The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1894-11-10
WILSON IN ENGLAND.
| POINTS MADE IN HIS SPEECH At
THE LONDON BANQUET.

Has Faith In the Permanent Freedom Of
the United states-Britons Do Not Re-
joice at the Prospect of American Com
petition In the Worlds Trade.
If the facts narrated in the news col
umns of the papers that Mr.. Wilson,
chairman of the ways and means com
mittee, had sought recuperation in an
ocean trip and had been rendered ban
quet by the London Chamber of Com
MERGE and had made some remarks
there in response to toast; if these
facts had, we say, escaped the notice Of
the readers of Republican papers when
they appeared in the news items, tho
dextrous and versatile commentators on
events in the editorial columns have
fully acquainted them with them.
They, the unfortunate readers, have
been told that it was eminently proper
that Mr.. Wilson should fly to England
as soon as the tariff act was law to
receive the thanks of the only people he
had served, and it was most fitting that
they should receive him with open
arms and fete and toast him as they
would any other gentleman who had
rendered them distinguished and
profitable service.
Governor Mckinley has followed his
editorial leaders with remarks to his
audiences in the same strain, and the
affair rises into one of international i'm
port and one of prime political or parti-
san Importance. Much is made of mi
nor matters in times of political stress,
and the attention given this dinner is
another gauge Of the pauoity Of re-
sources to which the opponents of the
once g. o. p. are reduced.
Mr.. Wilson made two points in his
speech that are worthy, the one of the
attention of our people, the other of
those whose representatives he address,
ed. We are being rapidly sobered,
he said, "by the. truth forced upon Us
that of all human governments a free
government is the most complex, and
judging from the worlds experience the
most uncertain and short lived. -
For this he has been severely CRITICS.
ed by his opponents in the press and ON
the stump. But Mr.. Wilson was amply
justified in his observation. He had just
come from prolonged and but partial
ly successful struggle with baneful and
selfish trusts which had fastened them.
selves ON the government and swerved
its powers to their gain.
In actual conflict with the trusts he
had found them, as he says, liable to
defy the law and use tho wealth they
drew from sharing in the power of taxa
ton to increase their privileges, de-
bauch elections and corrupt legisla-
ton. How can republic stand when
such is the case? How can we say that
it is republic, a free country, where
such conditions exist? 1t is true, as he
says, that this exposition Of the power
of the trusts and monopolists, craftilv
gained while the attention Of the people
was diverted, has rapidly sobered the
people to a sense of their danger and
the dangers to their institutions and
aroused them to the overthrow of their
enemies. 1t is the confidence in this
feeling of the people that made Mr..
Wilson say that, complex and difficult
as is the administration of the affairs of
republic and short lived as others
have been, freedom here will not per-
ish, and that "while other nations
have been great in war, commerce,
science, ETC., we can be great in all and
great in the greatness of permanent
freedom. "
Mr.. Wilson said nothing that his au-
ditors had not known and thought Of
long ago when he warned them of the
contest for the trade of the world which
they would have to meet when this
country shall have removed the barriers
it has raised between her own manu-
facturers and the worlds markets with
her absurd tariff acts and enabled them
to enter foreign markets on equal terms
with her greatest competitor When
our capacity to produce, now eoual to
all our needs in six months of activity,
shall be fully occupied in making the
things we and the world want, Eng
land will have to look to her laurels of
trade and commerce, or they will be
transferred to the brows of Uncle Sam.
1t was this certainty of the future when
we reach free trade that impelled Mr..
Wilson to tell his audience that II fear
cannot ask you to rejoice at its adop-
ton except as you may prefer right
principles to selfish advantage.
1t is IL years ago now that Joseph
Medill, then and now the editor in
chief of the Chicago Tribune, after his
return from trip to England, deliver
ed an address to the farmers of Illinois
in which he predicted the same result
from free trade that Mr.. Wilson did
and said in conversation with English
manufacturers they told him that they
dreaded the day when American manu-
facturers would be permitted by their
laws to enter into competition with
them in the worlds markets. They
were well content with our policy, which
restricted our wares almost exclusively
to our home market and left them not
only their own, but the markets of the
rest of the producing world. st. Paul
Globe.