Mr. McKinley has made a speech in Boston which shows
him as the very poet of Protection. He declares, it appears, that his tariff has created trade, and trade with all its profits on one side. "There is not a line in that Bill that is not American, not a page that is not patriotic, and not a paragraph that is not dedicated to the American home. We have never had as much foreign trade in any year as during the last twelve months, and Europe paid us at the end of that time ninety-nine millions of dollars in gold, representing the excess they bought of us over what we bought of them. We never had anything but raw material under the revenue tariff, and that was never developed until it was touched by the magic hand of Protec- tion. The policy of Protection:must be maintained, because it represents the highest civilisation and the noblest destiny." It is not of much use reasoning with men in a mood like that; they must learn by experience. Mr. McKinley and his hearers evidently believe that gold will benefit them more than the things they wait to buy with gold. They might as well think themselves better dressed in notes than in the clothes for which notes pay.
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