THE LOGIC OF FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 51 



leader of the Republican party is willing to risk his cause on ar- 

 guments such as those contained in his recent magazine article ; 

 when the President of the nation seriously and deliberately tells 

 the country that the import duties ievied on commodities are paid 

 not by the consumer, but by the foreign producer ; when, in spite 

 of the warnings given by the numerous and almost continuous 

 series of labor troubles that have taken place for some years past, 

 congressional orators assure themselves that wages are high and 

 the working classes in a very satisfactory condition ; when, in 

 order to create a profitable trade, a party proposes to subsidize 

 ocean steamships to do what they otherwise find it unprofitable to 

 do it would seem that the greatest need of the day was a com- 

 pulsory system of instruction in dialectics, with a view more espe- 

 cially to impress on the mind of legislators the relations between 

 cause and effect. 



The two methods of reasoning employed in this discussion ap- 

 pear in marked contrast to each other, and it is interesting to see 

 how their advocates are led to conclusions directly opposite. 

 Vulgarly speaking, it is the school of Aristotle opposed to that of 

 Bacon. 



Mr. Gladstone deduces his results from general truths. Mr. 

 Blaine arrives at his conclusions by induction. These two 

 methods, known as the method of syllogism and that of induction, 

 have been practiced by mankind in all ages, before the days when 

 reasoning became an art and logic a science. Both may be em- 

 ployed with safety where practicable, and both will lead to the 

 detection of truth, if properly carried out.* Induction is used in 

 discovery, syllogism in verification. The latter begins where the 

 former ends. Induction requires both patience and skill, and, if 

 ill performed, will as assuredly lead to error as to truth when well 

 performed. Both are constantly used by those who never heard 

 of a major or a minor premise, of 'comparentice or rejectiones. 

 The man who, learning that alcohol is poisonous, refuses to drink 

 whisky, reasons by the method of syllogism. Likewise, the man 



* " We shall find that in the study of moral philosophy, as in the study of all subjects 

 not yet raised to sciences, there are not only two methods, but that each method leads to 

 different consequences. If we proceed by induction, we arrive at one conclusion; if we 

 proceed by deduction, we arrive at another. This difference in the results is always a 

 proof that the subject in which the difference exists is not yet capable of scientific treat- 

 ment, and that some preliminary difficulties have to be removed before it can pass from 

 the empirical stage into the scientific one. As soon as those difficulties are got rid of the 

 results obtained by induction will correspond with those obtained by deduction, supposing, 

 of course, that both lines of argument are fairly managed. In such cases it will be of no 

 importance whether we reason from particulars to generals or from generals to particulars. 

 Either plan will yield the same consequences, and this agreement between the consequences 

 proves that our investigation is, properly speaking, scientific." (Buckle's History of Civili- 

 zation, vol. ii, p. 337.) 



