man can say that the belief, the popular belief in 1789, of the existence of this power, under the circumstances, is not absolutely conclusive proof of its existence. And then, in addition to this, how do you deal with the fact that all the framers of the Constitution themselves, as well as every public man alive in 1789, and the entire intelligence of the country, supposed they had inserted this power in it?

Did not those who made it know what they had done? Considering their eminent general character, their civil discretion, their preparation of much study, and yet more experience of arduous public affairs for the task; their thorough acquaintance with the existing systems, State and national, and with the public mind and opinions of the day; the long, patient, and solitary labor which they bestowed on it; the immediate necessity imposed on them of explaining and defending it to the country-in view of this, if you find them unanimously concurring in it, ascribing this power to the instrument, is it not the transcendentalism of unbelief to doubt? Do we really think we are likely to understand their own work now better than they did the day they finished it? Well, sir, we have satisfactory evidence that the members of the convention went, all of them, to their graves in the belief that the Constitution contained this power. Mr. Madison's opinion I have read. We have it on unquestionable authority that Mr. Gallatin has repeatedly said that upon his entrance into political life in 1789 he found it to be the universal opinion of those who framed the Constitution and those who resisted its adoption-the opinion of all the statesmen of the day-that Congress possessed the power to protect domestic industry by means of commercial regulations.

And when more than half a century had passed away Daniel Webster, in referring to these petitions in his great speech at Albany, August 27, 1844, and to the construction placed upon them by the statesmen of that day and the credit, moreover, accorded them in view of the changed powers of Congress in virtue of the clause in the new Constitution, used these memorable words, plainly indicating his views as to the powers and duties of Congress in reference to this important subject. He said:

Now, I ask you again, how were these petitions for protection treated? Did Congress deny its power? Did it say that it could not possibly give them this protection unless it should happen to be incidental? Did it say we have only a revenue power in regard to this matter? That is, we have the clear and undoubted power to take so much money out of your pockets and apply it to our own purposes, but God forbid that, in doing so, we should do you any good at the same time. Were these petitioners told that they must take care of themselves; that these were days of free trade and everybody must have a right to trade on equal terms with everybody else? Far, far from it.

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In regard to the subject of these petitions, we all know that the very first Congress secured to the navigation of the United States that which has been, from that time to this, the great foundation, not only of preference, but of monopoly-the whole coasting trade of the Union; and the shipwrights of America enjoy that monopoly to the present day, and I hope they will enjoy it forever. Look at the coasting trade of the United States, so vast in its extent. It is entirely confined to American shipping. * But how did Congress treat these petitions from the cities of New York and Baltimore to extend protection to the mechanic arts? It granted them. It yielded it. And except a formal act for taking the oaths, the very first act passed by Congress was to secure the coasting trade and protect the mechanic arts by discriminating duties, and thus carry out the clear, and, according to historical testimony, the most manifest, object of the Constitution.

But hear what that great Democrat Andrew Jackson had to say on this important subject. In his second annual message to Congress (December 7, 1830) he said:

The power to impose duties on imports originally belonged to the several States. The right to adjust those duties with a view to the encouragement of domestic branches of industry is so completely identical with that power that it is difficult to suppose the existence of the one without the other. The States have delegated their whole authority over imports to the General Government, without limitation or restriction, saving the very inconsiderable reservation relating to their inspection laws.

This authority having thus entirely passed from the States, the right to exercise it for the purpose of protection does not exist in them, and consequently if it be not possessed by the General Government, it must be extinct. Our political system would thus present the anomaly of a people stripped of the right to foster their own industry and to counteract the most selfish and destructive policy which might be adopted by foreign nations. This surely can not be the case; this indispensable power, thus surrendered by the States, must be within the scope of the authority on the subject expressly delegated to Congress.

In this conclusion I am confirmed as well by the opinions of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, who have each repeatedly recommended the exercise of this right under the Constitution, as by the uniform practice of Congress, the continued acquiescence of the States, and the general understanding of the people.

But further evidence on this point is superfluous, as it is all one way. And yet in the light emanating from all the public declarations, not only of the founders of the Government, but also of the expounders of the Constitution, including those of every statesman of this country worthy of the name during the first quarter of a century of the existence of our Government, we find the distinguished and erudite junior Senator from Indiana [Mr. TURPIE], in his scholarly speech of a few days since, characterizing the honorable Finance Committee's recapitulation of the pending measure as a gilded cenotaph, marking the sepulchral abode of all the respect, traditional regard, and reverence which,

according to the distinguished Senator, had in the first century of the Republic been paid to the law of the people.

The distinguished Senator is mistaken. The cenotaph to which he so eloquently points does not mark the burial-place of the principles of the founders and builders of the Republic on this great question. These, thank God, still live and will continue to survive, commanding the respect, traditional regard, and reverence accorded them, and the fundamental law from which they are evolved by the statesmen of earlier days; but if they ever do perish and die, on the monument which shall shadow their tomb shall be inscribed, "Strangled and entombed by the free-trade, tariff-for-revenue-only tinkers of modern Democracy!” Notwithstanding this wealth of evidence contributed by the founders of our Government, and to which I have. attracted attention, notwithstanding this "great cloud of witnesses" from among the illustrious men who framed the Constitution and gave to its various clauses interpretation in the primal days of the Republic-all vindicating and securely establishing the very policy sought to be enforced and perpetuated by the pending bill-our distinguished and eloquent colleague, the senior Senator from Indiana [Mr. VOORHEES], the peerless spokesman of his party, the impetuous champion of free trade from the sycamore-lined shores of the Wabash, in his eloquent speech a few days since proclaimed in his usual, inimitable, captivating, and magnetic manner that "the bill under consideration is the result of a system of progressive evil-the offspring of a long-continued evolution in unjust taxation," a bill "springing from a parent stock whose life-germ is vicious, whose sap and vitality are imbued with a venom fatal to liberty and equality, the bold culmination, the climax of a series of oppressive enactments, a financial monster equipped with claws with which to tear the fruits of labor from the farmer" and with "teeth with which to rend and crush his substance"-a measure, according to the distinguished Senator, whose authors are described as unlike "the romantic robbers of brilliant fiction," who are depicted "sometimes in the colors of chivalry, and as sparing the needy and distressed, while they politely preyed upon the opulent and the richly endowed," but who are, in the language of the senior Senator from Indiana, described as "the robber barons of this country, who do not belong to so refined a type as predaceous chevaliers."

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Truly, Mr. President, if simple denunciation and invective, as distinguished from argument, clothed in well-rounded periods of finished rhetoric, is the standard by which the pending bill is to be judged, then indeed all will agree, without a dissenting voice, that the McKinley bill, as it passed the House and as modified by the Senate committee, must, before the irresistible avalanche of invective which literally saturated the speech of the Senator from Indiana, go down more speedily and to still lower depths than ever went poor McGinty, and I believe it is confidently and vigorously averred that he went "to the bottom of the sea." Indeed, in the absence of material for argument or just criticism, so vehement in his terms of denunciation of the measure did that distinguished Senator become, that as he proceeded the generous impulses of his nature, asserting their normal functions, called a sudden halt, and he involuntarily injected into his speech an apology to the Senate and the country for the use of terms in his characterization of this bill which he himself declared might "seem of unwonted severity.'

THE EFFECT OF A TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY OR, IN OTHER WORDS, FREE TRADE.

Mr. President, let the doctrine of free trade or a tariff for revenue only, which is the same thing, as insisted on by the Democratic party, be enforced as our American policy and the result will be that only those foreign products which can not be produced in this country will be taxed, while all others will be permitted to come in by the shipload free; and while for a short time the cost of some of these articles, both domestic and foreign, may and undoubtedly would be reduced to the consumer, very soon the tables would be turned, American producers would be driven to the wall, factories, mills, and machine-shops would be closed, the fires of furnaces would die out, hundreds of thousands of laborers would be thrown out of employment, the agriculturist, the wool-grower, the cattle, hog, sheep, and horse raiser, the dairyman, the manufacturer of butter, cheese, and kindred products would all be compelled to compete with the unrestricted and unrestrained importation of these articles from foreign countries, for all of which the United States would become the dumping ground-the free and open market.

And then what would be the result further? Simply this: The excessive importations having crushed out American production and having wiped out American industries would at once control the markets in this country, and immediately prices on the necessaries of life would advance all along the line to the consumer, and, as a result, the great masses-the mechanics, laborers, and artisans--would be menaced and smitten with a two-sided, double-edged sword, one that would cut down unmercifully and relentlessly the rates of wages, if not indeed in many instances cause an entire deprivation of employment, while the other would carve on the rate-board of the consumer a marked increase in the price of every one of the necessaries of life. And not only so, another lamentable fact, and one which must not be lost sight of, would result from such a state of things, and that is the money thus paid out by the American consumer in such a state of affairs for the necessaries of life, would, instead of going to increase and aid in paying the wages of these same consumers, instead of going to our manufacturers and farmers, to the producers of this country, would go to fill the exchequer of foreign importers, and to swell the coffers of the producers of England, Canada, and other foreign countries.

The statement made and insisted on by Mr. Cleveland, and taken up and repeated from every Democratic stump and by every Democratic journal in the land during the past four or five years, to the effect that the tariff is a tax the amount of which is added to the price which the consumer must inevitably pay for the article thus taxed, is misleading in the highest degree and only occurs under the existing tariff law in a very few instances, and in a carefully prepared and properly adjusted revenue act should not occur in any instance after a sufficient time has elapsed under its operation to bring into full growth and development in this country the industry protected by the tariff referred to.

It is only when a customs duty is levied on an article of foreign production which we do not and can not produce here either at all or only in such limited quantities as to fall far short of the demand that it is absolutely true that the tariff is a tax on the consumer. In other words, when a tariff duty is imposed on articles which we can and do produce in this country in competition with the foreign product, then, while it is possible and indeed very probable a temporary advance in

prices may follow, the inevitable effect is, by building up and largely developing the particular industry, to reduce the price of that particular article to the consumer, and in such instances it is not infrequently the case that the price of the article is thus reduced much below the total amount of the duty.

This is clearly illustrated, as frequently instanced, in the case of the duty on salt. Salt in this country is worth to-day 50 cents a barrel of 280 pounds; the barrel in which it is packed is worth 20 cents, so that 280 pounds of salt is worth just 30 cents, and that is the price it costs the consumer, and yet the tariff on that amount of salt is 32 cents, or 2 cents more than the whole cost of the salt to the consumer. But it is also true in a great variety of cases, especially of woolen fabrics of the cheaper rates, and illustrated by the fact that these are as cheap here as in England. I agree the duty should be so adjusted that the amount of the duty, after an article has been sufficiently stimulated by the process of protection, would not be added to the price which the consumer must pay for the article, and in the case of a properly adjusted protective tariff this will always be the case.

But under the system advocated by the Democratic party with a tariff for revenue only, then in every instance the amount of the tariff is added to the price of the article which the consumer must pay; and the reason why this is so will be seen at a glance by a careful comparison of the principles upon which the two systems proceed-that is, a tariff for protection and one for revenue only.

In the former case it is the aim to admit free of duty all those foreign products which are necessaries of life and which we can not produce in this country, and to levy duties only on those articles of foreign importation which we can and do produce here, and which come into competition with the imported article, and hence the effect is to stimulate competition, build up industries, maintain for a time until the industry is firmly established and then eventually reduce prices, and consequently in such cases the tariff is not a tax, is not added to the price of the article, but tends in the end, by stimulating competition, to reduce that price.

But in the other case, in imposing a tariff for revenue only, it is universally the aim of the legislator to obtain the greatest possible amount of revenue from the least possible amount or rate of tax, and therefore in imposing the tax for revenue only a free-trade legislator inevitably seeks to impose his tariff on those articles only which we can not and do not produce in this country, and hence in every such instance it is true, as claimed by the late President Cleveland and his party, that the amount of the tariff becomes a tax, purely and simply, and is in such cases inevitably added to the price of the article which the consumer must pay.

When, therefore, it is insisted that the tariff is a tax and is paid by the consumer, the answer is that this is only the case, or at least most generally the case, when the tariff is a Democratic tariff-that is, one for revenue only, and not a Republican tariff, or one primarily not only for revenue but which fosters and encourages American production, and the result of which is not to increase the price of the commodity to the consumer to the amount of such tariff, or to any amount, but which prevents a destruction of industries by a ruinous competition from abroad, and which in fact, by stimulating competition at home, reduces it far below in many instances, and in fact in most instances, that which it would be but for the tariff.