380 AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT-VI 



not so universal in their application as I had supposed. 

 Down to the time of our Civil War I had been very intol- 

 erant on this subject, practically holding a protectionist 

 to be either a Pharisee or an idiot. I had convinced my- 

 self not only that the principles of free trade are ax- 

 iomatic, but that they afford the only means of binding 

 nations together in permanent peace; that Great Britain 

 was our best friend ; that, in desiring us to adopt her own 

 system, she ^as moved by broad, philosophic, and philan- 

 thropic considerations. But as the war drew on and I 

 saw the haughtiness and selfishness toward us shown by 

 her ruling classes, there came in my mind a revulsion 

 which led me to examine more closely the foundations 

 of my economical belief. I began to attribute more 

 importance to John Stuart Mill's famous ' l exception, ' ' 

 to the effect that the building up of certain industries 

 may be necessary to the very existence of a nation, and 

 that perhaps the best way of building them up is to 

 adopt an adequate system of protective duties. Down 

 to this time I had been a disciple of Adam Smith and 

 Bastiat; but now appeared the published lectures of 

 Eoscher of Leipsic, upon what he called "The Historical 

 System" of political economy. Its fundamental idea was 

 that political economy is indeed a science, to be wrought 

 out by scientific methods; but that the question how far 

 its conclusions are adapted to the circumstances of any 

 nation at any time is for statesmen to determine. This 

 impressed me much. Moreover, I was forced to acknow- 

 ledge that the Morrill protective tariff, adopted at the 

 Civil War period, was a necessity for revenue; so that 

 my old theory of a tariff for revenue easily developed 

 into a belief in a tariff for revenue with incidental pro- 

 tection. This idea has been developed in my mind as time 

 has gone on, until at present I am a believer in protection 

 as the only road to ultimate free trade. My process of 

 reasoning on the subject I have given in another chapter. 



At the opening of the university there was but little 

 instruction in political economy, that little being mainly 



