The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1888-09-07
7117--0--ll1l
Sound Views.
81
Harper's Weekly.

harper . weekly.
"Grave public questions confront us. There
is large, perilous, and increasing surplus in the
revenue 1t must be removed, not by needless
extravaRant expenditures, not by abolishing the
proper taxing of whisky and tobacco not by
stupid horizontal reduction for politics only but
by plain business methods. by freeing entirely
daily consumption of every household, and by
wise and discriminating reductions, which will
not only relieve the taxpayers, but will also en-
courage labor, and aid and strengthen industry,
and extend our commerce..
These are not the words of the President,
nor any one of that element which sought to
destroy this nation" They are the words of
Mr.. Henry Cabot Lodge, chairman of the
Republican Committee OF Massachusetts in
| 1884, and they were spoken in calling the
State Convention to order.
"There are only two ways to reduce the surplus
revenue ; one by raising the tariff to prohibit
| tory height, which nobody advocates I; the other
| er's hope"
These, again, are not the words of Presi-
dent Cleveland, but of Ex-Governor Long, of
Massachusetts, a Republican leader In that
State.
ANY tax or import duty which increases the
price OF these raw materials is a burden upon
| these skilled artisans and mechanics, or else a
| burden upon the consumers of their products
1t is not Mr.. Mills, ofTexas, who says this,
but Mr.. Allison, of Iowa, in 1870, advocat-
ing a general reduction of twenty per cent,
which he declared would not be "a full equi-
valent for the removal of all internal taxes on
manufactures"
ave want all those articles that enter as raw
material into the manufactures of the. country
free of duty, so that the country can stand on an
equality in the markets of the world with the
other nations of the world
No, this is not Speaker Carlisle, but Sena-
tor Henry Wilson, and the same views were
so universally accepted by the Republican
party up to its Convention of 1884 that the
Chicago Tribune, which supports the Repub-
lican nominations "spits upon the platform
of this year as abandoning in its tariff plank
the Republican doctrine. That platform de-
clares that the party, rather than yield sim
gle protective tax, would abandon what Mr..
Lodge approved-tbe proper taxing of
whisky and tobacco. II would engage In
what he calls needless and eXtravagant ex-
penditures. 1t would refuse to free the great
necessaries ofliie that enter into the daily
consumption of every household. 1t would
refuse wise and discriminating reductions
which would not only relieve the taxpayers,
but encourage labor, aid and strengthen
industry, and extend our commerce; and
Mr. Lodge, despite his words in 1884, would
now help to do it.
But il his words and those of the other Re-
publican leaders were true when they were
spoken, they are true now. They declare
principles of taxation and economy, and those
principles have not changed. Unless Mr..
Lodge and Governor Long and Mr.. Allison
and President Garfield and Vicu-President
Wilson and other Republican leaders were
freelraders, Mr.. Cleveland is not treetrader.
Unless Mr. Lodge and his friends demanded
free-trade in 1884, the friends CT Mr.. Cleve-
land do not demand iree-trade in 1883. I'm
less the Republican leaders were willing In
1884 to ruin American industry for the bene-
fit OF British free trade, the President and his
supporters are not willing to effect that ruin
in 1888. 1t is plain that if the Presidents
message and the Mills bill are the beginning
free trade, the stanchest Republicans began
it before them. 1t is Republicans who ex.
pose the folly of their own cry of free-trade
against the Democrats in the present cam
paign. In speaking of the ratification meet.
ing in Boston some time ago, the Springfield
Republican put the situation tersely when il
said:
ut was little more than thirty years ago that
Henry Wilson, Charles Sumner, and the other
Representatives of Massachusetts in Congress
spoke and voted in faver of reducing an average
twenty-five per cent. tariff to one OF eighteen and
twenty per cent. Their political descendants
last night at Boston denounced the proposed re-
duction of a forty-seven per cent. tariff to one
of forty-two per cent. as meaning free-trade.
"The people of this country, sir" said an
impassioned orator, "are not fool"