Protection Vs. Enterprise

In a recent address before the ínter national Free Trade Alliance, Prof. Sumner discloses how protection runs counter to both nature and entorprise aa folio wh : We are in the habit of oongratulating ourselves year by year that we are iucroasing fauilities for communication with foreign nations. We improve our inachinery ; we build better engines to put into steauiships. This is a figure of speech. I say we are doing this, but we know we are not doing it ; we congratúlate ourselves that other people are doing it, thus briuging usnearer toforeigu nations. But no sooner does this take place, no sooner does this diminished cost bogin to teil upou us, than we are turned around to face the other way, and we are told, " Nay, but this is a very great disaster to have these foreign goods made cheaper to us ; it is a very great evil ; we oannot stand it we must he protected against it, we must havo a barrier raised against it. " 80 we spend a great deal in dredging our harbors so as to make theni easy of access, and thus diminish the oost of transportation, but no sooner have we diminished this cost than we are called to counteraot our work by setting up a tax that shall havo tho same effect that the sandbar had before, or that the rickety steamboat had before. Wa ais told that we shall be inundated by foreign goods, and this bringu me to 011e of those fallaoies that inhere in words, Why don't they inúndate Patagonia or Iceland ? Why is it that France ant England and Geruiany have inundate ur by this malevolence of theirs ? Wh; is it that the beggar is never inundated If a man has money the storekeaper rush out and inúndate him with thei goods, but the poor beggar goes dow the street, and nobody asks him to bu; anything at all ; if they did, he woulí probably say, " Inúndate me, inundat me." And so France and England anc Germany don't iuundate Ioeland an( Patagonia; thoy inúndate the countr; that is known to be so rich as to be abl to pay for it liberally and with pleasure Then they say, " We ahall make our selvea tributary to foreign nutions, be cauae we have got to pay tor thes goods. Now, the only idea I have o tribute ia for an iron-clad to come anc anchor off out wharves and to threate to bombard the oity if a certain ranaom is nut paid, but I can see nothing o tribute in the peacetble exchange o articles of merchandise. Well, now, aaid at the outset it seemed a strang thing it should be neces9ary to mak these argumenta to the American peo pie aa a matter of tact and explana tion, and that strange fact lies in th mercantile and economie history of th country, though we didn't start so. Th fathera were more consistent vvitli them selvea. In the first treaty of the Uiiitec States with a foreign power - the treat; with France in 1778 - it was declared principie generally true that absolul freedom of exchanges between nation waa the ideal state of trade, and it vra further. stated as a practical pol oy on the part of the Unitec States, that they should Beek for reci procity with all nations. But in the las: generation or two the American peop] found that the natural resources of th continent were so great that even th destructivo tax on foreign trade couk not very greatly affect them, until th belief that the tarifF itsolf is the caus of their prosperity has become rivetec upon them, so that it is necessary now for us to make a special undertaking t break it down. I propoae, as what think will be really the most useful anc conclusivo presentation of thia subjec to show the effects of the tarifï within the boundary of thia country. For . don't believe, and I speak with som grounda for the opinión, that there is a history of any nation in the world that provea so conclusively the folly of this system as that of the United States.