organic character of our political abuses. At best they attack some outlying limb or branch of our abuses, while the tap-root is untouched.

PRESIDENT HAYES, after perambulating New England and his native State, has been visiting the Southern States, and reaping some of the fruits of his wise and just policy in the cordial welcome there extended to him. We do not think that the manner of this Presidential excursion has been specially happy. There has been a want of dignified reserve, an appearance of popularityhunting about the proceeding, which has grated on the nerves of many of his warmest friends. A President of the United States should display no trace of anxiety as to the reception of his administrative acts. He should feel that he cannot directly propitiate criticism without putting himself into its power. And his visits to the various sections of the Union should be associated only with the very highest significance of his office, as the highest embodiment of the national unity. All that is temporal or accidental in the history of his administration should have been left at Washington, and he should have come among the people with no thought of their blame-no desire of their praise. Nor is Mr. Hayes the happiest speech-maker who has filled the presidental chair. He has nothing of Mr. Lincoln's terse mother wit, and nothing of General Grant's occasional capacity for epigram. His speeches can be listened to and even read, but they contain no "words that have hands and feet," nothing that takes hold of any human mind. For this reason a more sparing use of the gift of speech would be much preferable, lest people begin to think they see, as Oxenstiern said, "with how little wisdom the world is governed."

THE Free Trade party seem determined to make an advance all along the line during the session of the coming Congress, and they are evidently confident of some degree of success. The English Cobden Club is about—with true British modesty-to extend its organization to the United States and other benighted countries, making David A. Wells its agent and representative for this continent. Mr. Wells has been writing letters of comfort and assurance to his English friends, which ought to bring substantial aid to the cause. So long as British trade was good, it was never

worth while for the Club to make much effort in this direction. But now that every class of their manufactures for export are depressed to the utmost and "the cotton-lords have ............... for two years many of them been living on the profits they made in prosperous times" (Spectator), the Cobden Club cannot readily afford to leave us in darkness any longer. Mr. Wells' utterances are hailed with delight by the English papers, and one of them pathetically announces that England is at last to have a chance.

American Free Traders are not idle. Taking advantage of the meeting of the American Social Science Association at Saratoga, they called a conference of Free Traders to meet in that town September 7th. Had it been a meeting of both sides, some public interest would have been excited, but the conference was "as unanimous as Jonah in the whale," and had nothing to make its proceedings lively. The numbers present were large enough to warrant the selection of a council of whole thirteen, two Bostonians, four New Yorkers, and the other seven distributed over the Union. The council is to call a national convention, and form a national association, two steps whose postponement does not indicate that the conference itself was much of a success.

The chief thing done by the Convention was the adoption of seven resolutions, and we must say that we are surprised that a committee, of which Park Godwin, Francis A. Walker and Horace White were members, could make no more forcible and unquestionable statement of the Free Trade case. We presume that these gentlemen did the best that was possible, and that best is but poor. Far more than for what they say, these resolutions are remarkable for what they omit. Is it possible that the Free Traders have learnt something? We had not thought it possible. A protracted study of their manifestoes and less explosive literature seemed to show it impossible. But these Saratoga Resolutioners say nothing about monopolies, nothing about the elevation of prices (those of ships excepted), nothing about taxes levied on the people to support hot-house industries, nothing about the consumer and the identity of his interests with those of society, nothing about his "natural right" to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest! Protectionists may well take heart as they read; perhaps by the time of that National Convention they may have carried home conviction on one or two other points, even though it may take the millionth refutation of every single fallacy to effect it.

The first two resolutions deal especially with the hard times, which they ascribe to over-production and the want of a market for our surplus, and their pith is "the economic axiom that 'it is necessary to buy in order to sell.'" Upon that the argument hinges. Now an axiom is what nobody can deny without exciting other men's suspicion of his sanity. But we will not excite any such suspicion in the minds even of the authors of this resolution by denying the truth of this statement. It is true only in the sense of those economists who hold that money used in paying the balance of trade is "simply a commodity like any other," and that it is productive only when it is sent out of the country, and thus procures in exchange articles of more direct usefulness than itself. But these gentlemen cannot have used the words in that sense; they are not capable of adopting language in a public manifesto which the common and unsophisticated reader could not help but misunderstand. They meant, of course, that unless we buy goods of other countries, other countries will not buy ours. And to say so is to assert that there is no such thing as a favorable or an unfavorable balance of trade; that nations do not ship gold and silver over land and sea to pay those balances. Why do Europe and America send vast masses of coin to China and India? Is it not because the Chinaman or the Hindoo does not find "it necessary to buy in order to sell?" He sells what he can; he buys what he must; and the rest of the world does the same. And why have the United States and Australia been pouring their gold into Europe ever since the opening of our mines? Is it not because Europe bought what she must of us, and sold us all she could, and when, as was the case till quite recently, her sales exceeded our purchases, we had to pay the balance in cash? Does any man honestly believe that if we adopt Free Trade with England she will increase her purchases of us as fast as her sales to us? And if not, what does this axiom mean?

The hard times, the resolutions say, are caused by over-production, and by the closing of foreign markets to our surplus products. We refuse to buy, and others will not buy of us. Surely the conference had heard that there are hard times in England and Germany as well as here. And there were easy times here under our Tariff, as well as in England under Free Trade. All true causes work uniformly; this assumed cause is found to be a false one by a double test. But why should our Free Trade friends make all this ado about hard times? Surely they do not need us to remind

them of "the economic axiom" that "the interest of the producer is a class interest, while that of the consumer is the interest of society, and is the only thing aimed at in wise and sound financial legislation." Hard times are the Free Trade millennium. They are the times when every thing favors the consumer, that is, society rather than separate classes. Are not all classes of goods more cheap and abundant than ever before, more cheap and abundant than they will be when times improve? and are not Cheapness and Abundance the Great Gods of the Free Trade world, while Dearness and Scarcity are proclaimed the devils which the Protectionists do ignorantly worship? Do the Saratoga conference want to put up prices? to favor class interests? to make things dear? to create scarcity? It is painful to be obliged to recall these gentlemen to their own fundamental principles, but we do most earnestly recommend them to a course of study in Bastiat's Essays on Political Economy, English Translation revised (with Notes), by David A. Wells.

The third resolution, however, shows how much imperviousness to argument can coëxist with the docility we have praised. It is a weak attempt to throw the blame of our decline in shipping on the Tariff, and on the law confining American registration to American built vessels. Absolutely the committee assert once more that these two measures of the Protective policy are the reasons why "our shipping, which had become the second in the world, and was fast becoming the first, has almost been swept from the seas." Not a word is said of the effects of the change from wooden to iron ship-building; not a word of the decline in our shipping which began in 1855, six years before the Protective policy was resumed; not a word of the injury inflicted upon the remnant of it by British-built privateers during the Rebellion, and the consequent transfer of numerous vessels to foreign flags; not a word of the equal decline of ship-building in Canada under a Free Trade policy; not a word of the removal of duties in 1870 from all articles employed in ship-building, without effecting any revival of the business; not a word of the fact that iron steam-ships are now built on the Delaware of the first quality (registered A at Lloyd's) and as cheap as on the Mersey or the Clyde, though not so cheap as we could buy the worn-out tubs Mr. Plimsoll denounces. No; the tariff and the tariff only has prevented our building ships cheaply, and the registration laws

from buying them advantageously. As to the registration laws, what difference does it make to anybody on Free Trade principles, whether the carrying trade is in the hands of the English and the Norwegians or our own. All the reasons for being indifferent whether an American registered vessel is American built or not, are of equal force to make us indifferent whether American commodities are carried in vessels of American or of foreign registration. All the reasons for wishing to see the American flag flying at the mast head, are equally forcible reasons for wishing it to float over really American vessels. The present laws do secure to it over eighty millions of coasting tonnage, and perhaps three times as much engaged in inland commerce, while the English ocean marine amounts to but sixty millions all told. And the carrying business has been so much overdone, that there is no opening for any large investment of capital in that quarter. There is "no money in it'" now, and there will be none for a long time to come. will lose nothing by waiting, and perhaps after a while we shall get an ocean merchant marine, when we become thorough instead of half-hearted Protectionists, and impose discriminating duties on goods imported in foreign bottoms.

We

The fourth resolution is pathetic. The Free Traders are no enemies of the "large and important [manufacturing] interests which have grown up under the erroneous fiscal policy" of 1861-77; they concede that "due regard must be paid to the security and welfare of those interests," but seeing that they are as ill off now as they well can be, and that Protection can do no more for them than it has done, the Conference proposes Free Trade for their revival! The patient is very ill; perhaps dying. Throwing him over the barn may do him some good; at any rate it cannot do him any harm. The proposal is all the more touching because it comes from men who cease not, night and day, to declare that the money question is at the root of all our difficulties, and that we would have had no such hard times were it not for the disorganization of the currency. When these gentlemen speak of Protection, Free Trade is their panacea; when they talk of currency, resumption is their panacea. In which character shall we believe them? For the present let us insist on what they say outside of the Confer. ence. For on all hands it is conceded that the money question must be settled before business can largely and permanently revive. Both resumptionists and anti-resumptionists agree as to