The state chronicle. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1883-1893, 1888-04-20

industrial and speculative instincts excel
all others, in country whose conditions
and capabilities so far surpass any other
home of one race, the heavy restrictions
Of protection have been down dragging
weight upon their energies from the mo-
ment of their application. But because
sufficient only to retard and not to destroy
a career which has been sustained by our
advantages, the absurd claim is made that
these hindrances are the cause of prosper
ity! The weight of the cars and the force
of the brakes move the train, and not the
engine!
These restrictions on foreign commerce
would long since have produced their ma
tural results but for the room and attrac-
tions of our great country. By the undue
stimulation of the manufacturing interests
a ruinous over supply Of their products
would have glutted the home market for
them as well as for the farmers products
and prices of goods and labor would have
come down to zero but for the constant
increase of our population, which enlarged
the market. This increase, however does
not equal the increase of production, and
the proportion between supply and demand
is daily widening. Feeling this, many
mills and factories run only half time.
There is no help for it-there is no chance
to relieve the plethora by trading with
foreign nations. The hands are locked
out. Fortunately, they can turn to some
thing else in country so broad and fruit
full as ours, and we are saved from bread
riots, and the unwisdom Of protective tar
ifs is covered yet a little longer.
But another cause, and perhaps the
greatest one Of our prosperity, is free trade
between the States. Without this all of
our advantages, all of our energy would
Hox fol laI To
suits. 1t does not, perhaps, occur to those
protectionists who use the words free
trader as a term of reproach that America
is the greatest free trade country in the
civilized world, and that free trade is a
peculiarly American idea. Long before
England ever conceived such a thing our
fathers established it between the States
of this Union by special provision in our
fundamental law Mr. Webster said in
the Senate that it was an American idea,
and that protection was European. 1t
was half century later than our Consti-
tutonal establishment of it before British
craftsmanship adopted it. 1t is now ab-
solute in this country among sixty millions
of people, between thirtyeight States. 1t
operates in Great Britain only over about
thirty millions of people, for her depen-
denotes levy their own tariff duties. So
far from this absolute freedom of trade
existing between the States being looked
upon as injurious and spoken of with Cp-
probrum, the most greedy protectlonlst
alive acknowledges its manifold blessings
and would 60 to war before North Carolina
and Georgia should be given the power to
protect their infant manufactures against
the ''pauper labor" of Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania. A protective tariff against
the latter would no doubt enable a few
men in the former States to get rich, just
as it has done everything else; but every
one confesseS it would be highly detrl-
mental to the public welfare. Nobody de
sres it, and yet, if State is forbidden to
buy where she can buy cheapest, no man
could say it would be unjust in that State
to forbid its citizens from buying Of those
who thus restrain them. As any restraint
whatever upon Interstate commerce IS
readily admitted to be undesirable and in
furious, so it is equally true that restric-
tions upon International trade are harm
full. 1t cannot be otherwise than true in
one case if it be true in the other, for the
principle is precisely the same. That
principle has long been established as
eternal truth by the people of our race
that all laws are impolitic and injurious
that forbid or hinder absolute freedom in
the alienation and transfer of property
IL
ignorance and prejudice to accent this
great truth and seeing how splendidly 1t
has approved it's own verify in the vast in
ternal trade of sixty million people, the
wonder is to me how any man who is eth
er wise or patriotic can consent to see his
country's commerce weighted with single
dollar of taxation beyond the absolute ne
cessities of the government. If foreign
commerce is indeed not desirable; if dis
tant lands contain nothing that we want,
and our ambition is to make nothing
which they want, but only to supply our
selves, then the forbidding or hampering
of that trade may be right. But the mer-
est tyro in economy knows that people
get rich by their surplus products-not by
supplying their own Immediate wants
and if they cannot sell or exchange that
surplus they will not make it. Therefore
free trade between the States up to the
point of the home supply is indispensable,
and therefore, again, for the disposal of
the aggregate surplus, freedom of trade
with foreign countries is equally indis-
pensable to national prosperity. How can
it be otherwise unless principle is false to
itself? How can it be true that it is abso-
lutely necessary to my individual welfare
that l shall sell my surplus products to
my neighbor freely and without restraint,
and after my neighbor is supplied AID
wants no more, it is NOT necessary for my
welfare or that of the public that | should
sell the remainder to man across the
river who does want it and offers me a
good price? Common sense and common
Justice alike declare that l should have the
utmost liberty to sell to both, subject only
to such charges on the transaction as the
government may lawfully impose for its
necessities, and not those of any man OF
set of men upon the earth.
T. B. VANCE.
A Sound Legal Opinion.