PROTECTIVE TARIFFS AND PRICES. 67 



This signal escape from slavish and disgraceful dependence upon 

 foreigners is an outgrowth of our Protective system, without whose 

 fostering encouragement the manufacture of silks would have had 

 no successful commencement in this country. 



We might take up and expose, one after another, the many 

 errors of statement and fallacies of reasoning in the Tribune* s 

 article, but- that is not necessary. With the above showing in 

 hand, how can its utterances on the tariff question command the 

 assent of intelligent people, or how can anything it says on the 

 subject be trusted? The public mind no longer endures with 

 patience anything like dictatorial instruction from the press, in 

 schoolmaster fashion, saying, as to a parcel of fledgeling pupils: 

 "Do you see this effect? Well, yonder is the cause." Nowadays, 

 readers are satisfied only with severely logical processes and abun- 

 dance of facts, so that they may themselves trace, step by step, 

 the writer's argument, and determine for themselves its force and 

 accuracy. 



