more frank than their opponents; they
realize that it constitutes indeed the most impregnable defense of
their school. Free-traders have at times attempted to deny the
truth of the statement; but every impartial investigation thus far
has conclusively proved that labor is better paid, and the average
condition of the laboring man more comfortable, in the United States
than in any European country.

An adjustment of the protective duty to the point which represents
the average difference between wages of labor in Europe and in
America, will, in the judgment of protectionists, always prove
impracticable. The difference cannot be regulated by a scale of
averages because it is constantly subject to arbitrary changes.
If the duty be adjusted on that basis for any given date, a reduction
of wages would at once be enforced abroad, and the American
manufacturer would in consequence be driven to the desperate choice
of surrendering the home market or reducing the pay of workmen.
The theory of protection is not answered, nor can its realization
to attained by any such device. Protection, in the perfection of
its design as described by Mr. Hamilton, does not invite competition
from abroad, but is based on the controlling principle that
competition at home will always prevent monopoly on the part of
the capitalist, assure good wages to the laborer, and defend the
consumer against the evils of extortion.

TENDENCY OF OVER-PRODUCTION.

An argument much relied upon and strongly presented by the advocates
of free-trade is the alleged tendency to over-production of protected
articles, followed uniformly by seasons of depression and at certain
intervals by financial panic and wide-spread distress. These
results are unhappily too familiar in the United States, but the
protectionists deny that the cause is correctly given. They aver
indeed that a glut of manufactured articles is more frequently seen
in England than in the United States, thus proving directly the
reverse of the conclusion assumed by the free-traders, and establishing
the conservative and restraining power of a protective tariff.
The protectionists direct attention to the fact that the first
three instances in our history in which financial panic and prolonged
depression fell upon the country, followed the repeal of protective
tariffs and the substitution of mere revenue duties,--the depression
of 1819-24, that of 183