either voluntarily gone into liquidation or reduced their circulation, or paid no dividends.

It will be impossible to supersede this system with any other that will be equally safe and simple. And yet the Democrats in Congress have attempted to prevent enacting laws for re-issuing national bank charters for the reason that it is their settled policy to oppose, and, if possible, destroy anything, no matter how wise and beneficial, that the Republicans have invented or espoused.

But they have not accomplished their design, nor has the work of the Republican party in this regard ended.

The duties of parents do not cease, but begin, with the birth of their children. They must nourish, guard and protect them to manhood. There is danger, in the rapid payment of the public debt now going on, of entirely wiping out the present basis of national banking before anything safe and adequate to take its place can be adopted.

In this regard many suggestions are brought forward. Some would have municipal, county and State bonds take the place of government securities as a basis for bank circulation. That would not do. We have seen too much repudiation,"scaling" and "adjusting" of these debts to adopt them for such a sacred and universal purpose.

Others would have a general bank circulation based on real estate. Such a system would result in greater frauds and more numerous losses than the other, owing to the incessant and heavy fluctuations of landed property, and the amount of worthless lands on which conscienceless financiers would succeed in starting banks.

But there is a basis in every respect equal to that of government bonds, to-wit: GOLD BULLION. It is, when of standard fineness, worth a certain amount by weight everywhere in the world. It could be purchased, after having been tested and stamped at the federal mints, and deposited at Washington in the same manner as bonds are now purchased and depos

ited, and for every $1,000 of gold the government could allow, perhaps, $975 of circulation to issue. Or, may be, to more thoroughly guard against all possible losses and expenses in case any bank should fail, only $950 of notes to $1,000 of bullion value would be allowed to issue.

Such a basis would be as safe and simple for this people as the present basis of bonds, but not so profitable for the banks, because bullion, unlike federal securities, draws no interest. To offset this feature the government taxation of banks would require to be reduced- perhaps not wholly lifted, for whatever derives benefits or special powers and advantages from the sovereignty of a State or nation, ought in equity, to be compelled to make some material return to that sovereignty for the advantages so derived. But, with gold bullion for a basis, the banks should be given at least the benefit that accrues from lost circulation, which now goes to the government.

Having provided for the perpetuation of our present beneficial banking system, with none of its safeguards or elements of stability diminished, our national debt may be gradually wiped out and taxation reduced.

The Republican party is alone capable and willing to do this; and with Democratic opposition removed, all that is desirable in this direction would soon be accomplished.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE TARIFF-ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH.

Object of a Tariff-Free-Trade in Colleges-England Wants FreeTrade-She Also Favored Secession-Natural Condition of Great Britain-She Has People and Factories, but no Food or Raw Ma terial-The United States Has People, Food and Raw Material and Wants Factories-The South in Slave Times-The South of To Day-She Wanted Free-Trade Then-She Wants Protection Now -The Democracy Her Chief Enemy-History Repeats Itself-The Khedive and the Mamelukes-Inequalities of the Present TariffEngland's Early Oppression of America-Cruel Penalties Against Colonial Enterprise-Effects of the Revolution--Again Crippled By British Masters-Clamor for a New Constitution-It is Framed -The First Tariff Bill at once Enacted-General Rejoicing— Tariff of 1846-Delight of England and the Slave-holders-Unpatriotic Agents in Our Midst-How England Built Up Her ProwessA Pound of Wool Makes as Much Cloth Here as in England-How Can England, 3,000 Miles Distant, Compete With Us-By Paving Low Wages-Constitutionality of the Tariff-Right of Self-Protection in Peace or War-Free-Traders' Plan of Gradual Staryation.

A judicious tariff not only affords a revenue for the liquidation of public expenditures, but at the same time tends to build up the material condition of the skilled working classes and their employers, and contributes to the general welfare and prosperity of the country. That it does so is not a mere accident or "incident." The tariff was and ought to be designed to do that very thing.

Because the tariff tends to strengthen and build up must be the reason a majority of the Democratic politicians oppose it; for with the exceptions of building up the State

enormous

rights theory, slavery, secession, Rebellion, an public debt, a polluted ballot and a mountain of political outrages in the South, they have been principally engaged in tearing down. They are now mining and sapping at the tariff, simply because it is a part of their general programme of opposition to the policy of the Republican party, and because the sound of free-trade is in consonance with their party cry of free whisky, free tobacco, free-coinage, free fraud and free riots on election day.

The abstract principles of free-trade are generally taught in our leading schools and colleges, because they are harmo nious and beautiful when lifted above the hard, practical affairs of human life, and because college professors, removed from the world and able to get their salaries without testing the inexorable laws of trade and commerce, are too generally impractical men.

The United States now has a tariff that brings in a large revenue and at the same time protects home industries. That any law which we can conceive will do these two things, would seem to be all the argument required in its favor.

It certainly must be a remarkable enactment that at once pours money into our treasury and defends our manufacturers and artisans from the inroads of the older countries of the world, swarming with the offspring of time and poverty, and backed by the accumulations of centuries.

It would also seem that the tariff laws need no other support than the fact that they are opposed by a majority of the Democracy of this country and the people of Great Britain. When the late Rebellion broke out Great Britain and the ruling spirits of the Democracy were then, as now, on the same side-both actively favored secession.

If protection is as ruinous to the poor as the free-trade Democrats claim, is it not strange that an immigrant stream

of over a half-million a year should be pouring upon us from the old world?

England has several agents in the United States who are paid to clamor for free-trade. In one sense it might be said that a person who accepts bribes from another country to work against the interests of his own, is guilty of treason. England desires us to engraft free-trade upon our commercial policy, at the same time boasting that whenever we shall adopt it, she will "close up the last of our cotton factories in two years."

Great Britain essayed to help the Democracy destroy our glorious Union of States; now the Democracy is helping Great Britain to destroy the cotton factories in our midst and paralyze our industrial condition generally. What a party for the poor man!

The tariff helps the United States and injures England. Therefore England clamors for free-trade, because, per contra, that would help her and hurt the United States.

What an incongruity for the Irish to vote, at the behests of England, the free-trade Democratic ticket!

A few sentences will suffice to show the totally different positons of England and the United States. The island of Great Britain is small, old and thickly peopled. Outside of coal and iron she has no raw materials worth comparing with her enormous consumption. Cotton, wool, corn, meat, wheat, timbers, silk, sugar, silver, gold, copper, dyes, tobacco, rice, and food articles generally, must be brought largely or wholly from foreign countries to feed her people and her factories.

What principle, then, should govern her commerce? That of free-trade, most assuredly; for if she had a general tariff it would add to the cost of food articles, and of raw materials used in her thousand factories, which, added to the fees of transporting those raw materials one way and the manufactured articles the other, would operate with heavy disaster upon master and workman alike.