The Sun.
London, England, 1870-03-29 00:00:00

sons and papers in the United States, yet no one,
even he who makes the accusation, believes it. The
funniestpart of it all is, unless indeed we are greatly
m'staken, that a more liberal Tariff, instead of in
the end benefiting British trade, would, in creating
a formidable rival in the United States, divert a
vast portion of that trade from the former to
the latter country. Not many .years ago Ameri-
can twills -were cutting out English cottons
in the markets of Asia, and half the officers of the
British Army in India were at least partly clad in
the manufactures of the New England looms. In
those days, the American produce was not only car-
ried in American ships to India, but a consider-
able portion of British produce as well ; and had
it not been for unforeseen events and changes, the
greatest mercantile marine in the world would
now have borne •the Stars an 1 Stripes. It may
be if Free Trade is good for America at all, that
its effect will be to bring back those prosperous
times ; and how can they be produced, at least in a
measure, except by transferring from Great Bri-
tain to the United States the supremacy in many
branches of industry? Yet, if so, this is what some
men in America assert Great Britain is freely ex-
pending gold, to bribe Americans to achieve. But
the people are becoming too knowing to be im-
posed on by such charges, and we repeat that the
gr..at struggle impending will be decided in the
Republic by the real force of truth.

ARGUMENTS OF '1 HE FREE-TRADE AND
PROTECTION PARTIES IN AMERICA.

(From the Artglc—.4merican Times.)

One of the strong points of the American Free-
Traders is that the labour of the industrial commu-
nity is now performed by machinery, and it is far
more important to have cheap machinery than to
have cheap labour to produce cheap goods. Machi-
nery in the United States, it is asserted, performs
more work than all the manual labour of the citizens
Hence its cost enters more largely into the price of
products than wages. A main point with the Pro-
tectionists is that the produce of the highly-paid
American mechanic ought not to be brought into
competition with that of the pauper labour of Eu-
rope; for the effect will be to elevate the latter at the
expense of the former ; to drain the States of their
gold in return, fpr the manufactures thus produced,
and, as a consequence, to decrease the fertilizing
stream of immigration. The answer is obvious on
the foregoing hypothesis ; —that cheap produce is clue
to cheap machinery, not to cheap labour; hence the
true way in which to enable America to compete, is
to lower the price and maintenance of machinery,
not of wages. The action of the Protective Tariff has
the reverse effect, the duties on iron, steel, copper,
and brass, doubling, even trebling, the first cost of
every piece of machinery used, while the tariff on
coal, oil, and lumber adds to the expense of keeping
it in motion. The end of Protection is not to raise
the price of hand labour, but of machine labour,
and incidentally thereby to lower wages, while the
Free-traders assert their end will be the lowering of
machine labour, which incidentally will raise
manual labour. Between the two there is this radi-
cal difference, that it is the interest of all to aid the
proprietor in diminishing the cost of the machine
labour to the lowest possible scale, whereby the
staple produce of a nation is mainly utilised ; whereas
it is the interest of all to raise instead of to diminish
the price of band labour, fur uo nation can be pros-
perous, or even safe, whose workmen are not fairly
paid. The same wages, where the common neces-
saries of life are dear, are low when compared with
that rate of wages where those necessaries are cheap;
for it is not the amount paid, but the purchas-
ing power of the sum giVen which tells. If ma-
chine labour can be so reduced as to make many
of the necessaries of life in America cheap, the
condition of the working men would be materially
improved without any addition to his weekly earn-
ings ; and the Free-Trader on this ground appeals
to the labourer for support, maintaining that one
of the two kinds of labour must be,reduced, and
asking him whether it is to be his or that of machi-
nery. Another strong point of the Free-Trader is
that the tariff as at present framed is an attempt
to make good the losses of manufacturers who per-
sist in producing in America what can be better
produced elsewhere. How to apportion this burden,
which the community, they assert, have no right to
bear, is the difficulty; for the moment the thing which
ought mot to be produced, gets a special protective
duty in its favour, as that duty enhances the cost of
producing something else, that thing also demands
a discriminating duty, and so on through the whole
round. By the time that the duty has reached the
last, the first thing to be protected, which ought not
to be produced in the country, has discovered that
the other discriminating duties have raised its cost
till the advantage of the first duty has been neutral-
is•_d, whereupon it demands a second ; when an-
other round commences to be repeated a third time,
and might go on ad infinitum if the people, on finding
the shoe pinching in every direction, did not inter-
fere with the process. Mr. MAHLON SANDS, at
the late great Free-trade meeting in New York, by
way of illustrating this, told the fix in which. Gen.
SCIIENCK, Chairman of the House Committee on
Ways and Means, often found himself. When Mr.
SANDS was, a few weeks since, in Washington he
heard the General remark at his breakfast :
" That his evening had been broken it upon by
corsets, his, rest disturbed by tin-plates, bis toilet
interfered with by castor oil, and that hair-pins
were at that moment on watch upon the sidewalk."
The Special Commissioner, Mr. WELLS, commenced
his investigations as a. Protectionist, being ap-
pointed by the ruling power, then pro! ection, iu Con -
g,ress. -lEven in his report for 1868 he charged the
Free-Tralers with endeavouring to degrade the
American labourer for a selfish gain ; but in 1869
he showed that the number employed by the great
protected industries of woollens, cottons, and iron
was oily 2? per cent. of all the producers in the
country. He hail been converted, in Mr. SANDS'
opinion, because he is an intelligent and honest
man ; and, however painful it may be for him to turn
against his old friends, the deeper he went into the
Protection system the more absurd it appeared, and
his opinions were changed by the influence of facts.
He does not openly avow 11:mself a Free trader, yet
has done more injury to the Protection cause than
any man alive.; indeed, next, to the grasping policy
inaugurated by the Protectionists themselves. At a
recent session of the Ways and Means Committee,
when the duty on iron was under discussion, it
was proposed to invite him to give evidence. When
we add that the Protectionists voted this down,
we must explain that it was they who appointed
Mr. D. A. NVELLs Special Commissioner to gather
statistics both at home and abroad ; but because
the knowledge he acquired did not suit their views
they declined to receive the very information that
gen.letnan had been paid to collect. The con-
sequence is that the new Tariff Bill was framed
in disregard of the statistics and information the
nation's special servant had secured, and the people
are showing that they do not approve of this.
General SCIIENCK, in bringing in the bill, said the
Committee. desired a fair, liberal, and thorough
discussion of a general nature before it was con-
sidei ed in detail. The debate, as far as it has pro-
gressed, shows signs that the bill will not pass, or,
be greatly amended, but the chances are that it
will be simply bulled. If the Protectionists feel
(as is probable), that they are losing ground with
the country, they will probably change their t ( ics,
and as .ert the wis iota of maintaining the status quo.
There is strength in the argument that even a bad
tariff is better than a constantly changing tariff,
for Dolling acts more injuriously on trade than an
uncertainty which upsets all mercantile calcula-