the pound-weight of commerce, and the other is assessed by the foreign value, fixed by the foreign importer or his agent in New York or elsewhere--fixed by the producer, fixed by anybody, at any price, to escape the payment of full duties. Why, the valuation under the ad valorem system is not even uniform throughout the United States.

It is a system that has been condemned by all the leading nations of the world. There is not a leading nation that adheres to any considerable extent to the ad valorem rates of duty upon articles imported into its borders; and England has abandoned all ad valorem duties except one, for the very reason that there can be no honest administration of the revenue laws so long as the value is fixed thousands of miles away from the the point of production and impossible of verification at home.

Henry Clay said fifty years ago: "Let me fix the value of the foreign merchandise, and I do not care what your duty is."

Mr. Secretary Manning, in his very able report made to the last Congress, has gone over the entire question, and he publishes in a volume the opinions of the experts of the Treasury, the collectors, the naval officers, the special agents of the Department, all of them declaring that there is nothing left for the American Government to do but to abolish the ad valorem system and adopt the specific in the interest of the honest collection of the revenue and for the safety and security of reputable merchants. And the Secretary himself says, in language too strong and plain to be misunderstood, that it is the duty of Congress to abandon the ad valorem and establish specific duties.

Not alone in the United States are the benefits which follow a protective tariff appreciated.

The working people of England find the competition with countries employing cheaper labor too oppressive to bear longer, and are demanding in the interest of themselves and families to be saved from the further degradation it will entail. It is not American competition they dread; it is the competition of France, Germany, and Belgium-countries whose labor is even more poorly paid than the labor of England. They have come to appreciate at last that nothing but tariffs which

are defensive in their character will save them from utter ruin and destitution. We shall be in precisely the same situation if the Mills bill of 1888 becomes a law. Our competition is with all the world, for no labor is so well paid as ours, and being the highest paid labor invites the sharpest competition from the lowest. We will have no objection to free trade when all the competing nations shall bring the level of their labor up to ours; when they shall accept our standard; when they shall regard the toiler as a man and not a slave; but we will never consent while we have votes and the power to prevent the dragging down of our labor to that of the European standard. Let them elevate theirs; let them bring theirs up to our level, and we will then have no contention about revenue or protective tariffs. We will meet them in open field, in home and neutral markets, upon equal footing, and the fittest will survive. This is no time to seriously think of changing our policy. The best sentiment, the practical judgment of mankind, is turning to it.

Sir Charles Tupper said, a year ago, in the Canadian House of Commons:

"No person who has carefully watched the progress of public events and public opinion can fail to know that a very great and marked change has taken place in all countries, I may say, in relation to this question [protection]. . . . In England, where it was a heresy to intimate anything of that kind a few years ago, even at the period to which I am referring, a great and marked change in public opinion has taken place. Professor Sidgewick, a learned Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and professor of moral philosophy in that great university, and the gentleman who read at the meeting of the British Association in 1886 a paper on political economy, has published a work in which opinions that would have been denounced as utterly fallacious and heretical at that time have been boldly propounded as the soundest and truest principles of political economy. . . . Statesmen of the first rank, men occupying high and commanding positions in public affairs in England, have unhesitatingly committed themselves to the

strongest opinion in favor of fair protection to British industry."

Why, even Canada, a dependency of free-trade England, is too wise to favor the false doctrines of her mother, and has rejected her teachings, and to-day is prosperous under a protective system, which she in the main borrowed from us. I wish every citizen might read the budget speech of the minister of finance in Canada, and contrast it with the arguments of the misguided "revenue reformers" in the Fiftieth Congress. On the 12th of May, 1887, in the Commons, Sir Charles Tupper, in speaking of a previous period in the history of Canada under free trade, said: "When the languishing industries of Canada embarrassed the finance minister of that day, when, instead of large surplus, large deficits succeeded year after year, the opposition urged upon that honorable gentleman that he should endeavor to give increased protection to the industries of Canada, which would prevent them from thus languishing and being destroyed. We were not successful-I will not say in leading the honorable gentleman himself to the conclusion that that would be a sound policy, for I have some reason to believe that he had many a misgiving on that question-but at all events we were not able to change the policy of the gentleman who then ruled the destinies of Canada. As is well known, that became the great issue at the subsequent general election of 1878, and the Conservative party being returned to power, pledged to promote and foster the industries of Canada as far as they were able, brought down a policy through the hands of my honored predecessor, Sir Leonard Tilley, . . . and I have no hesitation in saying that the success of that policy thus propounded and matured from time to time has been such as to command the support and confidence of a large portion of the people of this country down to the present day.'

Under this system he proceeds to show that Canada has enjoyed a prosperity the like of which she never enjoyed before, and then, instead of recommending a reduction of duties, proposes the increase of duties upon certain foreign merchandise, to the end that Canadian industries may be fostered thereby.

The experience of this country, the experience of Canada, the experience of every other country demonstrates the fact that under a protective tariff a nation is more prosperous. Its people are better clothed, better fed, better housed, and better educated-more content and happy. And it is this condition. of affairs that is most to be desired.

"The state of civilized society and resources of nations are the tests by which we can ascertain the tendency of the government. It is to the condition of the people in relation to their intercourse, their moral and physical circumstances, their comfort and happiness, their genius and industry, that we must look for the proofs of a mild and free, or a cruel and despotic government. Where agriculture, the arts and manufactures, flourish, where domestic improvements have been encouraged, where the more useful branches of education have been extensively cultivated, where commerce and navigation have been promoted, where the civil institutions are founded on justice, mercy, and equality, where there is liberty of conscience and freedom of speech and of the press-there it is that we can find the demonstrations of the prosperity and happiness of a people. In proportion as such principles and practices have been adopted we estimate the wealth, power, and glory of the Nation,"

INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT.

BY HON. BENJ. BUTTERWORTH, M.C. From OHIO, AND F. D. MUSSEY.

IN endeavoring to present a comprehensive statement of the progress, under the auspices of the Republican party, of internal development in the United States and a picture of its present industrial condition, difficulty is found in the amazing magnitude of the figures.

For instance, in the Treasury at this time there are two hundred and one million dollars of gold. This weighs 519 tons, and packed in ordinary carts, one ton to each cart, it would make a procession one mile long, allowing twenty feet of space for the movement of each cart. The statement of the figures may not be impressive, but the illustration makes it so.

The subject of the internal progress of the United States is so vast, that an article within the limits of this must confine itself largely to statistical facts, figures, and results, presented as attractively as possible and leaving deductions to the reader. The subject is treated of under the main general heads of Agriculture, Manufactures, Railroads, Commerce, and Mining, including other heads under these.

AGRICULTURE.

According to an estimate which is doubtless too small, we have in our country a million and a half square miles of arable land.

In 1850 we had about 300,000,000 of acres in farms, which number increased to nearly 600,000,000 in 1880. The number of farms has increased in the same time from less than 2,000,ooo to, in round numbers, over 4,000,000, while the value of the farms has increased from six thousand millions to ten thousand millions of dollars. At the same time the average size of