the
mother country of the very articles which might advance their
material interest and improve their social condition. They now
had the opportunity, as citizens of a free Republic, to show the
generous breadth of their statesmanship, and they did so by providing
in their Constitution, that Congress should never possess the power
to levy "a tax or duty on articles exported from any State."

At the same time trade was left absolutely free between all the
States of the Union, no one of them being permitted to levy any
tax on exports or imports beyond what might be necessary for its
inspection laws. Still further to enforce this needful provision,
the power to regulate commerce between the States was given to the
General Government. The effect of these provisions was to insure
to the United States a freedom of trade beyond that enjoyed by any
other nation. Fifty-five millions of American people (in 1884),
over an area nearly as large as the entire continent of Europe,
carry on their exchanges by ocean, by lake, by river, by rail,
without the exactions of the tax-gatherer, without the detention
of the custom house, without even the recognition of State lines.
In these great channels, the domestic exchanges represent an annual
value perhaps twenty-five times as great as the total of exports
and imports. It is the enjoyment of free-trade and protection at
the same time which has contributed to the unexampled development
and marvelous prosperity of the United States.

OPERATION OF PROTECTIVE LAWS.

The essential question which has grown up between political parties
in the United States respecting our foreign trade, is whether a
duty should be laid upon any import for the direct object of
protecting and encouraging the manufacture of the same article at
home. The party opposed to this theory does not advocate the
admission of the article free, but insists upon such rate of duty
as will produce the largest revenue and at the same time afford
what is termed "incidental protection." The advocates of actual
free-trade according to the policy of England--taxing only those
articles which are not produced at home--are few in number, and
are principally confined to _doctrinaires_. The instincts of the
masses of both parties are against them. But the nominal free-
trader finds it very difficult to unite the largest revenue from
any article with "incidental protection" to the com