DEAR PUNCHINELLO: In a paper of such great influence as PUNCHINELLO,
vast subjects should be set before the community. I know of none vaster
than Free Trade. You see, every body understands that subject and nobody
can explain it. I propose, therefore, to turn the light of my penny dip
upon it, and to set forth, in concise language, what I know about free
trade.
It must be premised that there is a great deal to be said on the other
side, and that nothing can be more abominable than free trade to a
protectionist, unless it be protection to a free trader. Free trade
is--well--free trade is--well--let me illustrate: cigars made out of
cabbages are not nice; not to put too fine a point upon it, they're
nasty. We are greater at raising cabbages than we are at sprouting cigar
tobacco. Under these circumstances the free trader (he's a smoker, or if
he isn't, his aunt or sister is) says we want Havana cigars to enter our
lips without the taint of revenue. That's free trade.
Every youth is a free trader. Don't you remember your own youthful
follies? If you are of the male persuasion, would you have traded your
jack-knife for TOM SMITH'S bull-pup, if there had been a tariff on the
pup. Or, if you are of the feminine persuasibility, would you have
swapped your crying-doll for BETSY JONSES' ring-tailed cat, if the cat
had been compelled to crawl through the custom-house and pay duties?
Besides, don't you remember how often your mother deprived you of a
second cup of tea, on the plea that it would injure your health? Much as
I respect your mamma, I can not refrain from informing you that that
plea was false, and that it was the absence of free trade that deprived
you of a second cup of China whiskey. Then you know that the lump-sugar,
the raisins, the cake, etc., were always locked up in a pantry. All the
result, my dear sir, of an absence of free trade.
Now that you have grown up, the result is the same. You must have your
soup, and (I do not mean to be pathetic) what is soup without salt? You
must travel on the cars, but what are cars without rails? But, alas,
salt and rails are in the black list. What do you care, whether or not
TOM JONES and BILLY BROWN make money out of their salt and iron mines?
You want cheap soup and cheap riding. Then every time that you pay one
hundred dollars for your wife's dry-goods, you have the ecstatic
pleasure of knowing that you are paying fifty dollars because Mr. JOHN
ROBINSON can't make goods as cheap as the English manufacturers.
In the natural state, man is a free trader. When our good Christian
brethren give an Indian a string of beads for a buffalo-skin, the Indian
charges no custom duties. He don't want to keep beads out of his
country. When LOT swapped his wife away for a pillar of salt, the trade
was free. When the Americans traded away good ships and cargoes for
Alabama claims, not a word was said about the tariff. These, however,
are cases in which nature rather gets ahead of civilization.
See the result of the lack of free trade in our country. The brick
manufacturers must be protected, so a heavy tariff was placed on the
foreign article. Our brick men, finding that they had a soft thing,
tried to solve that conundrum which the Israelites gave up: "How do you
make bricks without straw?" They made a patent brick, built the Howard
Museum in Washington, (was it a museum or a college?) the thing tumbled
down, and a Congressional committee sat among its ruins. Poor Gen.
HOWARD is in a muddle, and wishes, from the bottom of his heart, that we
had free trade in bricks.
Then, morally, see the high position of the free trader. Poor men who
must have tea or cigars or English or French manufactures, are never
driven to smuggling, where free trade prevails. The free trader would
even abolish the tariff of two dollars and a half, imposed on human
chattels who land at Castle Garden.
That's all I know about free trade. I thought I knew more. I'm afraid I
haven't illuminated the subject; however, I will turn my lantern next
week on protection.