New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1850-06-13

cussion Of our time is the glazing Ignorance
BETRAYED by one party Of the arguments Of
the other. We who stand for Protection
have read the works Of our antagonists,
have studied their arguments many Of us
have had them drilled into our ears at Col
lepe ss the infallible axioms Of Science.
We know not merely what we affirm but
what considerations are opposed to such
ofirmations. When we put forth a PROPOSE
ton. we do 50 after having maturely cOnsid-
cred The facts and Arguments whereby that
proposition is combated by our antagonists.
Bur our abstruser argumeDts-Our magl-
zines Of fact and the principles thence elab-
orated-are utterly unknown to our adver-
saries. They cannot state the simplest pro-
position OF our side fairly because they
never tried tounderstand t-neversuppOsed
it worth looking into. They have read what
Ricardo, or Senior, or Baptist Say, or T. Bls-
tiat or r. J. Walker say we hold-that is,
their caricatures or garblings Of our argu-
ments, in order to hold them up to ridicule
and they have swallowed these with open
throat as the dogmas Of Protection, and
thereupon set us all down as knaves seeking
private advantage at the expense OF the
general veal, or blOckheads whom those
knaves have duped by their canting cries OF
Home Labor Protection to Native In
dustry,' &c. &c. The consequence is that
they never understand US, because they
never really try and, for all practical pur-
poses, the controversy might as well be car
ried on in Choctaw on the one side and
Chinese on the other.
We submit that it is time this playing at
cross-purposes were desisted from. If we
are to continue the discussion, let US try to
come within sight Of each others positions.
If Free Trade is so invincible as its advo-
Gates contend, let some one of its leading
advocates take up the recentwOrks of MessrS.
Ii. C. Carey and c. Cotton, for example,
quote their essential propositions one after
another and reply to them. We believe
they might just as well undertake to show
twice four to be nine, or the circumference
of a circle less than its diameter, as to take
up Mr.. Careys Past, Present and Future
with its corollary The Harmony of Inter
csts,' and prove their main doctrines I'M
sound. But at all events it becomes them
either to make the effort or to modify the
suporcilous tone in which they have hither-
to prosecuted the controversy. If they can
not answer what we say it is high time
they stopped attributing to US and arguing
against what we don't say. If what we
really offer is not worth replying to, it is
clearly idle to corf,te what we do not and
never did set forth nor believe in.
1t is not long since correspondent, duly
schOoled in the Free Trade economy doled
ont as gospel at the colleges, gravely asked
us to take up DR.. Wayland's Political Econ
omy, and answer some Gifts principal chap
ters in successive Editorials. He had lap
parently) never looked into the treatises on
our side Of the question-neyer thought Of
them-seemed unconscious that there were
any. lie evidently supposed that the whole
Literature Of Protection was embodied in its
newspapers, and that it was the proper bust
ness of Editors to be cOnfuting volumes
twenty years out Of press. But this CONVEX
sion of the Newspaper into Retrospective
Review would be most distasteful to a great
share of its readers, who look to it for what
pertains to the day rather than for history
and refutation Of Human Error through all
past ages.
But do our Colleges treat the friends of
Protection fairly? Certainly, large pro-
portion of their Endowments, Funds, In
come, Patronage, are derived from our side.
In return, they teach our children to deride
and scoff at our convictions as selfish, anti |
quated and absurd. Now, we have no OBJ |
lection to their rroring all this, if they can;
but we protest against their assuming it.
Let them but show US fair play, and they are
welcome to confute us if they can. We on
ly ask them to treat Political Economy as
the approximatiye, speculative science it
truly is, and fairly set before their students
the arguments of each party, not as their
adversaries understand or state them, but as
they are stated by their champions respec-
lively. Let all the strong treatises, and es-
pecially all the new ones, Of each party be
promptly procured and let the Professor
give full and fair citations from the best
writer's Of each party bearing on the point
to be illustrated, summing up with an ex-