Los Angeles daily herald., 1890-01-11


Office of Publication, 12S-125 West Second
street los Angeles. Telephone No. 156
SATURDAY. JANUARY II. 1890.
K-rotection and Free Trade-Biaine
vs. Gladstone.
mo. e.
I Mr.. James G. Blaine, who at present
occupies the responsible position of Sec
retary of State of the United States in
Mr.. Harrison's Cabinet, has evidently
been invited by the managers of the
North american Review to respond to Mr..
Gladstone's essay on Free Trade. To
facilitate his part of the programme, he
has undoubtedly been supplied with the
proof.sheets of Mr.. Gladstone's article.
To this the eminent British statesman
would certainly have interposed no OBJ
lection. Nevertheless. as Mr.. Gladstone
devotes his whole article to one Mr..
Mckay, of New York, there is no actual
controversy between these eminent gen.
tlemen unless the statesman of Hawarden
shall make rejoindsr to Mr.. Blaine
and, to employ the language Of the law
Mr.. Blaine shall make a sur-rejoinder.
All of Mr.. Blaine's efforts, both literary
aud oratorical, are characterized by an
extremely lively style. He is often falla
icious, but never dull. His extreme
vivacity in repartee, as exemplified in his
s'Turkey Gobbler" reference to Roscoe
Conkling, when both were contesting fol
supremacy as Republican leaders in the
House of Representatives, undoubtedly
lost the Presidential election to Mr..
Blaine in 1884. Mr.. Conkling had a
most retentive memory, and considera-
tion OF the returns from the Utica dis
trict in New York explains Mr.. Blaine's
failure to carry the Empire State, and to
storm the White House in that year.
Probably the present is the only in
stance in Mr.. Blaine's career as a con-
trovereialist in which he is punctiliously
and persever;ngly polite. He recognizes
the tremendous weight and dignity of
Mr.. Gladstone, and writes in strain of
high courtesy that will doubtless be quite
acceptable to that distinguished gentle
man, on the principle that "praise from
Sir Rupert is praise indeed" But after
Mr.. Blaine has been specially courteous
to his illustrious opponent, he enters
upon the real energies of debate with
heat and purpose.
He has no hesitation in saying that
Mr.. Gladstone's purview is limited and
.curtailed by a narrow and English prism !;
that he makes no allowance for differ
ences Of country, differences geograph-
ical and climatic, and so on, ad inJfni.
tum. After great deal of disquisition
that is not without ingenuity and elo-
quence, Mr.. Blaine gets down to the
overruling propositions as to free trade
and protection. He absolutely dismisses
the former as properly applicable tc
Great Britain, with her prodigious accu-
mulated wealth and unlimited capital at
specially low rates of interest, but abso
lutely foreign to the United States; and
devotes himself to protection, pure and
simple.
In this connection, it may be as well to
say that he empties into the controversy
his Twenty Years in Congress-" q
work which was written in captivatin 6
style, and which, considering its author,
was a remarkably fair performance to
the Democratic leaders who followed
and were contemporaneous with him.
In his book, as in his reply to Mr.
Gladstone's argument for free trade
under any and all possible conditions
Mr.. Blaine indulges in an ingenious ar
gument to break the force of the excep
tional prosperity which resulted in thu
United States on the adoption of tht
Robert J. Walker low tariff of 1916. HI
claims tina: the disbursement of owe
one hundred millions of dollars in tht
several States of the Union, as an Incl
dent OF the Mexican war, and the conse
.quent inpouring into the channels of com
merce of the gold of California, were th'
causes Of that exceptional and unprece
dented prosperity, and he asserts tina
their surcesse allowed the natural oper
ations of the low tariff to assert them
selves, and thus brought about the pani
of 1857. We dismiss his spirited narrativ
of precedent panie5 as things will
which all readers of American histor,
are familiar.
Mr.. Blaine, in his advocacy of higl
tariff as the panaeea of all national ills
an ! the great abracadabra of all possible
attainabls national good, is very mucl
puzzled by the occurrence of the pani'
of 1873, following upon the high wa
tariff of 1861, as amended and made
more oppressive by the amendments o
1865. He attempts to explain this nota
BILE national financial catsclysm by tht
waste of nine thousand millions of dol
lars worth OF national wealth by the
riot of the war. and by the feverist
speculation which thence resulted. Thif
later issue of his fine spun theories failf
to meet the occasion, and the facts oi
that celebrated panic entirely negative
his eloquent narrative which concerns the
years following the war of 1872 and the
subsequent years leading up to the panic
of 1887.
Out of Mr.. Gladstone's luminous and
eloquent mass Of matter we picked out
that portion which said that if protection
was good for the United States in its in
tercourse with the outside world it ought