COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 439 



protection who did not consider free trade as the ultimate object- 

 ive point in all tariff legislation. I do not know any man of any- 

 intellectual standing, in public or in private life, who does not 

 now look upon free trade as the true objective point of all tariff 

 legislation. All sensible men hold that there are existing condi- 

 tions which make it inconsistent with the public welfare to adopt 

 revolutionary free-trade measures at the present time ; but they 

 all accept the fundamental principle, provided certain conditions 

 precedent can be established in a safe and proper way. 



The difference among intelligent men at the present time is 

 only as to the time when it may be suitable to begin tariff reform 

 in this direction, and upon the method of such reform. So it has 

 always been. It is only the first step that costs. Gladstone once 

 said, doubtless recalling his own experience and change of views, 

 " The road to free trade is like the way to virtue, the first step the 

 most painful, the last the most profitable." 



The conditions which now obtain in this . country correspond 

 very closely to those which existed in Great Britain in 1842, at 

 the time when Sir Robert Peel was compelled to modify and ulti- 

 mately to change all his previous conceptions upon this subject, 

 and to become the leader in the great reform of the British tariff 

 which ended in the present system, sometimes called that of 

 British free trade. This system is not free trade in an abstract 

 or in an absolute sense, because Great Britain raises a large 

 revenue from duties upon foreign imports, and will probably be 

 compelled to do so for very many generations in order to sustain 

 the burden of her great debt. We shall also be compelled to raise 

 a large part of our revenue from duties upon imports, for one 

 generation ; but I will presently prove that our advantage in con- 

 ditions is so great that it may enable us within even less than one 

 generation to adopt absolute free trade if it shall become expedi- 

 ent to do so, except so far as it may continue to be necessary to 

 tax the import of spirits in order to maintain the revenue derived 

 from an excise measure. Whether or not absolute free trade may 

 be desirable or expedient, it will be time enough to determine 

 when the opportunity is offered. What we have to deal with 

 now is our present condition and not this theory, as President 

 Cleveland so well put it. 



In one of Sir Robert Peel's great speeches which he made long 

 after he had entered upon this course, he spoke as follows, in ex- 

 planation of his course at the beginning of the reform of the tariff : 



" I stated, and I am ready to repeat that statement, that if we 

 had to deal with a new society in which those intricate and com- 

 plicated interests which grow up under institutions like those in 

 the midst of which we live, had found no existence, the true ab- 

 stract principle would be to buy in the cheapest market and to sell 



