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’TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE

efforts to that which he can do best, even the Massachusetts agriculturalist has prospered. On the other hand, wherever in this country protection has been most completely applied, I insist that if its results are analyzed in an unprejudiced spirit, it will be pronounced to have worked unmitigated evil,—an unhealthy, because artificially stimulated and too rapid, growth. Let Lawrence, in Massachusetts, serve as an example. Look at the industrial system there introduced in the name of Protection against the Pauper Labor of Europe! No growth is so dangerous as a too rapid growth; and I confidently submit that politically, socially, economically and industrially, America to-day, on the issues agitating us, presents an almost appalling example of the results of hothouse stimulation.

Nor is this all, nor the worst. There is another article, and far more damaging, in the indictment. Through Protection, and because of it, Paternalism has crept in; and, like a huge cancerous growth, is eating steadily into the vitals of the political system. Instead of supporting a government economically administered by money contributed by the People, a majority of the People to-day are looking to the government for support, either directly through pension payments or indirectly through some form of industrial paternalism. Incidentally, a profuse public expenditure is condoned where not actually encouraged. Jeffersonian simplicity is preached; extravagance is practised. As the New York showman long