Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1888-06-05
and ureiudiees. To show how

passions and prejudices. To show how
entirely correct we are in these observa-
tons. we will give the tariff talk made a
year or 90 ago by Representative George
D. Tillman, Democratic member OF
Congress from South Carolina. Mr.. Till
man has since distinguished himself as
chairman of thes Reading Railroad Tnves-
tigating Committee. The following was
a reply to a request to join Free Trade
Association:
.'As your letter is the first bugle note call
ing for an organized general agitation in
South Carolina of the doctrine of Free
Trade, l regret to have to differ from you at
the very outset. As the same 'deplorable
prostration of industrial interests that you
complain of in the United States exists also
in England. where Free Trade prevails, how
is it that protection can produce the identical
result here that Free Trade produces there?
As you declare your association has resolved
to urge upon the people of South Carolina,
in public meetings. the propriety of demand
ing of Congress a speedy abolition of arti-
fetal barriers and governmental toll gates,
infer that you propose doing away with
necessary revenue BY direct taxation. If
this be your plan. SO far from approving ii,
I hope you will not get offended when
| intimate that your friends and the friends of
| those members of the association who agree
with you, ought to be looking out for quarters
in that Institution where disordered minds
are sometimes restored. | prefer, as q
general thing, a tariff for revenue, with
| incidental protection to American industries.
| This has always been the doctrine of Jeffer-
| son, Madison, jackson and other fathers of
| the Democratic party.
Shall we of the Palmetto State always be
self idolatrous Bourbons, never forgetting,
never learning anything? Was it not our
Incorporate zeal for free trade that led TO
notification, and was it not as much to enjoy
free trade to protect slavery that South
| Carolina seeded in 1860! Hence, what issue
can better revive sectional hate or reopen the
healing wounds of the war than for the
cradle of the rebellion" to begin, at this
early stage of the next canvass. to agitate the
old cause of the quarrel-free trade--wher
protection is the settled policy of a large
ma jority of the Northern people?
No other Southern States, as am advise l.
is at present trying to lash itself into Juror Of
excitement against protective tariff. Their
| "hy ehouih NC 'oiuhtcei " piedeh CRUZ
for redressing the supposed wrongs of the
agricultural States of the South and Vest
Surely we can bear the ills of protection al
long as they can
1t is as true now as it ever was that who
ever spits against the wind spi,s in his owl
face; and considering that South Carolina.
policy led to the war which forced the gov
eminent to contract a debt of nearly three
thousand million dolars. the payment of the
interest and principal of which, together with
providing for current expenses and pensions
requires an annual revenue of nearly tire,
hundred million dollars, is it becoming il
South Carolina to pirate about free trade?
Whether it shall please South Carolina O.
the other exConfederate States or not, eithe
incidental or per Sc, protection will for grea
while remain the law of this land, as has beer
the case since the war, and as was the cas-,
for considerable periods at different times be
fore the war. If manufacturers and higl
tariff have made the North rich, why Shout,