tective system.

I say, therefore, to the American manufacturer, sooner or later you
must choose between the alternatives of ruin or the abandonment of
protection. Why hesitate in the decision? Are not Canada and South
America and Mexico your natural markets? England now supplies them with
almost all the foreign goods they buy. Why should not you? Your coal
and iron lie together in the mountain side, and can almost be dropped
without carriage into your furnaces; while in England the miners must
go thousands of feet under the earth for those products. * * * The
situation is yours. Break down your protective barrier. All the world
will soon do the same. Their walls will disappear when ours fall. Open
every market of the world to your products; give steady employment to
your laborers. In a little while you will have the reward which nature
always gives to those who obey her laws, and will escape the ruin
which many of your most intelligent opera-tors see impending over your
industries.

I have not time to-day to more than refer to the ruinous effect of
protection upon our carrying trade. In 1856, seventy-five per cent.
of the total value of our imports and exports was carried in American
vessels; while in 1879 but seventeen per cent. was carried in such
vessels, and in 1880 the proportion was still less. In 1855, 381 ships
and barks were built in the United States, while in 1879 there were
only 37. It is a question of very few years at this rate until American
vessels and the American flag will disappear from the high seas.
Protection has more than all else to do with the prostration of this
trade. It accomplishes this result (1) by enhancing the price of the
materials which enter into the construction of vessels, so that our
ship-builders cannot compete with foreigners engaged in the same
business; (2) by increasing the cost of domestic production so that
American manufactured goods cannot profitably be exported; and (3) by
disabling our merchants from bringing back on their return trips foreign
cargoes in exchange for our products.

Nor will I say any thing as to the increase of the crime of smuggling
under protection, a crime which has done incalculable harm to honest
dealers, particularly on the border, and a crime out of which some of
the largest fortunes in the country have been made.

There are many who will admit the abstract justice of much that I have
said who profess to believe that it will not do to disturb