The Weekly Visitor

(From our Special Correspondent.)

Pawtucket, May 8, 1873.

To the Editor of the Visitor:

I closed my last with an extract from the New York World concerning the party issue of the immediate future which, according to its purpose and belief, is to be that of Protection and Free Trade. The question that arises is manifestly this: Can this be made the party issue? A partisan journalist, like the editor of the World, is willing, of course, to seize upon anything that can be turned to party account, be made the means of party recuperation and strength, and the rallying cry of future party contests. Under such straits his personal convictions will be very likely to yield to party necessities, even if there be no personal ambition like that of poor Mr. Greeley who, though he declared himself to be, and was, a "ferocious protectionist," accepted the nomination of a party which ignored entirely the question of protection in its platform. It is not manifestly what this editor, or a few partisan leaders, desire, so much as what the people at large demand. What, then, are the prospects of this being made the issue in the next great national contest at the ballot box?

That it will not be thus made the issue and battle cry of the next national combinations I argue

1. From the fact that there cannot be free trade. I say "cannot," not literally, but practically. The nation can, if so disposed, determine to raise all the revenue required to meet the current expenses of the government and pay the interest on its immense funded debt; but is there any probability that it will do so? We are compelled to raise, for that purpose, some $200,000,000 annually. Then we wish to diminish that debt surely, if slowly, and fifty or a hundred million dollars should be added to the above sum. Of course, whatever theorists or doctrinaires may say, we are to have no direct taxation for the payment of national expenditures. This two or three hundred million dollars must be raised, and it can be raised in no manner, so little obnoxious to the popular feeling, as that now adopted. But with the revenue collected as it is, there can be no free trade, and if no free trade there can be no free trade party, at least of sufficient magnitude to constitute, or to consider, itself national. If there were no national debt there might be a better show therefor, but the nation owing more than two billion dollars the time for free trade is not yet.

2. I judge so from the fact there is no popular demand for free trade. This appears from various sources. (1) The press does not indicate any such demand. Of course the west is opposed to a high tariff, and its people and press oppose such a tariff as Pennsylvania and New England might demand, but there is very little stress placed upon the subject, even by the conductors of its press. (2) The course of the Cincinnati and Baltimore conventions that nominated Mr. Greeley, reveals the same absence of a demand. The free traders of the country are mainly, though not exclusively, in the Democratic party, and yet in the platform adopted by that party the subject of free trade was not insisted on. (3) The debates in Congress during the last session indicated the same general want of any such demand. I do not say, by any means, that there are no free traders in Congress, for there are; but I do say that in the debates, especially in the House, (in the Senate the subject was not largely discussed,) the general impression left on the mind was that the spirit of moderation and compromise prevailed, and that the distance between protectionists and free traders was becoming less, while extreme men on both sides are becoming more nearly agreed.

3. But a very convincing evidence, in my mind, is that there is a growing uncertainty in the minds of men as to what is the truest policy on the subject of protection. Like questions in finance and concerning the conflict between capital and labor, men are becoming convinced that it involves principles and problems that are recondite in their character, and "hard to be understood." You may remember that I gave you some account of two debates in the Senate, during the last session, on the question of the resumption of specie payments, as also on the Indian question, in which I called special attention, not so much to the differences of opinion between different speakers, as to the manifest uncertainty which pervaded their own minds on the subjects under discussion. They didn't know seemed to be the impression more generally made by the speeches of the men who discussed those topics. They seemed to be drifting or beating about on a "sea of conjecture," with no very well defined, certainly no well defended views upon the matters at issue. So with the questions of Protection and Free Trade, men "don't know" just what is best. Vast interests are involved, wide reaching and far extending laws, personal and public, social and commercial exert their influence and control, often in a manner not to be fully estimated by the ordinary powers of human comprehension. There are extreme men, and men whose personal and pecuniary interests will be promoted by extreme legislation, of the one sort or the other, and they will declare themselves with positiveness for or against the system that promises to be helpful or harmful to them. But I am confident that such are in a small minority of the whole. My conviction is that the great majority is in favor of moderate protection, and that it will be useless for the World and its Democratic leaders to seek to make this the party issue of the immediate future, at least with any show of success for the advocates of free trade.