606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



were disappointed. The mass of the people, who are the great 

 consumers both of domestic and of foreign products, would gain so 

 much in their consuming power as to cause the revenue from du- 

 tiable imports to become greater than it had ever been before, 

 even if we take off fifty million dollars of taxes now derived from 

 such foreign imports as have been named above. 



Again, while the ordinary expenditures of the Government 

 may increase with the population, the burden of interest and of 

 pensions will soon rapidly diminish ; therefore I am justified in 

 predicting that if this policy should be adopted and continue for 

 fifteen years or during the life of existing machinery, in which 

 interval all our processes of manufacturing would be readily 

 adapted to the new conditions at a diminishing cost, we might 

 then, if we chose, relieve every article of import from foreign coun- 

 tries from taxation, except spirits, beer, tobacco, and sugar, and 

 perhaps relieve sugar by substituting some other less onerous tax, 

 as the people of Great Britain have done within a very few years. 



We might come to these conditions sooner if it were expedi- 

 ent, provided the mass of the people could be persuaded to put a 

 moderate duty on tea and coffee as a substitute for duties on some 

 other commodities. This, however, can hardly be expected ; the 

 great objection to the present removal of the duty on sugar is 

 that, once off, it would be difficult to put it on again even if the 

 public should become convinced that they had better put a tax 

 on sugar than on wool, hides, lumber, leather, tin plates, salt fish, 

 potatoes, and other articles of like kind. 



Strange as it may seem, a small part of the members of the 

 Senate and House of Representatives seem to believe that the 

 dogma of " protection with incidental revenue " has some founda- 

 tion in right and justice — notably the author of this catch- word 

 or phrase, who has been pushed into temporary prominence as 

 Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means by the very 

 sincerity of his convictions. 



The greater part of the support of this measure is, however, 

 given by the mis-representatives of their respective States, who 

 can only be designated as political lacqueys or time-servers, many 

 of whom are known to vote against their own convictions. 



It happens that most of the representatives on the Democratic 

 side who have not heretofore agreed with the majority of their 

 own number upon this question, have either been removed by 

 death or by failure to be re-elected. Hence comes the necessity 

 for a choice of parties, if this question is to be the paramount one 

 in politics. It is a pity, even a shame, that a plain, practical busi- 

 ness question can not be taken out from party politics to be settled 

 on its merits. What is there that we can do to bring this about ? 

 This is a meeting of representative business men who have here- 



