Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1893-12-22

senator MOrrill's Tariff Speech.
Senator Morrill, appears never to have
been more entirely at his best than in his
speech on the vagaries of the tariff re-
formers" last week. 1t was filled not only
with historical facts and logical argument,
but abounded in sharp thrusts, happy turns
of phrase, and bright sayings which must
have been enjoyed and appreciated, even
by the Democrats at whom they were aimed.
! The Senator whose reputation for tipping
his sharpest arrows with wit goes without
saying in Washington, has never been
more felicitous than when he referred
to the "self-elected drum majors in the
Democratic camp, and characterized the
Wilson tariff bill as formulated blind
man s-buff work" We suspect Mr.. Cleve-
land WINGED and smiled in spite of himself
at the Senator's suggestion that whether
or not great republic will give frail
monarch a paramount boost is blunt
question in Hawaii"
In its main portion the speech showed
what has been the effect of forty years of
free-trade policy in England in gradually
killing the farming interests, cutting down
wages, and driving the working people out
of the country. He said, for instance:
"From 1S53-after the advent of free
trade or "a tariff for revenue only'-to Oc-
tober, 1898, the number of British and
| Irish emigrants to the United States, not
| including those from Canada, amounted to
), 149, $50. This extraordinary exodus, large
ly of adult workingmen, from Great Brit
ain to the United States, of more people
than now dwell in the Canadian Dominion,
or in Australia, or in Ireland cannot be
ascribed to anything else than either the
home expressions of free trade or to the
attractions emanating from a protective
tariff and the Joy of determining which
has been most potential in the movement
may be left to the thick-and-thin philoso-
pliers of tariff for revenue only 1t
may help them to remember that no tracks
of returning homesick emigrants from
| America have ever been discovered
Since 1861 the number engaged in farm
ing in Great Britain has decreased from
2,O1O, 454 in that year to 9SO,278 in 1891
more than one-half.
"The soil of England and Wales has
been generously treated, and is supposed
to have lost nothing of its old-time fertili-
ty. Guano, phosphates and other modern
ltIllllLcIS dIt dDulludllly duu HdNt UG6u
abundantly applied. What then is it that
has blishted the vocation of more than
one-half of those formerly employed in ag-
riculture in England and Wales, and COM
! PEELED them to flee from their homes to
other countries, or to seek other occupa-
| tions? If those left behind may answer,
all, whether owners of the soil or laborers,
with one accord would straightway declare
that their sufferings have been imposed by
tariff for revenue only Among Eng
lish farmers free trade has not rag of
reputation to cling to. Only few persons
own land in Great Britain, and these chief
ly by primogeniture inheritance. The glo-
Ty of America is that nearly all the land is
held in fee simple by those who hold the
plow.'
Mr.. Morrill, also showed that the fathers
of the American republic-Washington,
jefferson, Madison-founded its growth
and prosperity on the principle of protec-
tion for our home industries 1t was this
principle which was in reality at stake
when Great Britain began to impose taxes
without our consent, and when her states
men declared, as one of them did, that
"The colonies have no right to manufact-
ure so much as a horseshoe nail
These paragraphs regarding the Wilson
bill deserve quoting in conclusion:
"As their formulated blind man s-buff
work comes to light, a robust forgetfulness
is exhibited by the exclusion of all the
wise precedents of the past; but will they
forget the resonant admonition of the 7th
of November, reverbe-ating from Iowa to
Massachusetts,? 1t is to be hoped, in the
words of old Sam johnson, They will re-
member who kicked them last
| am loath to believe that our country will
consent to have thoroughly tested reve-
nue. system permanently superseded by an
experimental change so revolutionary that
even the conventiOn-made index of its reck-
less character served to suspend or pros
trate fearful number of important Amer
lean industries. Our farmers, who, next
to wage-earners, are to bear the brunt of
, such disastrous change having their
products on the free list as raw materials,
and the consumers becoming producers,
will not fail to learn that the swap of pro-
lection for free trade, in accord with the
, British pattern, is the surrender and ship
/ wreck of the home market, twenty times
, more valuable, for the foreign, without the
remotest chance of any extension of the
! latter. Wage-earners also will not lag be-
hind in the discovery that free trade with
the alias of "a tariff for revenue only is
; not a child's bogy, but real juggernaut
= under whose wheels they will be the earli-
! est victims called for sacrifice"
Press Shots.
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