Our Foreign Trade

Our farmers are now enjoying a series of forensic encounters between tho advocates of Protcction and Free-trade, in which the Protectionist will be fotuid talking for American interests every timp, and the trader will appeal for tolerance or sympathy for some foreign interest, generally British, as their heaviest contributions, bpth of ideas and money, are derived from that source. The suggestion, if not the argument, of the Free-trade orator will bo that, as England is the largest purchasor of our farm producís, clearing our markets of a surplus which would otherwise be very inconvenient, we should reciprócate and admit her manufacturad goods; that England will not buy of ns unless we buy of her. This is a fallacy. England will buy where she can buy the cheapest in the future, as in tho past. The foundation idea of the British political economy, Free-trade, is to sell dear and buy cheap, keeping the wages of operatives at the lowest possible point, so that the proñt3 of the completed transaction shall be at the maximum. England adopted Free-trade onlywhen her statesmen knew their country superior to all others in abundanceof money, in organization and in facilitiesof transportation, which gave her at that time the cheapest freight rates of ar y country in the world. The measurc was adopted without regard to the interests of her farming population.who are being eliminated. It was the hope of England that all the world would grow raw produce to sell to her for her manufacture and consumption, taking a portion of it back in payment, England charging her own price for transportation each way; that the world should "sell her skins for a sixpence and buy back the tails for a shilling." When England devised Free-trade and induced us to accept it also she thought to offer us the only market for our farm produce. She intended to keep the only shop at which we could buy. Our tariff of 1846 gave her such a start in that direction that the balance of trade on merchandise against us was over one thousand and five hundred million dollars, a sum paid in gold and bonds for goods we find we can manufacture cheaper and better than those she sold, while we have a debt to her requiring the transmission of about one hundred million dollars yearly as interest money. These vast sums she has immediately invested, largely in countries intended to compete with us in the sale of farm produce. The efforts of the Free-traders seem to bo directed to increasing the capital which England can so employ in the future. Under our present tariff laws over five hundred million dollars' worth of merchandise was brought into this country the last riscal year, all of which could have been manufactured here. This sum at nn average of $200 per capita would have supported a quarter of a million people, whose expenditure for American farm produce of all kinds cannot be put at less than twenty-two million dollars, whereas if they were employed in England- our largest customer for such produce - they would not take much over a million dollars' worth. Free-traders also claim that a tariff enabling us to afford the employment five hundred million dollars would pay for would not increase the wages of those so employed.