The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1891-10-02

ural product. Perhaps this is a canard
after all. Let us not feel too jubilant
over it.-Herdld and NelDS.
| THE LONDON "TIMES" ON THE NOR
RILL TARIFF.
We know what foreign Free Traders
are saying of the new law. 1t will be in
structive to know what they said of the
Protective law of 1861. Listen to the
London Times of March 9Th, 1861:
The bill called the Morrill, Tariff
Bill" is an act for the establishment of
Protective duties on most extravagant
SCALE If it were designed to condemn
the very principles of Free Trade, and to
introduce those of Protection as form
ing the only true theory of international
commerce, it could not have been more
strongly formed. The duties imposed
by this bill are not only immoderately
high, but they are levied upon imports
of the first necessity The articles taxed
are not mere luxuries or commodities
entering into the consumption of the
wooden goods and hardware that the i'm
posts will fall. Cutlery is to be taxed
upward of so per cent. in the lowest in
stance; in the highest nearly $50. In adj
dition to this the bill enacts so many
complicated arrangements, and throws
such interminable distractions in the
way of business, that commerce will be
next to impossible under conditions so
difficult. We need not enter into par
ticulars of the act, which is said to be
scarcely Ineligible even to Americans
themselves, but we can convey very
good idea of its character and purpose
by observing that, if it should be passed,
it will almost prohibit all imports into
the United States from England, France
and Germany. That bill would be far
more detrimental to the interests of
America than to those of Europe. The
blow would do little damage to this
country; but such proposal, at such a
moment, will look like new sacrifice of
the Southern States to the exigencies of
the Northern, ard will intensity the
quarrel between them by jealousies
which will survive after the political
tempest has rolled away.
1t has now become perfectly known
that protection in these matters is only
another name for suicide; and when a
state establishes a prohibitory Tariff it
is itself the sufferer from its own ordi-
nances. If the backwoodsmen Of
America are to be deprived of good
axes and settlers of cheap clothing the
penalty will be paid by them. At the
same time, however, though we shall
not think the worse of America for this
measure, except as regards her financial
wisdom, we must needs remark that, as
amity follows Free Trade, so is estrange-
ment or indifference likely to follow
commercial seclusion. 1t is rather an
extraordinary reflection that what we
have just been endeavoring to do, at
some cost, as regards France, America
should propose to undo as regards u.s.
If the people of the United States should
refuse to purchase in our markets what
it is for their own interest to buy, and if
they should decide upon manufacturing
for themselves the articles we could
send them at less price and of better
quality, they, and they only, will be the
losers.
read this that you may realize that
what is said of the law of 1890 was said
of the law of 1861, and for that matter of
1912, of 1928 and 1924, and of every
American Protective law. This editorial
of the London Times, written 30 years
ago, has been over and over again
repeated, almost in the identical Ian
guage, since the passage of the law of
1890, in the same paper, and iterated and
reiterated by the Free Trade journals of
the United States. They were wrong in
their prophecies then; they are just as
wrong in their prophecies now.
1.-THE bill of 1861" says this paper,
will be found more detrimental to the
interests of America than of Europe"
That is what they say of the present
law. The law of 1861 detrimental to the
interests of America! Think of it! 1t
was the beginning of new and better
United States; it built factories; it en-
ployed labor; it encouraged genius and
invention; it built cities; it opened
mines; it extended agriculture and gave
the farmer home market, and, while
doing this, supplied the revenue to keep
the war going for the preservation of
the Union, and since has been rapidly
extinguishing the National debt and
wrestling from England the manufac-
turing supremacy she had SO long en-
joyed.-HOn. VIM. Mckinley, Dr., at
Niles, Ohio, august %.