een such as to give to agriculture a fair participation in the
general prosperity. The value of our total farm products has increased
from $1,363,646,866 in 1860 to $4,500,000,000 in 1891, as estimated by
statisticians, an increase of 230 per cent. The number of hogs January
1, 1891, was 50,625,106 and their value $210,193,925; on January 1,
1892, the number was 52,398,019 and the value $241,031,415. On January
1, 1891, the number of cattle was 36,875,648 and the value $544,127,908;
on January 1, 1892, the number was 37,651,239 and the value
$570,749,155.

If any are discontented with their state here, if any believe that wages
or prices, the returns for honest toil, are inadequate, they should not
fail to remember that there is no other country in the world where the
conditions that seem to them hard would not be accepted as highly
prosperous. The English agriculturist would be glad to exchange the
returns of his labor for those of the American farmer and the Manchester
workmen their wages for those of their fellows at Fall River.

I believe that the protective system, which has now for something more
than thirty years continuously prevailed in our legislation, has been a
mighty instrument for the development of our national wealth and a most
powerful agency in protecting the homes of our workingmen from the
invasion of want. I have felt a most solicitous interest to preserve to
our working people rates of wages that would not only give daily bread,
but supply a comfortable margin for those home attractions and family
comforts and enjoyments without which life is neither hopeful nor sweet.
They are American citizens--a part of the great people for whom our
Constitution and Government were framed and instituted--and it can not
be a perversion of that Constitution to so legislate as to preserve in
their homes the comfort, independence, loyalty, and sense of interest
in the Government which are essential to good citizenship in peace, and
which will bring this stalwart throng, as in 1861, to the defense of
the flag when it is assailed.

It is not my purpose to renew here the argument in favor of a protective
tariff. The result of the recent election must be accepted as having
introduced a new policy. We must assume that the present tariff,
constructed upon the lines of protection, is to be repealed and that
there is to be substituted for it a tariff law constructed solely with
reference to revenue; that no duty is to be