Representative Lorimer of Chicago, who is an active Republican leader in the West, proposed him for that honor. Early in the winter Senator Foraker of Ohio took occasion to announce that he had but one candidate and that his name is Theodore Roosevelt. Recently Senator Quay of Pennsylvania has predicted that he will be nominated unanimously, and Senator Platt of New York has also declared for him. No RepubNo Republican leader has ventured to publicly express a different opinion or desire. The tendency is so pronounced that it will go further than all things else to promote party harmony and this is a most happy augury for the continued prosperity of the country.

The language of the resolutions shows that the President has a strong hold upon the hearts of the people. They speak of his fidelity, his patriotic ideals, his high sense of honor, his courageous manhood, his purity and devotion to the interests of the country, and all this shows that the people know him and trust him. Indeed, their admiration takes on a certain good humored familiarity. At railroad stations they shout for "Teddy" and he does not resent it, though never for a moment relaxing the dignity that properly pertains to his exalted station. They know him as college man, ranchman, hunter, rough rider, popular orator and interesting author, but they also recognize his most efficient service as civil service commissioner, police reformer in the great city of New York, assist

ant secretary of the navy, valiant soldier in Cuba and successful governor of the Empire State. He is no novice and yet he is so young that a Southern admirer spoke of him as "the big boy." Thus he is a rare combination of hearty vitality and studiousness, familiarity and dignity, impulsiveness and prudence, courage and caution, and under the ripening effects of years and great experience, he is constantly becoming admirably equipped for his high responsibilities. Even if he were not President and month after month becoming more and more worthy of re-election, his brilliant career and his strong qualities would make him one of the few men pre-eminently qualified for the place and it should now be a matter for national rejoicing that he has so well justified expectation in the exalted office that even thus early in his administration public opinion throughout the country points unmistakably to his election for a second term and to his continued success.

Ir is significant that the Western Republican conventions are laying strong emphasis on the protective tariff. Time was when our free trade philosophers of the East cherished the idea_that_the land, New York and Pennsylvania on West would break away from New Engthis issue. They tried their best to convince the Western farmers that they had no interest whatever in the protective system. But this hope has proved delusive. Michigan and Nebraska are as stalwart in their protectionism as Massachusetts. And even the South, long the free trade stronghold in America, now shows signs of returning to the economic faith of Washington and Jefferson.-Boston Journal.

for fifty years, he takes for the basis of his article a book entitled "Protection," issued last year by Mr. M. G. Byng, an English manufacturer, in which the author showed that the gain in imports is greater than the gain in exports and contended that by 1912 free trade will have destroyed itself. M. Guyot meets this argument by this disingenuous comparison:

It is the old theory of the balance of trade, according to which England ought to have been ruined long ago, while the indebted countries, such as Peru, Greece, Hayti and Spain, which have so often had the balance of trade in their favor, should have become rich. Then he prints tables which show that from 1854 to 1874 the imports and exports of the United Kingdom rose 133 per cent; but being compelled to notice, as Mr. Gladstone had, the enormous part which the introduction of machinery, railways, steamboats and telegraphs had played in this development, he contends that British statesmen showed their superiority by unfettering trade so as to give these forces their greatest play, while the protectionist nations. were and are "guilty of a monstrous self-contradiction when they establish lines of telegraph, excavate harbors, build railways and subsidize ships, and at the same time neutralize a large part of all this vast machinery by measures designed to prevent foreign goods from entering their territories." This is a sample free trade argument: first crediting the prosperity of Britain to free trade, when the fact is it was due to the more complete readiness of that country to

avail of the great new forces of steam and electricity than that of other countries-a preparedness resulting from a long period of protectionand second, measuring the prosperity of all countries by the extent of their foreign trade. While Great Britain's foreign trade was expanding 133 per cent, America's internal development was increasing more than 200 per cent as a whole, despite a partially free trade tariff and a consequent financial crisis during the first decade, and a civil war of unequaled magnitude and destructiveness during the second decade. The true test of an economic policy is not what it does for one phase of a nation's life but what it does for all phases.

Then M. Guyot proceeds with tiresome tabulation to show the state of British foreign trade-always that, without so much as an allusion to domestic conditions-during later periods, and sure enough, he shows that the total gross imports and exports increased from an average of £632,000,000 in the five years 1875-9 to £752,000,000 in the five years 1895-9, and from £815,000,000 in 1899 to £870,000,000 in 1901-the last being the highest ever attained in British commerce. Then with seeming candor he says:

This increase in the volume of commerce is not denied by those who declare that England is living on her capital, but they assert that her exports have declined, in spite of the fact that the export of British products is higher. than in all former years.

This is not what the protectionists of England assert. of England assert. They admit the

growth of exports and it would be folly to deny the figures. What they assert is that England is falling behind in the commercial race; that is, that her exports do not gain like those of the protectionist nations, particularly the United States and Germany. This being so, and having been most conclusively shown in the pamphlet entitled "Marching Backward," by Ernest E. Williams,* M. Guyot begs the question by ignoring the point of relative growth.

Another sample free trade argument is found in his attempt to reply to an article by Mr. Benjamin Low, in the North American Review for October, 1900, in which Mr. Low Isaid that "in 1870 Great Britain did rather more than 35 per cent of the total commerce of the great industrial nations, and in 1895 under 30 per cent." This may be true, says M. Guyot, but Great Britain still has supremacy over any one of them. Is this an answer to the charge of a decline? He next tries to befog the issue by saying that Mr. Low's argument is the old argument of Montaigne, that "there is no gain except at some one else's expense," whereas the contrary is borne on the very face of it, for Mr. Low showed gains in both countries. He quotes Lord Shaftesbury's advice in 1672 to make war on the Dutch, whose trade was gaining, for "if we do not master their trade they will ours"; and what Lord Hardwicke said in 1743, after France had been forging ahead: "If our wealth is diminished it is time to

*Reprinted from the London Mail, Home Mar. ket Club, 1898.

ruin the commerce of that nation which has driven us from the market of the Continent," etc. We respectfully submit that these expressions were not arguments for protection, but of monopoly and brutality, and going back from the twentieth century to demolish them is a good deal like battling a man of straw. M. Guyot must himself have been impressed by the absurdity of his performance, for it led him to perpetrate this remarkable paragraph:

The logical protectionist must regret the good old times when six or seven hundred thousand Iroquois, Apaches and other Red Indians lived on the 2,939,000 square miles where the seventy-six million inhabitants of the United States now dwell in peace and activity. The protectionist complains that the Yankees erect mills and factories, sink mines, lay rails, and that they will soon be so completely self-sufficing that it is difficult to see what the Continent of Europe will be able to supply them with. But the Red Indians were much more completely self-supporting; and there could have been no question of England sending them in 1899 £18,119,000, in 1900 £19,781,000, and in 1901 £18,401,000 worth of British

products.

Possibly we are obtuse, but the precise bearing of this contention is beyond our perception. Perhaps it was not intended as argument but as an introduction to the statement that "whilst the Yankees buy much from England, they sell to her a great deal more," which he proves by a table showing that our exports to that country have grown from £30,000,000 in 1854 to £139,000,000 in 1900,

while our imports of British produce fell from £21,000,000 in 1854 to £19,800,000 in 1900. If the object

of this comparison were to convince Americans that they have nothing to complain of, we could understand it, but if it was intended as an argument for free trade it proves the contrary. It is followed by the old conclusion, "At the same time, if they sell they will be obliged to buy"-this in spite of the table showing that we sell more and more and buy less and less. In the next sentences he goes beyond sordid facts and figures and soars into the ineffable realm of theory. "If they have no need of manufactured goods," says he, "they will buy securities, and thus raise the value of continental capital; if they do not want securities, will they insist on having gold? They will soon have enough of that. Trade is essentially barter. Laissez-faire, Laissez-passer. The interests and needs of men will find a solution."

It seems hardly worth while to proceed further in reviewing the steps of a writer who proves our case and sticks to his theory, but it should be said that he takes up the subjects of "the German bogey," fiscal federation with British possessions, the policy of bounties, wages under a protectionist system, and finally free trade and free labor, and makes out no better than on the points noticed. He comes, however, to the logical free trade conclusion that "free free trade should be followed by free labor." If this means anything it means no labor organizations, no laws restricting immigration, and no regulations to prevent hard taskmasters from overworking their employees.

In

other words, we should say that free trade means the reign of the strongest, the restoration of the age of tooth and claw, and a sort of international anarchy or piracy, in which the rule will be "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost"; and yet that doctrine is boasted by its adherents as one of brotherhood and good will and universal peace!

II.

After thus following the devious windings of a free trader, who lives in a protection country and cannot recognize a good thing when he sees it, it is pleasant to turn to the writing of an English protectionist, who sees the evils and dangers of free trade at close quarters and would save his country from a policy which he rightly fears is calculated to dismember the empire and impoverish the home. country. Sir Guilford L. Molesworth has written, and Ward, Lock & Co., Ltd., of London, have published, a booklet entitled "Our Empire under Protection and Free Trade,” in which he makes a strong plea for the commercial union of the various parts of the empire, and so marshals his facts as to leave little need of extended comment. He says that with all her great natural resources, India is poor

he has lived in India-and that everywhere may be seen evidence of native industries crushed out by unlimited foreign competition, while Canada and Australia have made wonderful progress under the policy of protection. As for the United