The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-06-04
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
EDITORIAL OPINIONS OF TIE LEADING JOURNALS
UPON CURRENT ToPICs-coMPmBD RvBRY
DAY FOR THR EVENING TELEGRAPH.
GREELEY's "PoLITICAL ECONOMY"

GhBElaE1 > 'GOLlIlCAL ECONOMls
From the NJ Y. Forld.
Mr.. Greeley will devote the summer to the
preparation Of n work on what he calls 'fohtl-
cal Economy" TO consist of an elaborate deiense
of protective tariffs. When Completed II 10 W
be printed and put in the market as DOoki put
he will nublish the successive chapters, week
by week as he writes them IN the IFtD""e,
having given the first on Saturday. such an
Undertaking at this time, is practical confess
sion that his darling hobby of protection is in
danger. IL is a confession that the protectionists
were deluding themselves with vain hopes when
thev fanced that our colossal public debt had
decided the tariff question for this generation.
Mr. Greeley rushes to the support of tottering
cause Those who read his chapters will have
an opportunity to see how tiimsy and foolish are
the best protectionist arguments which can be
mustered by its foremost advocate III this
country.
Mr. Greeley's first chapter, filing more than
three columns of the Tribune, consists of an
irrelevant and sprawliug rhapsody on the moral
advantages of labor, in the course of which he
introduces two long quotations, one from Car
lyle the other from "our own great iChanning'
Gas Mr.. Greeley calls him), setting forth the
benefits of labor as q moral discipline. Mr.
Greeley is unfortunate in his selection of autho-
rities for, so far rs those writers have ever
expressed themselves on the protectionist con-
trOversy they have evinced strong leaning to
the free-trade side. ''Our own great Channing'
repudated with scorn the idea that trade and
industry require the nursing interference of
governments, as may be seen in the following
quotation
GAN our great interests are left to ourselves; and
governments when they have nterfered with them
have obstructed much more than they have adj
vanced them For example, they have taken religion
into their care only to dishgure It, SO education in
their hands, has generally become propagator of
servile maxims, and an upholder of antiquated
errors In like manner they have paralyzed trade
by their nursing care, and multiplied poverty by eX-
pediens for its relief Government has almost always
been barrier against which intellect has had to
struggle; and society has made its chief progress by
the minds Of private individuals, who have out
stripped their rulers, and gradually shamed them
into truth and wisdom"
This is good anti-protectonst doctrine vigo-
rously expressed. We commend the whole pas
sage from which this brief extract is taken to the
attention of Mr.. Greeley, and hope it will not
abate his admiration for 'our own great Chan
ming" He will find it in the second part of that
writer's famous dissertation on Napoleon Bona
parte Carlyle, too, in his quaint way, has aided
the free trade cause. His article on "Corn Law
Rhymes" was written in the incipent stages of
the great movement by which protection was
Overthrown in England. 1t contributed to call
attention to the subject and conciliate favor for
the arguments of the obscure rhymester who
pleaded for cheap bread Mr.. Gree0y's chosen
authorities are against him; difficult is it to
find recent writer's of mark in any department
who do not discard the obsolete theory which he
advocates
Mr.. Greeley, with intrepid defiance of facts
attempts to convey the impression that the sup
porters of free trade are mere college pedants'
and "blear-eyed book-worms." We insert the
ter
"Let us suppose that the new kingdom of Italy was
ruled by some great genius like Czar Peter or Napo-
leon can you believe that he would not find or
make some way of setting these idle hundreds Of
thousands at work that he would be withheld from
attempting it by some college pedant blear-eyed
book-worR, who should magisterally admonish him
that governments have properly nothing to do with
industry or commerce. that the extent OF their leg-
innate function is to keep you from breaking each
others heads or picking each others pockets that
they transcend their sphere whenever they medde
n
grass flourish where but one has hitherto been
grown ?"
We ask Mr.. Greeley to note that the principle
which he thinks that none but college pedant
or bear-eyed book-worm would be likely to ad-
yocate is the very principle we have quoted from
'our own great Channing." The fact is, that
studiOus men and practical men alike if they
are intelligent and keep abreast of the spirit of
the age are either already on the side of COM
mercial freedom or are verging rapidly towards
it. 1t is true that sagacious theorists like Adam
Smith and his disciples, gave the first impulse to
sound public thought on this subject in England;
but the actual free-trade battle, when it became
strenuous, was fought by men of as practical a
turn as any that ever lived. The life, the SOUL
the organizing spirit of the anti-corn law league
was Richard Golden, calico printer, the son
of Sussex farmer, who had never seen the in
side of a college, and was as little of pedant
as any man of his time. His chief lieutenant
and cO-worker was John Bright, q man of the
same stamp as himself, and of a similar training.
The hosts of their abettors consisted of hunger
bitten men whose outcry against the tariff was
eXtorted by the pale gaunt faces of their famish-
ing wives and children. The first bold free
trade speech ever made in Parliament (three
months before Cobden's irst) was by Lord Pal
merston, whom nobody ever thought of calling
pedant. The repeal of the corn laws was
finally carried through Parliament by Sir Robert
Peel, rs practical statesman as ever lived, then
recent convert whose protectionist prejudices
succumbed to the irresistible force of evidence.
Brougham, who, though good deal of pedant,
did not lack practical ability, its first ener-
getic advocate in the House of Lords. France
is advancing towards free trade under the direc-
tion of the Emperor one of the shrewdest and
most practical minds in Europe.
Mr.. Greeley with an equally brazen. defiance
OF notorious facts, pretends that there is a ma
tural alliance between free trade and slave
holding, as if he did not know that England was
a prOtectionist country until after the emanci-
patton of her West India slaves, and then within
dozen years became q nation of tree-traders;
and as if he did not know that the foremost Bri-
tish abotionists were also leaders in the free
trade movements and as if he did not know that
the most strenuous opposition to our earliest
protective tariffs came not from the slave-hold
ing South but from free New England. How
consciously weak must be the side that needs
TO be propped up by such false pretenses al
are put forth by Mr.. Greeley to create preiu
dice against a cause which he cannot success
fully assail by argument Why will he insul
the intelligence of readers by trying to make
them believe that Golden, and Bright and Mill
and BrOugham are TO be ranked among the sup
porters of slavery? Does he not know tha
George Thompson, who made himself so noto
rious by his anti-slavery speeches in this coun
1ry was one of the leading orators of the anti
corn-law league? Has he forgotten facts s.
recent as the free-trade speeches of William
Lloyd Garrison and Henry Ward Beecher? MI
Greeley is driven to such pitiful such dishones
fetches and subterfuges by his consciousness