ance will
illustrate the lesson I wish to enforce.

The question of the tariff is, from a practical point of view, one of
the most important with which our legislators will have to deal during
the next few years. The widest diversity of opinion exists as to the
best policy to be pursued in collecting a revenue from imports.
Opposing interests contend against one another without any common basis
of fact or principle on which a conclusion can be reached. The opinions
of intelligent men differ almost as widely as those of the men who are
immediately interested. But all will admit that public action in this
direction should be dictated by one guiding principle--that the
greatest good of the community is to be sought after. That policy is
the best which will most promote this good. Nor is there any serious
difference of opinion as to the nature of the good to be had in view;
it is in a word the increase of the national wealth and prosperity. The
question on which opinions fundamentally differ is that of the effects
of a higher or lower rate of duty upon the interests of the public. If
it were possible to foresee, with an approach to certainty, what effect
a given tariff would have upon the producers and consumers of an
article taxed, and, indirectly, upon each member of the community in
any way interested in the article, we should then have an exact datum
which we do not now possess for reaching a conclusion. If some
superhuman authority, speaking with the voice of infallibility, could
give us this information, it is evident that a great national want
would be supplied. No question in practical life is more important than
this: How can this desirable knowledge of the economic effects of a
tariff be obtained?

The answer to this question is clear and simple. The subject must be
studied in the same spirit, and, to a certain extent, by the same
methods which have been so successful in advancing our knowledge of
nature. Every one knows that, within the last two centuries, a method
of studying the course of nature has been introduced which has been so
successful in enabling us to trace the sequence of cause and effect as
almost to revolutionize society. The very fact that scientific method
has been so successful here leads to the belief that it might be
equally successful in other departments of inquiry.

The same remarks will apply to the questions connected with banking and
currency; the standard of value; and, indeed, all s