Q. What next must we do?
A. As our country has been very prosperous from its commencement, and we have had more or less Protection within that period, the best way is to say that all this has happened “under Protection.” It has happened under other things, too, both good and evil, because it couldn’t happen over them. But never let us forget that it was all caused by Protection. The very slight fact that our country was most prosperous when we had very low revenue duties is purely accidental and irrelevant. In Mr. Blaine’s history of his career in Congress he described the period of our greatest prosperity. But there was no election in view then, and he was careless enough to say that this period coincided with what is called the period of the Free Trade tariff of 1846. It was a dreadful mistake, because the statement was altogether too true, and Protection has no use for that which is merely true.
Q. There are other arguments, are there not?
A. A very decisive one is to call Free Trade a theory. For it is a theory of the Creator, who seemed to favor the idea of commerce along with civilization. But He, of course, left something for men to find out. The Chinese found out in the twelfth century that a big wall around their country would keep off nations that were savage and hostile; but the Republican Party have gone the Chinese one better and have walled off trade. No doubt some college Free Trader will ask you ironically if it is really the man who walks on his feet who is the theorist and innovator, and if the one who walks on stilts, and who tries to get everyone else on stilts, and who thinks it is a mistake that people were not born already stilted—as nations should have been already walled—is not one. But levity like this is what a great cause must not notice.
Q. What more must be said?
A. We must take pains to compare the United States with some foreign country. As we have already shown that everything good that has occurred here is wholly owing to Protection, we must take some foreign country and charge all that is bad there, such as the costly armies, the despotic or kingly rule, the dense population, the illiteracy, etcetera, to Free Trade. There are no really Free Trade countries in Europe except England, and possibly Belgium. They are protective in part. But they are foreign, and that is sufficient for the argument. Only put the excess of our benefits over theirs to the benefit of Protection, and all will be right.
Q. What shall we say about cheapness and dearness?
A. Didn’t the Apostle Paul say we must be all things to all men? If we do seem to oppose somewhat the solidarity of humanity, we meet in our arguments a variety of mental difficulties. Our Apostle Harrison went for dearness by not wanting to find a cheap coat, for fear he should find a cheap man under it. Another Apostle thought “cheap and nasty go together.” At the final period of a Presidential election, however, it is better to say that Protection makes things cheap, and our editors almost always take that cue. To be sure, if cheapness were our intention, Protection could not be established, and we could not cry out against “cheap pauper labor.” The arguments must therefore be shuffled—and cheap and dear must sometimes be taken and at other times denied. The question is more or less of a crux, but it is the beauty of the noble doctrine of Protection that all trivialities of this sort it majestically sweeps away. Not being amenable to any of the laws of human reason, it is not disturbed by such trifles as truth and consistency.
Q. But can’t we say the foreigner pays the tax?
A. We certainly can and we do. But this argument needs very cautious handling. Sometimes duties are collected through the Post-Office, when the cat is let out of the bag and the duty comes directly to the man to whom the package is addressed. If he asks to have it charged to the foreign country his goods came from, even a Republican postmaster will sometimes laugh at him. Such perverse incidents as this are what Artemus Ward might call “in-fe-lick-et-us”—very.