fundamental than the strongest which can possibly be urged against patents. It is generally admitted that the present patent laws need much improvement; but in this case, as well as in the closely analogous one of copyright, it would be a gross immorality in the law to set everybody free to use a person's work without his consent and without giving him an equivalent. I have seen with real alarm several recent attempts, in quarters carrying some authority, to impugn the principle of patents altogether; attempts which, if practically successful, would enthrone free stealing under the prostituted name of free trade, and make the men of brains, still more than at present, the needy retainers and dependents of the men of money-bags. CHAPTER VI. SPEECH OF HORACE GREELEY ON THE GROUNDS OF PROTECTION.* Mr. President and Respected Auditors:-It has devolved on me, as junior advocate for the cause of protection, to open the discussion of this question. I do this with less diffidence than I should feel in meeting able opponents and practiced disputants on almost any other topic, because I am strongly confident that you, my hearers, will regard this as a subject demanding logic rather than rhetoric; the exhibition and proper treatment of homely truths, rather than the indulgence of flights of fancy. As sensible as you can be of my deficiencies as a debater, I have chosen to put my views on paper, in order that I may present them in as concise a manner as possible, and not consume my hour before commencing my argument. You have nothing of oratory to lose by this course; I will hope that something may be gained to my cause in clearness and force. And here let me say that, while the hours I have been enabled to give to preparation for this debate have been few indeed, I feel the less regret in that my life has been in some measure a preparation. If there be any subject to which I have devoted time, and thought, and patient study, in a spirit of *Speech at the Tabernacle, New York, February 10, 1843, in public debate on this resolution: Resolved, That a Protective Tariff is conducive to our National Prosperity. HORACE GREELEY, From Greeley's "Recollections of a Busy Life." anxious desire to learn and follow the truth, it is this very question of protection; if I have totally misapprehended its character and bearings, then am I ignorant, hopelessly ignorant indeed. And, while I may not hope to set before you, in the brief space allotted me, all that is essential to a full understanding of a question which spans the whole arch of political economy,-on which able men have written volumes without at all exhausting it, I do entertain a sanguine hope that I shall be able to set before you considerations conclusive to the candid and unbiased mind of the policy and necessity of protection. Let us not waste our time on non-essentials. That unwise and unjust measures have been adopted under the pretence of protection, I stand not here to deny; that laws intended to be protective have sometimes been injurious in their tendency, I need not dispute. The logic which would thence infer the futility or the danger of protective legislation would just as easily prove all laws and all policy mischievous and destructive. Political Economy is one of the latest born of the sciences; the very fact that we meet here this evening to discuss a question so fundamental as this, proves it to be yet in its comparative infancy. The sole favor I shall ask of my opponents, therefore, is that they will not waste their efforts and your time in attacking positions that we do not maintain, and hewing down straw giants of their own manufacture, but meet directly the arguments which I shall advance, and which, for the sake of simplicity and clearness, I will proceed to put before you in the form of propositions and their illustrations, as follows: PROPOSITION I. A Nation which would be prosperous, must prosecute various branches of industry, and supply its vital wants mainly by the labor of its own hands. Cast your eyes where you will over the face of the earth, trace back the history of man and of nations to the earliest recorded periods, and I think you will find this rule uniformly prevailing, that the nation which is eminently agricultural and grain-exporting,-which depends mainly or principally on other nations for its regular supplies of manufactured fabrics, has been comparatively a poor nation, and ultimately a dependent nation. I do, not say that this is the instant result of exchanging the rude staples of agriculture for the more delicate fabrics of art; but I maintain that it is the inevitable tendency. The agricultural nation falls in debt, becomes impoverished, and ultimately subject. The palaces of "merchant princes" may emblazon its harbors and overshadow its navigable waters; there may be a mighty Alexandria, but a miserable Egypt behind it; a flourishing Odessa or Dantzic, but a rude, thinly-peopled southern Russia or Poland; the exchangers may flourish and roll in luxury, but the producers famish and die. Indeed, few old and civilized countries become largely exporters of grain until they have lost, or by corruption are prepared to surrender, their independence; and these often present the spectacle of the laborer starving on the fields he has tilled, in the midst of their fertility and promise. These appearances rest upon and indicate a law, which I shall endeavor hereafter to explain. I pass now to my PROPOSITION II. There is a natural tendency in a comparatively new country to become and continue an exporter of grain and other rude staples and an importer of manufactures. I think I hardly need waste time in demonstrating this proposition, since it is illustrated and confirmed by universal experience, and rests on obvious laws. The new country has abundant and fertile soil, and produces grain with remarkable facility; also, meats, timber, ashes, and most rude and bulky articles. Labor is there in demand, being required to clear, to build, to open roads, etc., and the laborers are comparatively few; while, in older countries, labor is abundant and cheap, as also are capital, machinery, and all the means of the cheap production of manufactured fabrics. I surely need not waste words to show that, in the absence of any counteracting policy, the new country will import, and continue to import, largely of the fabrics of older countries, and to pay for them, so far as she may, with her agricultural staples. I will endeavor to show hereafter that she will continue to do this long after she has attained a condition to manufacture them as cheaply for herself, even regarding the money cost alone. But that does not come under the present head. The whole history of our country, and especially from 1782 to '90, when we had no tariff and scarcely any paper money,-proves that, whatever may be the currency or the internal condition of the new country, it will continue to draw its chief supplies from the old,— large or small according to its measure of ability to pay or obtain credit for them; but still, putting duties on imports out of the question, it will continue to buy its manufactures abroad, whether in prosperity or adversity, inflation or depression. I now advance to my PROPOSITION III. It is injurious to the new country thus to continue dependent for its supplies of clothing and manufactured fabrics on the old. As this is probably the point on which the doctrines of protection first come directly in collision with those of free trade, I will treat it more deliberately, and endeavor to illustrate and demonstrate it. I presume I need not waste time in showing that the ruling price of grain (as any manufacture) in a region whence it is considerably exported, will be its price at the point to which it is exported, less the cost of such transportation. For instance: the cost of transporting wheat hither from large grain-growing sections of Illinois, was last fall sixty cents; and, New York being their most available market, and the price here ninety cents, the market there at once settled at |