Experience The Best Of Teachers

American precedent is against freetrade. American experience is in favor of protection. The practico and experience of all nations but one, is against free-trade. France tried free-trade and returned to protection. Tliere are but two countries which suffer perlodically from famine, and botli have free-trade - Ireland and India. The only independent free-trade nation in the world has more professional paupers than any other two civllized nations. The greatest inovement of ernigrants is away from the greatest free-trade country. The wages of laborers are higber in this protected country than in any otlier, and here the laborlng man lives botter, eats more, savea more, and owns .' more property than in any other part of the earth. The only nation in modern times that bas had a surplus in ita treasury is tlns nation that stands flrmly by protection. The only nation of modern times that ever paid the largerpartof a huge'national debt within twenty ycars after it was incurred, is a nation that works behind a protectlve tariff system. Tbis nation consumes more luxuries and more of the necessarie3 of Hfe than any other. It has the best market that can be found upon the rolling globe, and the only market that is steadily vrldentng its boundaries and enlarging lts capacity for consumption. The otber markets of the world are chokcd and crowded with the wares of England and other commercial nations. But the f ree-trader asks us togive up our control of this market so that we may begin to compete with England in the markets that she has gorged with lier products. The timo may come when Americans will make that experiment, but it will certalnly be eucceeded by swift return to the old system, just as Germany and France returned to it. Is It worth while to pay the heavy price that will have to be paid for that experience? According to Dr. Horell Mnckenzie, leprosy, the scourge of the middle ages, has not become practically extinct among Europeans but is really spreading. It has between 1,000 and 1,200 victims in Norway, is found also in Portugal, Greece, nnd Italy, and is rapidly spreading in Sicily, in the Baltic province3 of Russia and in France, while the British Islands are not exenipt from t. In the United States, cases have been found in California, in some of the states of the Northwest, in Utah, and in Loulsiana. Hany cases exist in New Brunswick. In the Sandwich Islands the disease first broke out in 1853, and there are now 1,100 lepers in the Molokai settlement alone. The disease is extending in the West Indies. Threats come to us from across the herring pond of tariCf retaliation if the MeKinley bill uecomes a law. Some of the foreigners will, it is said, boycott Ameri. can wlieat and pork. In the end that would be a kindness to American agriculturists. It would opérate against the over-produclion of cheap wheat and tend to the production of other thlngs for which there is a home market, and which we now import largely. The eflect would be to make the American people more than ever independent of other nations. We have a suspicion, ho wever, that some foreign nations will not dare to do wbat is tbreatened. It would be too tnuch like boycotting their breakfasts. Eigbteen territorios in all were admittcd to the Union before they reached the 100,000 mark in population. There ia, therefore, no justifleation for democratie opposition to the admission of Wyoming. That opposition is as partisan as former democratie opposition to the creation of free "Western states in the ante bellum days and to the admission of tlie Dakotas. Wyoming is as much entitled to admission as any of the eighlcen former territorios referred to, and the repubheans in Congress and elsewhere, will not be troubled at the comments of the organs of democratie opinión on the subject. The democratie fight In Pennsylvania over the nomination for governor seems to be regarded by the democrats themselves as of national signlflcance. The struggle ishetween ex Senator Wallace- "Coilee-Pot" Wallace- and Grover Cleveland's Bill Scott's semi-Mugwump Pattlson. If Pattison gets it. they say, Cleveland gets the Pennsylvania delegation in 1892 and Scott figures as boss. If Wallace gets it he will do the bosslng himself, and the delegation will be more likely to go to Hill. It is a very pretty quarrel, and one that republicans can afford to regard with perfect cquanimity. Cpt. Edward Cahill, of Lansing, has been appointed Justice of the Supreme Court in place of Judge Campbell, deceased. The appointmcnt was tendered to tbe Hon. Benton Hanchett of Saginaw, wlio refused it. Farmers are to have declded assiatance by the new McKinley tariff bill, for it puts duties hlgher on their productions, thereby seeuring to them better home markets after shuttlng out many cheap importations.