Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-10-20
City Newspapers Silly Talk.

disapprove the latest letter of General
Hancock about the tariff question, and
in various methods of witless expression
they ventilate their opinion that he had
better quit writing letters. A great
many people are similarly tempted often
to wish that the metropolitan editors
would quit writing editorials; for it is
safe to say that it is the general opinion
that very often they do not write wisely
and yet they express themselves with so
much self-confidence and SO great an air
of settling the matter in hand at once
and for all with their judgment of it,
that it is impossible to resist the convic-
tion that we are fools for venturing to
disagree with them if they are not fools
themselves. The New York Herald,
whose weakness it is to delight to fore
see the drift of public sentiment and to
put itself at the head of it, to get the re-
pute of leading it, just now is berating
the city Democracy for nominating for
mayor one to whom the only exception
which it takes is that he is a Catholic :;
and in a city which never had a
Catholic mayor before; which is
simply silly. But the Herald is out of
sorts over the Indiana election, and is
hardly accountable. 1t scolds the ma
tional Democracy like an old woman for
the sins OF omission and commission
which lost it Indiana: and so does the
usually leveLheaded New York Sm.
The latter has special idiosyncrasy
which troubles it nightly. 1t is bee
which it cannot shake out of its bonnet.
And that is the conviction that Mr..
Tilden was the man to be the Democrat
ic candidate. Not corporal's guard of
people think with the Sun; which only
intensiies the Suns opinions that the
people are idiots. Indiana has greatly
upset it, too: SO much SO, indeed, that
some irresponsible person has been per-
mitted to say editorially in its columns
that /" General Hancock is a good man
he weighs two hundred and fifty
pounds.'' Certainly a journal which
speaks thus of a candidate whom it earn
estly asks the people to elect needs to he
put in a straight waist-coat. The opinion
thus expressed of General Hancock is
too much at variance with the universal
estimate of his character and abilities,
and too much opposed to that which the
SIM itself has warmly and often express
ed to make it possible that it is it's real
opinion. 1t has simply been upset
by Indiana or some other cause that
ought to have been as insufficient to
overthrow the equipoise of great jour-
nal whose duty it is to keep a keen and
sober eye on public events and judge
them in good temper and with sagacity.
1t is these city journals and others that
condemn Gen. Hancock's expression on
the tariff. They do not, probably, like his
declaration that talk about free-trade in
this country is ''all folly" and yet it en-
phatically is so, as every one knows. No
party asks that the public revenue shall
be raised by direct taxation, or proposes
to abolish the customs Both party
platforms favor tariff for revenue"
and SO do all people except the free-trad-
ers of whom there are number in
the country who hold to their idea in
theory but never attempt to put it
into practice. OF these are the edi-
tors of the journals and the merchants
in the great seaboard cities whose
commerce would, of course. be ben
Gifted by free trade. These people
know that it is g all folly - to talk about
free trade when no political party is will
ing to shoulder the burthen ofadvocating
it, but nevertheless they do not like to hear
their favorite dogma thus despitefully
spoken of; it is such precious good doc
trine. And so it is, under certain cir.
cumstances. 1t is excellent for CONNER
cial cities and no doubt the direct col
lection of tax is the cheapest. But there
are countervailing reasons which make
the people Of this country unwilling to
sanction free trade. They are not ready
to admit the manufacturers of other
countries into competition with our own
on equal terms, knowing that the result
would be the nipping in the bud of our
own industries.
The day will come in this country
when we will, all of us, want free trade,
and the manufacturers more than any
body else. That day will be when our
industries are strengthened and develop
ed, our ores and fbres superabundant for
our own use, and the market of the
world rendered necessary to us as al out
let for our goods just as it is to free
trade England to-day.
So that our free trade metropolitan
newspapers, which support the cand dates
of parties that both oppose free trade,
need not be supersensitive when General
Hancock intimates that they are foolish,
and declares the tariff question one of
local interest which can best he satisfac-
factorily disposed by commission which
considers those interests. That is good
sense. The tariff question is question
that is looked at differently just as
commerce, agriculture or manufacture,
happens to be a controlling interest
where it is discussed.
But everybody wants stability in the
tariff. The iron manufacturer would |
rather have small duty imposed on
foreign iron with guarantee that it !
would not he changed for ten or twenty
years, than high duty liable to he al