"Then I don't see what contempt you should have for this government," retorted Fritzie vigorously.
"Only that it affords him no adequate exercise for his ingenuity," suggested Arthur De Castro.
"I don't care," protested Fritzie; "I am an American and I won't have our government abused. I believe in sticking to your own."
"Well, if we haven't stuck to our own, I should like to know who has?" observed Charles Kimberly benevolently. "We've stuck for fifty years to our tariff builders, as Mustard would to a stot. MacBirney's farmers are doing the work for us now," he continued. "Our beet growers guard the sugar schedule at Washington. These wonderful Western States; lowest in illiteracy, highest in political sagacity! It is really a shame to take the money."
"I don't see how you conscientiously can take it," declared Hamilton, appealing to Robert Kimberly.
"I do it by educating my conscience, Doctor," responded Robert Kimberly. "Every one that takes the trouble to inquire knows I am a free trader. I abstain from the Reform Club, but that is out of deference to my partners. I contribute to both campaign funds; to the one for our shareholders, to the other for my conscience; for as I say, personally I am a free trader."
"And a tariff beneficiary," added Arthur De Castro.
"Why not, Arthur? Wasn't it Disraeli who said sensible men are all of one religion? He might better have said, sensible men are all of one politics. It is true, we are tariff beneficiaries, but this country is doing business under a protective theory. We are engaged, as we were long before there was a tariff, in what is now a protected industry. We can't change our business because the government changes its economic policy.
"And if anybody is to have protection here, Arthur, why shouldn't we? Who has a better right to it? Our warrants of occupation were extorted from the Iroquois. We fought the Indian, we fought the French, we fought the English----"
"Was there anybody you didn't fight?"