The San Francisco call., 1896-04-19

friend in him. Webster's celebrated
Greek speech, in fact, may serve now
almost as an appeal in behalf OF the
people who are striving to shake on the
Spanish yoke. Here is an extract:
"Sir, am not of those who are for with
holding aid when it is not urgently needed,
and when the stress is past and the aid no
longer necessary overwhelming the suffer.
ers with caresses. will not stand by and
see my fellow-man drowning without
stretching out hand to help him until
he has, by his own efforts and presence of
mind, reached the snore in safety and
then incumber him with aid. With suffer
ing Greece now is the crisis of her fate,
her great, it may be her last, struggle.
Sir, while we sit here celebrating her des-
tiny may be decided. The Greeks, con-
tending with ruthless oppressors, turn
their eyes to us and invoke us by their an
cestors; by their slaughtered wives and chill
dren; by their own blood, poured out like
water; by the hecatombs of dead they have
heaped up, as it were, to heaven, they in
woke, they 1mplore US for some cheering
sound, some look of sympathy, some
token of compassionate regard. They look
to us as the great republic of
the earth, and they ask us. by our
common faith, whether we can forget that
they are struggling, as we once struggled
for what We now SO happily enjoy cannot
say. sir, that they will succeed; that rests
with heaven. But for myself, sir, if I
should tomorrow hear that they have
failed-that their last phalanx had gone
down beneath the Turkish cimetar,
that the flames of their last city
had sunk in ashes, and that naught
remained but the wide melancholy waste
where Greece once was, L should still
reflect, with the most heartfelt satisfac-
ton, that I have asked you in the name
or seven millions of freemen, that you
Oily or =
one friendly voice.
But Henry Clay, as the foremost advo-
cate OF the American system of protec-
ton, has an immortal place, though in a
lower niche than Webster, in the Nations
temple of historic fame. His speeches on.
the american system will always be
studied by political students, who will
picture to themselves the effect that must
have been carried by the magic of his
voice, when he shot forth such periods as
these, that statesmen are to-day repeating
n the halls of Congress:
when gentlemen have succeeded in
this design of an immediate or gradual de-
structlon OF the American system what is
their substitute? Free trade! Free trade
The call for free trade is as unavailing as
the cry OF spoiled child in its nurses
arms Tor the moon or the stars that glitter
III the ornament of heaven. 1t never
has existed, it never will exist. Trade i'm
plies at least two parties. To be free it
should be fair, equal and reciprocal. But
if we throw our ports wide open to the
admission OF foreign productions free of all
duty, what ports of any foreign nation
shall we find open to the free admission of
our surplus produce? We may break
down all barriers to free trade on our part,
but the work will not be complete until
foreign powers shall have removed theirs.
There would be freedom on one side and
restrictions, prohibitions and exclusions
on the other. The bolts and the bars and
the chains of all other nations will remain
undisturbed.'