462 
STATE AGEICULTHEAL SOCIETY. 
$14.00; in 1803, $21.00; in 1806, $27.00; in 1819, $32.50 ; in 1836 it was 
reduced to $7.60. Why ? Because through an unioavering policy of protection for 
a century and a half her iron had obtained the mastery over all competition. 
Then it was time to cry “Hurrah for free trade in woolens and iron the world 
over!” 
As has been well said by Hon. D. J. Morrell, of Pennsylvania: 
“During the last century an institution was founded in England, under the 
style of ‘The Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts,’ whose 
munificent and practical benevolence is attested by many churches still 
standing in this country, erected by funds which it supplied. The great mis¬ 
sionary enterprise to which England of to-day is devoted is the propagation 
in ‘ foreign parts’ of the doctrines of a political religion—the gospel of free 
trade. Its tracts are essays of British economists, its colporteurs, her com¬ 
mercial traders, its foreign missionaries, the represenatives of the press of 
our leading commercial city, and its churches, our bonded warehouses. No 
infiuence which can contribute to the spread of this religion is despised ; no 
accessible organ which can affect opinion abroad remains unsubsidized.” 
The solicitude of the English for our adoption of their “ free trade’’jpro- 
fessions as our practice can hardly arise from philanthropy, as they are not 
vastly better or worse than other people. 
In 1846, when our tariff was reduced, firms in Manchester and Glasgow 
paid some $60,000 to that end, and over $1,000,000 of British money was 
spent in Washington. Samples of foreign goods were shown in a basement 
room of the Capitol, used for that purpose, and to-day there is no lack of 
money from interested foreign parties to propagate the same “political gos¬ 
pel.” 
Bnt even John Stuart Mill, an able advocate of free trade, says in his Po¬ 
litical Economy: 
“ The superiority of one country over another in a branch of production 
often arises only from having begun it sooner. There may be no inherent 
advantage on one part, or disadvantage on the other, but only a present su¬ 
periority of skill and experience. A country which has this skill and expe¬ 
rience yet to acquire may, in other respects, be better adapted to the pro¬ 
duction than those which were earlier in the field ; and, beside, it is a just 
remark, that nothing has a greater tendency to produce improvement in any 
branch of production than its trial under a new set of conditions. But it 
cannot be expected that individuals should, at their own cost, introduce a new manu. 
facture, and bear the burdens of carrying it on until the producers have been 
educatedn'^ to the line of those with whom the processes have become tradi¬ 
tional. A PROTECTIVE duty, continued for a reasonable time, will sometimes 
be the least inconvenient mode in which a country can tax Itself for the sup¬ 
port of such an experiment.” 
This covers the whole ground of p'otection as a prindple, and his only error 
s in considering as a tax that which is a help and benefit. 
