between our country and foreign nations. Ministers with plenipotentiary jurisdiction are the accredited agents of the Government, who represent it among foreign nations with certain rights and privileges, including the rights to conclude treaties, effect commercial alliances, and establish peaceful relations. The consuls of the United States are not vested with such powers, but are held to perform all duties which involve the rights of United States citizens when such persons are residing or traveling in foreign countries. As commercial agents, they are expected to decide upon the authenticity of a ship's papers, "receiving and certifying protests of masters of vessels or other persons respecting losses at sea, and giving consular certificates for various purposes." Consuls are held amenable to the laws of the countries wherein they reside as the agents of our Government, such being the acknowledged rule among civilized countries. In exceptional cases, however, consuls in semicivilized countries, as those of North Africa and some of the Asiatic dominions, where the laws are of inefficient operation, may exercise such duties as shall tend to preserve the lives and property of the citizens of the countries represented by them. Consuls are expected and required to care for disabled seamen, and to return them to their homes at the expense of their governments. They may also constitute arbiters in the settlement of disputes among seamen and to regulate their wages. These rights are clearly defined in the treaties with foreign nations and according to the laws made by Congress. Ministers have more extensive powers, as has been shown. The foreign relations of the United States were never more in accord with peace and the glory of the nation than now.

85

FREE TRADE.

The two political bugbears which have been for some time the subjects of grave reflection and interest, and which have been discussed with vigor, and in some instances with abuse, in this country, are free trade and protection as among the better systems of relief. By free trade is meant unrestricted commerce-the removal of duties or taxes upon imported or exported products. This serious question has agitated the world for centuries. Whether it be more conducive to national wealth and strength to impose on the people a species of taxation that might be thought oppressive and burdensome, or to place high duties upon foreign products to ostensibly prevent competition of foreign elements in our markets with many of our own products, are the two phases of the subject as they are being considered by the great political parties of today. It is claimed by the one side that a reduction of the tariff upon actual necessities and a continuation of duties upon luxuries would afford a just solution of the difficulty; while, on the other hand, their opponents maintain that better results would follow the continuation of the duties upon imports, whether of necessities or luxuries, as a means to the end of more effectually protecting home industries and home markets. The Democrats contend that under the low protection of this country there was not only better satisfaction, but greater uniform

advancement in general material interests than has been the result under a higher protection. The examples of other countries are cited to prove either position. The people of the world have been forced continually to consider these questions as involving national government, and the rights of taxation under it, for its support and the advancement and prosperity of general industries. By free trade is implied that freedom of intercourse and exchange of commodities which tends to promote pacific relations among different countries, and causes a greater and more rapid development of markets, commerce, manufacturing, and general industrial pursuits. But, as in the nature of all rules, some exceptions may be found, so, as regards free trade, it may be, perhaps, more reasonably to be considered in the light of demanding certain restrictions. It would appear, too, that protection, to a natural extent, would find much support from the self-interest which would undeniably be prompted as embraced in foreign competition. The farmer, who must be governed by the laws of supply and demand, and who, while affording through his labor the more actual and natural necessities of life as supplied in articles of food and certain materials for manufactures, must pay greatly increased prices for articles of clothing and his various other requirements if the high protection now resting upon these things be continued. In other words, the farmer must take the world's prices for what he has to sell, but must pay protected prices for what he has to buy. And this applies to the actual needs of farmers, as contrasted with luxuries, which are in numerous instances subjected to lower tariff rates. This discrimination against farmers and other laborers, and in favor of manufacturers, the rich, and others who may be bene

fited thereby, has given rise to 'much controversy, and is still being considered by some of our best and ablest men with reference to a more satisfactory adjustment. The people of England, in the relations of manufactures and trade, are virtually free traders; nor can the declaration that they have greatly profited thereby be successfully refuted. The world admits the fact, but there may now exist in the United States certain differences in the nature of the industries of the people which would render absolute free trade disruptive of the ends so beneficially served by it in England. Nor can it be reasonably contended that the United States needs free trade, but rather a reduction and adjustment of the present burden of import duties, mainly because they make home prices extortionate.

While this question may never be settled to the satisfaction of everybody, its proper solution should be demanded by the people as in the nature of their constitutional rights. Intelligent farmers declare that under high protection they can barely make a living, as they must pay a price for their necessities out of all proportion to what they receive for their products. So, too, the wageworkers in the manufacturing industries declare that the present improper and disproportioned rewards of labor deprive them, under high protection, of what they should enjoy; and they contend that immigrant labor is unrestrained, and that under lower protection they would be relieved of these distresses which increase the prices of necessities. The high protection demanded for the greater sustenance and extension of manufactures and their relations, in which are embarked rapidly expanding capital, seems to have been heeded to the injury of farmers and the working classes generally.

Salary and wages are reckoned upon different conditions and degrees of labor. The bank president and the presidents and other officers and assistants in manufacturing, mercantile, and other lines, as contrasted with labor in its more specific and natural sense, receive salaries for their services; all others, wages. In the latter cases, the laws of demand and supply determine amounts; in the former cases, efficiency, responsibility, and the nature of the businese determine amounts. Hence, as the great economist, Adam Smith, pertinently observes: "The rate of wages is fixed by dispute or struggle between employer and employed, and is generally just enough to supply their needs." The difference shown by these illustrations naturally suggests, in the light of the vast disproportion salaries and wages bear to each other, the greater ability of salaried laborers to enjoy luxuries than wage-workers to enjoy necessities. Further and statistical examples are given in the appendix to this volume, to which the attention of all its readers is earnestly requested. Reform in import duties is what is needed, or rather what is suggested under the present conditions of the tariff, as necessary to the safer and better conduct of the great industries of the country. Unequal taxation is or should be understood by everybody to mean unjust taxation. It is claimed by the friends of reform that the larger part of our national taxation is not within the nature of levies for public purposes. The question that a man cannot be free who pays taxes to his neighbor is another argument directly offered by the tariff reformers. It is said that private interests are the ruling motives to a high protection, which can not and do not mean the public welfare. Taxes for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the