Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1888-01-06
Gen. Harrison's Letter of Formal
Acceptance.

The following is Gen. Harrison s letter
accepting the Republican Presidential
nomination:
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind, Sept. 11.-Hon. M.
M. Estee and others. Ommittee.-Gentle-
men: When your committee visited me,
on the fourth of July last, and presented
the official announcement of my nomina-
tion for the Presidency of the United
States by the Republican convention, l
promised as soon as practicable to COM
municate to you a more formal acceptance
of the nomination. Since that time the
work of receiving and addressing almost
daily large delegations OF my fellow citi-
zeps has not only occupied all of my time,
but has in some measure rendered it I'M
necessary for me to use this letter as a
medium of communicating to the public
my views upon the questions involved in
the campaign. appreciate very highly
the confidence and respect manifested by
the convention, and accept the nomination
with feeling of gratitude and a full sense
of the responsibilities which accompany it.
1t is matter of congratulation that the
declarations of the Convention upon the
questions that now attract the interest of
our people are so clear and emphatic.
There is further cause of congratulation
d. in the fact that the convention utterances
uncertain or contradictory, can now be
judged and interpreted by Executive acts
and messages, and by definite propositions
in legislation.
This is especially true of what IS popu-
larry known as the tariff question. The
issue cannot now be obscured. 1t is not a
contest between schedules, but between
wide apart principles. The foreign com.
petitOrs of our market have, with quick
instinct seen how one issue of this contest
may bring them advantage, and our own
people are not so dull as to miss or neglect
the grave interests that are involved for
them. The assault upon our protective
system is open and defiant. Protection is
assailed as unconstitutional in law or as
vicious in principle, and those who hold
such views Oincerely cannot stop short of
an absolute elimination from our tariff
laws of the principle of protection
The Mills bill is only a step. but it is to-
ward an object that the leaders of demo-
cratic thought and legislation have clearly
in mind. The important question is not
so much the length of the step as the di
rection of it. Judged by the Executive
message of December last, by the Mills
BILL by the debates in Congress. and by
the st, Louis platform, the Democratic
party will, if supported by the country.
place the tariff laws upon purely revenue
basis. This IS practical free trade-free
trade in the English sense. The legend
upon the banner may not be Free
Trade;n it may be the more obscure
motto, ''Tariff Reform - but neither the
banner nor the inscription is conclusive
or. indeed, very important. The assault
itself is the important fact. Those who
teach that the import duty upon foreign
goods sold in our market is paid by the
consumer, and that the price of the domes
tic competing article is enhanced to the
amount of the duty on the imported arti-
cle-that every million of dollars collected
for customs duties represents many mil
lions more which do not reach the treas
ury, but are paid by our citizens as the
increased cost of domestic productions
resulting from the tariff laws-may not
intend to discredit in the minds of others
our system of levying duties on competing
foreign products. but it is clearly already
discredited in their own. We cannot
doubt without impugning their integrity
that if free to act upon their convictions
they would so revise our laws as to lay the
burden of the customs revenue upon arti-
cles that are not produced N this country