“As a matter of fact, the poor man, the _The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

heavily in debt. He has not the security to offer. Men lend their

money on security, and in the very nature of the case poor men can

borrow but little. What then do poor men do with their small

earnings? When a man has earned, out of his hard work, a hundred

dollars more than he needs for current expenses, he reasons thus: ‘I

can not go into business with a hundred dollars; I can not embark in

trade; but, as I work, I want my money to work.’ And so he puts his

small gains where they will earn something. He lends his money to a

wealthier neighbor, or puts it in the savings-bank. There were, in

the United States, on the first of November, 1876, forty-four

hundred and seventy-five savings-banks and private banks of deposit,

and their deposits amounted to $1,377,000,000, almost three-fourths

of the amount of our national debt. Over two and a half millions of

the citizens of the United States were depositors. In some States

the deposits did not average more than $250 each. The great mass of

the depositors are men and women of small means—laborers, widows,

and orphans. They are the lenders of this enormous aggregate. The

savings-banks, as their agents, lend it to whom? Not to the laboring

poor, but to the business men who wish to enlarge their business

beyond their capital. Speculators sometimes borrow it. But in the

main, well-to-do business men borrow these hoardings. Thus the poor

lend to the rich....

“There is another way in which poor men dispose of their money. A

man says: ‘I can keep my wife and babies from starving while I live

and have my health, but if I die they may be compelled to go over

the hills to the poor-house’; and, agonized by that thought, he

saves out of his hard earnings enough to take out and keep alive a

small life-insurance policy, so that, if he dies, there may be

something left, provided the insurance company to which he intrusts

his money is honest enough to keep its pledges. And how many men do

you think have done that in the United States? I do not know the

number for the whole country, but I do know this, that from a late

report to the insurance commissioner of the State of New York, it

appears that the companies doing business in that State had 774,625

policies in force, and the face value of these policies was

$1,922,000,000. I find, by looking over the returns, that in my

State there are 55,000 policies outstanding; in Pennsylvania,

74,000; in Maine, 17,000; in Maryland, 25,000; and, in the State of

New York, 160,090. There are, of course, some rich men insured in

these companies, but the majority are poor people, for the policies

do not average more than $2,200 each. What is done with the assets

of these companies, which amount to $445,000,000? They are loaned

out. Here again the creditor class is the poor, and the insurance

companies are the agents of the poor to lend their money for them.

It would be dishonorable for Congress to legislate either for the

debtor class or for the creditor class alone. We ought to legislate

for the whole country. But when gentlemen attempt to manufacture

sentiment against the resumption act, by saying it will help the

rich and hurt the poor, they are overwhelmingly answered by the

facts.

“Suppose you undo the work that Congress has attempted—to resume

specie payment—what will result? You will depreciate the value of

the greenback. Suppose it falls ten cents on the dollar, you will

have destroyed ten per cent. of the value of every deposit in the

savings-banks, ten per cent. of every life-insurance policy and

fire-insurance policy, of every pension to the soldier, and of every

day’s wages of every laborer in the nation.

“In the census of 1870, it was estimated that on any given day there

were $120,000,000 due to laborers for their unpaid wages. That is a

small estimate. Let the greenback dollar come down ten per cent. and

you take $12,000,000 from the men who have already earned it. In the

name of every interest connected with the poor man I denounce this

effort to prevent resumption. Daniel Webster never uttered a greater

truth in finance than when he said that of all contrivances to cheat

the laboring-classes of mankind, none was so effective as that which

deluded them with an irredeemable paper money. The rich can take

care of themselves, but the dead-weight of all the fluctuations and

losses falls ultimately on the poor man who has only his day’s work

to sell.

“I admit that in the passage from peace to war there was a great

loss to one class of the community, to the creditors; and in the

return to the basis of peace some loss to debtors was inevitable.

This injustice was unavoidable. The loss and gain did not fall upon

the same. The evil could not be balanced nor adjusted. The debtors

of 1862–’65 are not the debtors of 1877. The most competent judges

declare that the average life of the private debts in the United

States is not more than two years. Of course, obligations may be

renewed, but the average length of private debts in this country is

not more than two years. Now, we have already gone two years on the

road to resumption, and the country has been adjusting itself to the

new condition of things. The people have expected resumption, and

have already discounted most of the hardships and sufferings

incident to the change. The agony is almost over; and if we now

embark again upon the open sea we lose all that has been gained, and

plunge the country into the necessity of venturing once more over

the same boisterous ocean, with all its perils and uncertainties. I

speak the deepest convictions of my mind and heart when I say that,

should this resumption act be repealed and no effectual substitute

be put in its place, the day is not far distant when all of us,

looking back on this time from the depths of the evils which will

result, will regret, with all our power to regret, the day when we

again let loose the dangers of inflation upon the country.

* * * * *

“Although I do not believe in keeping greenbacks as a permanent

currency in the United States, although I do not myself believe in

the Government becoming a permanent banker, yet I am willing for one

that, in order to prevent the shock to business which gentlemen

fear, the $300,000,000 of greenbacks shall be allowed to remain in

circulation as long as the wants of trade show manifestly that they

are needed. Now, is that a great contraction? Is it contraction at

all?

“Why, gentlemen, when you have brought your greenback up two and

one-half cents higher in value, you will have added to your volume

of money $200,000,000 of gold coin which can not circulate until

greenbacks are brought to par.

“Let those who are afraid of contraction consider that and answer

it.

“Summing it all up in a word: the struggle now pending in the House

is on the one hand to make the greenback better, and on the other to

make it worse. The resumption act is making it better every day.

Repeal that act and you make it infinitely worse. In the name of

every man who wants his own when he has earned it, I demand that we

do not make the wages of the poor man to shrivel in his hands after

he has earned it; but that his money shall be made better and

better, until the plow-holder’s money shall be as good as the

bond-holder’s money; until our standard is one, and there is no

longer one money for the rich and another for the poor.”

With these bits of marble chipped from the temple of his arguments on

the currency question, we must content ourselves. Upon this question

Garfield was undoubtedly ahead of his generation. The resumption bill

which he introduced in 1868 was better than the one adopted in 1875. He

presented the fundamental principles as he understood them in 1868. From

them he never changed. All subsequent efforts were but their

elaboration, and, at this writing, history itself is their fulfillment

and demonstration.

It is easy to see that his style of speaking changed somewhat. He became

more terse and epigrammatic. He condensed the philosophical parts of his

speeches, and enlarged the practical parts. He became more direct in

address, more sparing of ornament, and simpler in language. But this was

all. He was never known to be on but one side of a question. He took his

position only after the most laborious investigations and careful

thought. Once taken, nothing could drive him from it. In his answers to

the riddles propounded by the Sphinx of American currency and finance,

James A. Garfield is entitled to a place in the gallery of fame, beside

the greatest financiers known to our national history. In the future, no

authority will be, or can be, higher than Garfield.

Our next inquiry relates to Garfield’s record upon questions affecting

THE REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES OF THE UNITED STATES. Owing to his long

service on the Committees of Ways and Means and on Appropriations, these

twin topics of surpassing importance continually lay like couchant lions

right in his political pathway.

Of the question of revenue, the tariff is the most vital branch. On the

subjects of free-trade and protection, Garfield had made up his mind

while at Williams College. Professor Perry, the instructor in political

economy, was an unqualified free-trader. After his usual careful

investigation, Garfield took the opposite view. He formulated the

following proposition: “As an abstract theory, the doctrine of

Free-Trade seems to be universally true, but as a question of

practicability, under a government like ours, the protective system

seems to be indispensable.”

Into the defense of that proposition he threw all his energies. In his

speeches on the tariff we will find but one continual elaboration of

this view. The speeches are moderate and conservative, avoiding either

extreme. His object was to legislate for the whole country and not for

any locality or class alone. On April 1, 1870, he delivered a speech on

the tariff, which is of the first rank among his earlier efforts.

It presents an interesting history of England’s tariff policy toward the

colonies, a brilliant discussion of the trend of prices since the war,

and closes with a review of the eventful history of tariff legislation

in this country, not omitting the South Carolina nullification. The high

tariffs required by the high prices prevailing during the war, he

thought, should be gradually reduced. Every one knows that the advantage

of a high tariff on imports is the protection it gives to American

industry by keeping up the prices here, and preventing competition with

the cheap labor of Europe. But it is equally true that, while keeping

prices up is good for the seller, and indirectly for the laborer whom he

employs, it is bad for the buyer. Free-trade makes low prices. Avoiding

alike the Scylla on the one hand and the Charybdis on the other,

Garfield chose a medium. He closed his speech of April 1, 1870, by an

appeal against either extreme:

“I stand now where I have always stood since I have been a member of

this House. I take the liberty of quoting, from the _Congressional

Globe_ of 1866, the following remarks which I then made on the

subject of the tariff:

“‘We have seen that one extreme school of economists would place the

price of all manufactured articles in the hands of foreign producers

by rendering it impossible for our manufacturers to compete with

them; while the other extreme school, by making it impossible for

the foreigner to sell his competing wares in our market, would give

the people no immediate check upon the prices which our

manufacturers might fix for their products. I disagree with both

these extremes. I hold that a properly adjusted competition between

home and foreign products is the best gauge by which to regulate

international trade. Duties should be so high that our manufacturers

can fairly compete with the foreign product, but not so high as to

enable them to drive out the foreign article, enjoy a monopoly of

the trade, and regulate the price as they please. This is my

doctrine of protection. If Congress pursue this line of policy

steadily, we shall, year by year, approach more nearly to the basis

of free-trade, because we shall be more nearly able to compete with

other nations on equal terms. _I am for that protection which leads

to ultimate free-trade. I am for that free-trade which can only be

achieved through a reasonable protection._’”

As the representative of General Garfield’s tariff speeches in these

pages, we select the one of February 4, 1878. Of this speech a gentleman

of high abilities and information, says: “Having read and re-read it

carefully, and having read all the great speeches made in Congress for

forty years before the war on this difficult question, it is my

deliberate conviction that the sound American doctrine of protection has

never been stated with equal clearness, breadth, and practicality.”

THE TARIFF.

“A few days ago, the distinguished gentleman from Virginia, who now

occupies the chair [Mr. Tucker], made a speech of rare ability and

power, in which he placed at the front of his line of discussion a

question that was never raised in American legislation until our

present form of Government was forty years old; the question of the

constitutionality of a tariff for the encouragement and protection

of manufacturers. The first page of the printed speech of the

gentleman, as it appears in the _Congressional Record_, is devoted

to an elaborate and very able discussion of that question.

“He insists that the two powers conferred upon Congress, to levy

duties and to regulate commerce, are entirely distinct from each

other; that the one can not by any fair construction be applied to

the other; that the methods of the one are not the methods of the

other, and that the capital mistake which he conceives has been made

in the legislation of the country for many years is that the power

to tax has been applied to the regulation of commerce, and through

that to the protection of manufactures. He holds that if we were to

adopt a proper construction of the Constitution we should find that

the regulation of commerce does not permit the protection of

manufactures, nor can the power to tax be applied, directly or

indirectly, to that object.

“I will not enter into any elaborate discussion of that question,

but I can not refrain from expressing my admiration of the courage

of the gentleman from Virginia, who in that part of his speech

brought himself into point-blank range of the terrible artillery of

James Madison, one of the fathers of the Constitution, and

Virginia’s great expounder of its provisions.

“In a letter addressed to Joseph C. Cabell, on the 18th of March,

1827, will be found one of those discussions in which Mr. Madison

gives categorically thirteen reasons against the very constitutional

theory advanced now by the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker]. It

would almost seem that the distinguished author of the book which I

hold in my hand had prophetically in his mind the very speech

delivered in this House by the later Virginian, for he refutes its

arguments, point by point, thoroughly and completely.

“I say that more than a hundred pages of Madison’s works are devoted

to discussing and exploding what was, in 1828, this new notion of

constitutional construction. In one of these papers he calls to mind

the fact that sixteen of the men who framed the Constitution sat in

the first Congress and helped to frame a tariff expressly for the

protection of domestic industries; and it is fair to presume that

these men understood the meaning of the Constitution.

“I will close this phase of the discussion by calling the attention

of the committee to the language of the Constitution itself:

“‘The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties,

imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common

defense and general welfare of the United States.’

“Language could hardly be plainer to declare the great general

objects to which the taxing power is to be applied.

“It should be borne in mind that revenue is the life-blood of a

government, circulating through every part of its organization and

giving force and vitality to every function. The power to tax is

therefore the great motive power, and its regulation impels,

retards, restrains, or limits all the functions of the Government.

“What are these functions? The Constitution authorizes Congress to

regulate and control this great motive power, the power to levy and

collect duties; and the objects for which duties are to be levied

and collected are summarized in three great groups: First, ‘to pay

debts.’ By this, the arm of the Government sweeps over all its past

history and protects its honor by discharging all obligations that

have come down from former years. Second, is ‘to provide for the

common defense.’ By this, the mailed arm of the Government sweeps

the great circle of the Union to defend it against foes from without

and insurrection within. And, third, is to ‘promote the general

welfare.’ These are the three great objects to which the

Constitution applies the power of taxation. They are all great,

beneficent, national objects, and can not be argued out of

existence.

“The fifteen specifications following in the eighth section of the

same article—such as the power to raise armies, to maintain a navy,

to establish courts, to coin money, to regulate commerce with

foreign nations and among the several States, to promote science and

the useful arts by granting patents and copyrights—are all

specifications and limitations of the methods by which this great

central power of taxation is to be applied to the common defense and

the general welfare. And it is left to the discretion of Congress to

determine how these objects shall be secured by the use of the

powers thus conferred upon it.

“The men who created this Constitution also set it in operation, and

developed their own idea of its character. That idea was unlike any

other that then prevailed upon the earth. They made the general

welfare of the people the great source and foundation of the common

defense. In all the nations of the Old World the public defense was

provided for by great standing armies, navies, and fortified posts,

so that the nation might every moment be fully armed against danger

from without or turbulence within. Our fathers said: ‘Though we will

use the taxing power to maintain a small army and navy sufficient to

keep alive the knowledge of war, yet the main reliance for our

defense shall be the intelligence, culture, and skill of our people;

a development of our own intellectual and material resources, which

will enable us to do every thing that may be necessary to equip,

clothe, and feed ourselves in time of war, and make ourselves

intelligent, happy, and prosperous in peace.’

“To lay the foundation for the realization of these objects was a

leading motive which led to the formation of the Constitution, and

was the earliest and greatest object of solicitude in the First

Congress.

“Two days after the votes for president were counted, and long

before Washington was inaugurated, James Madison rose in the first

House of Representatives, and for the first time moved to go into

the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, for the

express purpose of carrying out the theory of the Constitution to

provide for the common defense and the general welfare, both by

regulating commerce and protecting American manufactures. Thus, on

the 8th of April, 1789, he opened a debate which lasted several

weeks, in which was substantially developed every idea that has

since appeared save one, the notion that it was unconstitutional to

protect American industry. All other phases of the subject were

fully and thoroughly handled in that great debate.

“Our fathers had been disciplined in the severe school of experience

during the long period of colonial dependence. The heavy hand of

British repression was laid upon all their attempts to become a

self-supporting people. The navigation laws and commercial

regulations of the mother country were based upon the theory that

the colonies were founded for the sole purpose of raising up

customers for her trade. They were allowed to purchase in British

markets alone any manufactured article which England had to sell. In

short, they were compelled to trade with England on her own terms;

and whether buying or selling, the product must be carried in

British bottoms at the carrier’s own price. In addition to this, a

revenue tax of 5 per cent. was imposed on all colonial exports and

imports.

“The colonists were doomed to the servitude of furnishing, by the

simplest forms of labor, raw materials for the mother country, who

arrogated to herself the sole right to supply her colonies with the

finished product. To our fathers, independence was emancipation from

this servitude. They knew that civilization advanced from the

hunting to the pastoral state, from the pastoral to the

agricultural, which has such charms for the distinguished gentleman

from Virginia. But they also knew that no merely agricultural people

had ever been able to rise to a high civilization and to

self-supporting independence. They determined, therefore, to make

their emancipation complete by adding to agriculture the mechanic

arts, which in their turn would carry agriculture and all other

industries to a still higher development, and place our people in

the front rank of civilized and self-supporting nations. This idea

inspired the legislation of all the earlier Congresses. It found

expression in the first tariff act of 1789; in the higher rates of

the act of 1790; and in the still larger schedule and increased

rates of the acts of 1797 and 1800.

“In 1806 the non-importation act forbade the importation of British

manufactures of silk, cloth, nails, spikes, brass, tin, and many

other articles; and the eight years of embargo witnessed a great

growth in American manufactures. When the non-importation act was

repealed in 1814, John C. Calhoun assured the country that Congress

would not fail to provide other adequate means for promoting the

development of our industries; and, under his lead, the protective

tariff of 1816 was enacted.

“I have given this brief historical sketch for the purpose of

exhibiting the ideas out of which the tariff legislation of this

country has sprung. It has received the support of the most renowned

names in our early history; and, though the principle of protection

has sometimes been carried to an unreasonable extreme, thus bringing

reproach upon the system, it has nevertheless borne many of the

fruits which were anticipated by those who planted the germ.

“Gentlemen who oppose this view of public policy tell us that they

favor a tariff for revenue alone. I therefore invite their attention

to the revenue phase of the question. The estimated expenditures for

the next fiscal year are two hundred and eighty and one-half million

dollars, including interest on the public debt and the

appropriations required by law for the sinking fund. The Secretary

of the Treasury estimates the revenues which our present laws will

furnish at $269,000,000; from customs, one hundred and thirty-three

millions; from internal revenue, one hundred and twenty millions;

and from miscellaneous sources, sixteen millions. He tells us that

it will be necessary to cut down the expenditures eleven millions

below the estimates in order to prevent a deficit of that amount.

The revenues of the last fiscal year failed by three and a quarter

millions to meet the expenditures required by law.

“In the face of these facts can we safely diminish our revenues? If

we mean to preserve the public faith and meet all the necessities of

the Government we can not reduce the present revenues a single

dollar. Yet the majority of this House not only propose to reduce

the internal tax on spirits and tobacco but they propose in this

bill to reduce the revenues on customs by at least $6,000,000. To

avoid the disgrace of a deficit they propose to suspend the

operations of the sinking fund and thereby shake the foundation of

the public credit. But they tell us that some of the reductions made

in this bill will increase rather than diminish the revenue. Perhaps

on a few articles this will be true; but as a whole it is undeniable

that this bill will effect a considerable reduction in the revenues

from customs.

“Gentlemen on the other side have been in the habit of denouncing

our present tariff laws as destructive to, rather than productive

of, revenue. Let me invite their attention to a few plain facts:

“During the fifteen years that preceded our late war—a period of

so-called revenue tariffs—we raised from customs an average annual

revenue of forty-seven and a half million dollars, never in any year

receiving more than sixty-four millions. That system brought us a

heavy deficit in 1860, so that Congress was compelled to borrow

money to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government.

“Do they tell us that our present law fails to produce an adequate

revenue? They denounce it as not a revenue tariff. Let them wrestle

with the following fact: During the eleven years that have passed

since the close of the war we have averaged one hundred and seventy

and one-half million dollars of revenue per annum from customs

alone. Can they say that this is not a revenue tariff which produces

more than three times as much revenue per annum as that law did

which they delight to call ‘the revenue tariff?’ In one year, 1872,

the revenues from the customs amounted to two hundred and twelve

millions. Can they say that the present law does not produce

revenue? It produces from textile fabrics alone more revenue than we

ever raised from all sources under any tariff before the war. From

this it follows that the assault upon the present law fails if made

on the score of revenue alone.

“I freely admit that revenue is the primary object of taxation. That

object is attained by existing law. But it is an incidental and

vitally important object of the law to keep in healthy growth those

industries which are necessary to the well-being of the whole

country.

“Let us glance at the leading industries which, under the provisions

of the existing law, are enabled to maintain themselves in the sharp

struggle of competition with other countries. I will name them in

five groups. In the first I place the textile fabrics, manufactures

of cotton, wool, flax, hemp, jute, and silk. From these we received

during the last fiscal year $50,000,000, which is more than

one-third of all our customs revenue.

“It is said that a tax should not be levied upon the clothing of the

people. This would be a valid objection were it not for the fact

that objects of the highest national importance are secured by its

imposition. That forty-five millions of people should be able to

clothe themselves without helpless dependence upon other nations is

a matter of transcendent importance to every citizen. What American

can be indifferent to the fact that in the year 1875 the State of

Massachusetts alone produced 992,000,000 yards of textile fabrics,

and in doing so consumed seventy-five million dollars’ worth of the

products of the fields and flocks, and gave employment to 120,000

artisans? There is a touch of pathos in the apologetic reply of

Governor Spottswood, an early colonial Governor of Virginia, when he

wrote to his British superiors:

“‘The people of Virginia, more of necessity than inclination,

attempt to clothe themselves with their own manufactures.... It is

certainly necessary to divert their application to some commodity

less prejudicial to the trade of England.’—Bancroft’s _History of

the United States_, vol. iv, page 104.

“Thanks to our independence, such apologies are no longer needed.

Some of the rates on the textiles are exorbitant and ought to be

reduced; but the general principle which pervades the group is wise

and beneficent, not only as a means of raising revenue, but as a

measure of national economy.

“In the second group I have placed the metals, including glass and

chemicals. Though the tariff upon this group has been severely

denounced in this debate, the rate does not average more than

thirty-six per cent. _ad valorem_, and the group produced about

$14,000,000 of revenue last year. Besides serving as a source of

public revenue, what intelligent man fails to see that the metals

are the basis of all the machinery, tools, and implements of every

industry? More than any other in the world’s history, this is the

age when inventive genius is bending all its energies to devise

means to increase the effectiveness of human labor. The mechanical

wonders displayed at our Centennial Exposition are a sufficient

illustration.

“The people that can not make their own implements of industry must

be content to take a very humble and subordinate place in the family

of nations. The people that can not, at any time, by their own

previous training, arm and equip themselves for war, must be content

to exist by the sufferance of others.

“I do not say that no rates in this group are too high. Some of them

can safely be reduced. But I do say these industries could not have

attained their present success without the national care; and to

abandon them now will prevent their continued prosperity.

“In the third group I place wines, spirits, and tobacco in its

various forms which come from abroad. On these, rates of duty range

from eighty-five to ninety-five per cent. _ad valorem_; and from

them we collected last year $10,000,000 of revenue. The wisdom of

this tax will hardly be disputed by any one.

“In the fourth group I have placed imported provisions which come in

competition with the products of our own fields and herds, including

breadstuffs, salt, rice, sugar, molasses, and spices. On these

provisions imported into this country we collected last year a

revenue of $42,000,000, $37,000,000 of which was collected on sugar.

Of the duty on the principal article of this group I shall speak

further on in the discussion.

“On the fifth group, comprising leather and manufactures of leather,

we received about $3,000,000 of revenue.

“On the imports included in the five groups I have mentioned, which

comprise the great manufacturing industries of the country, we

collect $119,000,000—more than ninety per cent. of all our customs

revenue. I ask if it be not an object of the highest national

importance to keep alive and in vigorous health and growth the

industries included in these groups? What sort of people should we

be if we did not keep them alive? Suppose we were to follow the

advice of the distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker]

when he said:

“‘Why should me make pig-iron when with Berkshire pigs raised upon

our farms we can buy more iron pigs from England than we can get by

trying to make them ourselves? We can get more iron pigs from

England for Berkshire pigs than we can from the Pennsylvania

manufacturers. Why, then, should I not be permitted to send there

for them?...

“‘What a market for our raw material, for our products, if we only

would take the hand which Great Britain extends to us for free-trade

between us!’

“For a single season, perhaps, his plan might be profitable to the

consumers of iron; but if his policy were adopted as a permanent

one, it would reduce us to a merely agricultural people, whose chief

business would be to produce the simplest raw materials by the least

skill and culture, and let the men of brains of other countries do

our thinking for us, and provide for us all products requiring the

cunning hand of the artisan, while we would be compelled to do the

drudgery for ourselves and for them.

“The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] is too good a logician not

to see that the theory he advocates can only be realized in a state

of universal peace and brotherhood among the nations; and, in

developing his plan, he says:

“‘Commerce, Mr. Chairman, links all mankind in one common

brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests, and thus creates

that unity of our race which makes the resources of all the property

of each and every member. We can not if we would, and should not if

we could, remain isolated and alone. Men under the benign influence

of Christianity yearn for intercourse, for the interchange of

thought and the products of thought as a means of a common progress

toward a nobler civilization....

“‘Mr. Chairman, I can not believe this is according to the Divine

plan. Christianity bids us seek, in communion with our brethren of

every race and clime, the blessings they can afford us, and to

bestow in return upon them those with which our new continent is

destined to fill the world.’

“This, I admit, is a grand conception, a beautiful vision of the

time when all the nations shall dwell in peace; when all will be, as

it were, one nation, each furnishing to the others what they can not

profitably produce, and all working harmoniously together in the

millennium of peace. If all the kingdoms of the world should become

the kingdom of the Prince of Peace, then I admit that universal

free-trade ought to prevail. But that blessed era is yet too remote

to be made the basis of the practical legislation of to-day. We are

not yet members of the ‘parliament of man, the federation of the

world.’ For the present, the world is divided into separate

nationalities; and that other divine command still applies to our

situation: ‘He that provideth not for his own household has denied

the faith, and is worse than an infidel;’ and, until that better era

arrives, patriotism must supply the place of universal brotherhood.

“For the present Gortschakoff can do more good to the world by

taking care of Russia. The great Bismarck can accomplish more for

his era by being, as he is, a German to the core, and promoting the

welfare of the German Empire. Let Beaconsfield take care of England,

and McMahon of France, and let Americans devote themselves to the

welfare of America. When each does his best for his own nation to

promote prosperity, justice, and peace, all will have done more for

the world than if all had attempted to be cosmopolitans rather than

patriots. [Applause.]

“But I wish to say, Mr. Chairman, that I have no sympathy with those

who approach this question only from the stand-point of their own

local, selfish interest. When a man comes to me and says, ‘Put a

prohibitory duty on the foreign article which competes with my

product, that I may get rich more rapidly,’ he does not excite my

sympathy; he repels me; and when another says, ‘Give no protection

to the manufacturing industries, for I am not a manufacturer and do

not care to have them sustained,’ I say that he, too, is equally

mercenary and unpatriotic. If we were to legislate in that spirit, I

might turn to the gentleman from Chicago and say, ‘Do not ask me to

vote for an appropriation to build a court-house or a post-office in

your city; I never expect to get any letters from that office, and

the people of my district never expect to be in your courts.’ If we

were to act in this spirit of narrow isolation we should be unfit

for the national positions we occupy.

“Too much of our tariff discussions have been warped by narrow and

sectional considerations. But when we base our action upon the

conceded national importance of the great industries I have referred

to, when we recognize the fact that artisans and their products are

essential to the well-being of our country, it follows that there is

no dweller in the humblest cottage on our remotest frontier who has

not a deep personal interest in the legislation that shall promote

these great national industries. Those arts that enable our nation

to rise in the scale of civilization bring their blessings to all,

and patriotic citizens will cheerfully bear a fair share of the

burden necessary to make their country great and self-sustaining. I

will defend a tariff that is national in its aims, that protects and

sustains those interests without which the nation can not become

great and self-sustaining.

“So important, in my view, is the ability of the nation to

manufacture all these articles necessary to arm, equip, and clothe

our people, that if it could not be secured in any other way I would

vote to pay money out of the Federal Treasury to maintain government

iron and steel, woolen and cotton mills, at whatever cost. Were we

to neglect these great interests and depend upon other nations, in

what a condition of helplessness would we find ourselves when we

should be again involved in war with the very nations on whom we

were depending to furnish us these supplies? The system adopted by

our fathers is wiser, for it so encourages the great national

industries as to make it possible at all times for our people to

equip themselves for war, and at the same time increase their

intelligence and skill so as to make them better fitted for all the

duties of citizenship both in war and in peace. We provide for the

common defense by a system which promotes the general welfare.

“I have tried thus summarily to state the grounds on which a tariff

which produces the necessary revenue and at the same time promotes

American manufactures, can be sustained by large-minded men, for

national reasons. How high the rates of such a tariff ought to be is

a question on which there may fairly be differences of opinion.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, on this question I have long occupied

a position between two extremes of opinion. I have long believed,

and I still believe, that the worst evil which has afflicted the

interests of the American artisans and manufacturers has been the

tendency to extremes in our tariff legislation. Our history for the

last fifty years has been a repetition of the same mistake. One

party comes into power, and believing that a protective tariff is a

good thing establishes a fair rate of duty. Not content with that,

they say: ‘This works well, let us have more of it,’ and they raise

the rates still higher, and perhaps go beyond the limits of national

interest.

“Every additional step in that direction increases the opposition

and threatens the stability of the whole system. When the policy of

increase is pushed beyond a certain point, the popular reaction sets

in; the opposite party gets into power and cuts down the high rates.

Not content with reducing the rates that are unreasonable, they

attack and destroy the whole protective system. Then follows a

deficit in the Treasury, the destruction of manufacturing interests,

until the reaction again sets in, the free-traders are overthrown,

and a protective system is again established. In not less than four

distinct periods during the last fifty years has this sort of

revolution taken place in our industrial system. Our great national

industries have thus been tossed up and down between two extremes of

opinion.

“During my term of service in this House I have resisted the effort

to increase the rates of duty whenever I thought an increase would

be dangerous to the stability of our manufacturing interests; and by

doing so, I have sometimes been thought unfriendly to the policy of

protecting American industry. When the necessity of the revenues and

the safety of our manufactures warranted, I have favored a reduction

of rates; and these reductions have aided to preserve the stability

of the system. In one year, soon after the close of the war, we

raised $212,000,000 of revenue from customs.

“In 1870 we reduced the custom duties by the sum of twenty-nine and

one-half millions of dollars. In 1872 they were again reduced by the

sum of forty-four and one half millions. Those reductions were in

the main wise and judicious; and although I did not vote for them

all, yet they have put the fair-minded men of this country in a

position where they can justly resist any considerable reduction

below the present rates.

“My view of the danger of extreme positions on the questions of

tariff rates may be illustrated by a remark made by Horace Greeley

in the last conversation I ever had with that distinguished man.

Said he:

“‘My criticism of you is that you are not sufficiently high

protective in your views.’

“I replied:

“‘What would you advise?’

“He said:

“‘If I had my way—if I were king of this country—I would put a duty

of $100 a ton on pig-iron and a proportionate duty on every thing

else that can be produced in America. The result would be that our

people would be obliged to supply their own wants; manufactures

would spring up; competition would finally reduce prices; and we

should live wholly within ourselves.’

“I replied that the fatal objection to his theory was that no man is

king of this country, with power to make his policy permanent. But

as all our policies depend upon popular support, the extreme measure

proposed would beget an opposite extreme, and our industries would

suffer from violent reactions. For this reason I believe that we

ought to seek that point of stable equilibrium somewhere between a

prohibitory tariff on the one hand, and a tariff that gives no

protection on the other. What is that point of stable equilibrium?

In my judgment it is this: a rate so high that foreign producers can

not flood our markets and break down our home manufacturers, but not

so high as to keep them altogether out, enabling our manufacturers

to combine and raise the prices, nor so high as to stimulate an

unnatural and unhealthy growth of manufactures.

“In other words, I would have the duty so adjusted that every great

American industry can fairly live and make fair profits; and yet so

low that if our manufacturers attempted to put up prices

unreasonably, the competition from abroad would come in and bring

down prices to a fair rate. Such a tariff I believe will be

supported by the great majority of Americans. We are not far from

having such a tariff in our present law. In some respects we have

departed from that standard. Wherever it does, we should amend it,

and by so doing we shall secure stability and prosperity.

“This brings me to the consideration of the pending bill. It was my

hope, at the beginning of the present session, that the Committee of

Ways and Means would enter upon a revision of the tariff in the

spirit I have indicated. The Secretary of the Treasury suggested in

his annual report that a considerable number of articles which

produced but a small amount of revenue, and were not essential to

the prosperity of our manufacturers, could be placed upon the free

list, thus simplifying the law and making it more consistent in its

details. I was ready to assist in such a work of revision; but the

committee had not gone far before it was evident that they intended

to attack the whole system, and, as far as possible, destroy it. The

results of their long and arduous labors are embodied in the pending

bill.

“Some of the rates can be slightly reduced without serious harm; but

many of the reductions proposed in this bill will be fatal. It is

related that when a surgeon was probing an emperor’s wound to find

the ball, he said:

“‘Can your Majesty allow me to go deeper?’

“His Majesty replied:

“‘Probe a little deeper and you will find the Emperor.’

“It is that little deeper probing by this bill that will touch the

vital interests of this country and destroy them.

“The chief charge I make against this bill is that it seeks to

cripple the protective features of the law. It increases rates where

an increase is not necessary, and it cuts them down where cutting

will kill. One of the wisest provisions of our present law is the

establishment of a definite free list. From year to year when it has

been found that any article could safely be liberated from duty it

has been put upon the free list. A large number of raw materials

have thus been made free of duty. This has lightened the burdens of

taxation, and at the same time aided the industries of the country.

“To show the progress that has been made in this direction, it

should be remembered that in 1867 the value of all articles imported

free of duty was but $39,000,000, while in 1877 the free imports

amounted to $181,000,000.

“As I have already said, the Secretary of the Treasury recommends a

still further increase of the free list. But this bill abolishes the

free list altogether and imposes duties upon a large share of

articles now free. And this is done in order to make still greater

reduction upon articles that must be protected if their manufacture

is maintained in this country.

“Let me notice a few of the great industries at which this bill

strikes. In the group of textile fabrics, of which I have spoken,

reductions are made upon the manufactures of cotton which will stop

three-quarters of the cotton mills of the country, and hopelessly

prostrate the business. Still greater violence is done to the wool

and woolen interests. The attempt has been made to show that the

business of wool-growing has declined in consequence of our present

law, and the fact has been pointed out that the number of sheep has

been steadily falling off in the Eastern States. The truth is that

sheep-culture in the United States was never in so healthy a

condition as it is to-day. In 1860 our total wool product was sixty

millions of pounds. In 1877 we produced two hundred and eight

millions of pounds.

“It is true that there is not now so large a number of sheep in the

Eastern States as there were a few years since; but the center of

that industry has been shifted. Of the thirty-five and a half

millions of sheep now in the United States, fourteen and a half

millions are in Texas and the States and Territories west of the

Rocky Mountains. California alone has six and a half millions of

sheep. Not the least important feature of this interest is the

facility it offers for cheap animal food. A great French statesman

has said: ‘It is more important to provide food than clothing,’ and

the growth of sheep accomplishes both objects. Ninety-five per cent.

of all the woolen fabrics manufactured in this country are now made

of native wool.

“The tariff on wools and woolens was adopted in 1867, after a most

careful and thorough examination of both the producing and

manufacturing interests. It was the result of an adjustment between

the farmers and manufacturers, and has been advantageous to both. A

small reduction of the rates could be made without injury.

“Both of these interests consented to a reduction, and submitted

their plan to the Committee of Ways and Means. But instead of

adopting it, the committee have struck those interests down, and put

a dead level ad valorem duty upon all wools. The chairman tells us

that the committee had sought to do away with the _ad valorem_

system, because it gave rise to fraudulent invoices and

undervaluation. Yet on the interest that yields twenty millions of

revenue, he proposes to strike down the specific duties and put the

interest upon one dead level of _ad valorem_ duty without regard to

quality.

“I would not introduce sectional topics in this discussion, but I

must notice one curious feature of this bill. In the great group of

provisions, on which nearly fifty millions of revenue are paid into

the Treasury, I find that thirty-seven millions of that amount come

from imported sugar. No one would defend the levying of so heavy a

tax upon a necessary article of food were it not that a great

agricultural interest is thereby protected, and that interest is

mainly confined to the State of Louisiana. I am glad that the

Government has given its aid to the State, for not a pound of sugar

could be manufactured there if the tariff law did not protect it.

“As the law now stands, the average _ad valorem_ duty on sugar is

sixty-two and one-half per cent. But what has this bill done? The

complaint is made by its advocates that the rates are now too high.

The rates on all dutiable articles average about forty-two per

cent.; yet on sugar the average is sixty-two and one-half per cent.,

greatly above the average. This bill puts up the average duty on

sugar to about seventy per cent. This one interest, which is already

protected by a duty much higher than the average, is granted a still

higher rate, while other interests, now far below the average rate,

are put still lower. Metals, that now average but thirty-six per

cent. _ad valorem_, far less than the general average—but little

more than half of the rate on sugar—are cut down still more, while

the protection of the sugar interest is made still higher.

“If the planters of Louisiana were to get the benefit there would be

some excuse for the increase; but what is the fact? One thousand

four hundred and fifteen million pounds of sugar were imported into

this country last year, but not one pound of refined sugar; every

pound was imported in the crude form, going into the hands of about

twenty-five gentlemen, mostly in the city of New York, who refine

every pound of this enormous quantity of imported sugar. This bill

increases the rates on the high grades of sugar far more than on the

lower grades, and makes the importation of any finished sugar

impossible. It strengthens and makes absolute the monopoly already

given to the refining interest; yet we are told that this is a

revenue-reform tariff.

“Before closing I wish to notice one thing which I believe has not

been mentioned in this debate. A few years ago we had a considerable

premium on gold, and as our tariff duties were paid in coin, there

was thus created an increase in the tariff rates. In 1875, for

instance, the average currency value of coin was one hundred and

fourteen cents; in 1876, one hundred and eleven cents; in 1877, one

hundred and four cents. Now, thanks to the resumption law and the

rate of our exchanges and credit, the premium on gold is almost down

to zero. But this fall in the premium has operated as a steady

reduction of the tariff rates, because the duties were paid in gold

and the goods were sold in currency.

“Now, when gentlemen say that the rates were high a few years ago,

it should be remembered that they have been falling year by year, as

the price of gold has been coming down. When, therefore, gentlemen

criticise the rates as fixed in the law of 1872, they should

remember that the fall in the premium on gold has wrought a virtual

reduction of fourteen per cent. in the tariff rates.

“Mr. Chairman, the Committee of Ways and Means has done a large

amount of work on this bill. But the views which have found

expression in his bill must be criticised without regard to personal

consideration. A bill so radical in its character, so dangerous to

our business prosperity, would work infinite mischief at this time,

when the country is just recovering itself from a long period of

depression and getting again upon solid ground, just coming up out

of the wild sea of panic and distress which has tossed us so long.

“Let it be remembered that twenty-two per cent. of all the laboring

people of this country are artisans engaged in manufactures. Their

culture has been fostered by our tariff laws. It is their pursuits

and the skill which they have developed that produced the glory of

our centennial exhibition. To them the country owes the splendor of

the position it holds before the world more than to any other equal

number of our citizens. If this bill becomes a law, it strikes down

their occupation and throws into the keenest distress the brightest

and best elements of our population.

“It is not simply a stalking-horse upon which gentlemen can leap to

show their horsemanship in debate; it is not an innocent lay-figure

upon which gentlemen may spread the gaudy wares of their rhetoric

without harm; but it is a great, dangerous monster, a very

Polyphemus which stalks through the land. _Monstrum horrendum,

informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum._ If its eye be not out, let us

take it out and end the agony.” [Applause on the Republican side.]

But the correlative of revenue is expenditure. Only one other man of

this age ever attempted a philosophy of national expenditure besides

Garfield—that was Gladstone. No other American ever attempted to

regulate appropriations by a philosophical principle. No other man ever

attempted to reduce the fabulous and irregular outlay of the Government

to a science. Of Garfield’s studies in this direction we have spoken

elsewhere. On January 23, 1872, upon the introduction of his first bill

as Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations he delivered an elaborate

speech on the subject of

PUBLIC EXPENDITURES

“It is difficult to discuss expenditures comprehensively without

discussing also the revenues; but I shall on this occasion allude to

the revenues only on a single point. Revenue and the expenditure of

revenue form by far the most important element in the government of

modern nations. Revenue is not, as some one has said, the friction

of a government, but rather its motive power. Without it the

machinery of a government can not move; and by it all the movements

of a government are regulated. The expenditure of revenue forms the

grand level from which all heights and depths of legislative action

are measured. The increase and the diminution of the burdens of

taxation depend alike upon their relation to this level of

expenditures. That level once given, all other policies must conform

to it and be determined by it. The expenditure of revenue and its

distribution, therefore, form the best test of the health, the

wisdom, and the virtue of a government. Is a government corrupt?

that corruption will inevitably, sooner or later, show itself at the

door of the treasury in demands for money. There is scarcely a

conceivable form of corruption or public wrong that does not at last

present itself at the cashier’s desk and demand money. The

legislature, therefore, that stands at the cashier’s desk and

watches with its Argus eyes the demands for payment over the

counter, is most certain to see all the forms of public rascality.

At that place, too, we may feel the Nation’s pulse; we may determine

whether it is in the delirium of fever or whether the currents of

its life are flowing with the steady throbbings of health. What

could have torn down the gaudy fabric of the late government of

France so effectually as the simple expedient of compiling and

publishing a balance sheet of the expenditures of Napoleon’s

government, as compared with the expenditures of the fifteen years

which preceded his reign? A quiet student of finance exhibited the

fact that during fifteen years of Napoleon’s reign the expenditures

of his government had been increased by the enormous total of three

hundred and fifty million dollars in gold per annum.

HOW SHALL EXPENDITURES BE GAUGED?

“Such, in my view, are the relations which the expenditures of the

revenue sustain to the honor and safety of the nation. How, then,

shall they be regulated? By what gauge shall we determine the amount

of revenue that ought to be expended by a nation? This question is

full of difficulty, and I can hope to do little more than offer a

few suggestions in the direction of its solution.

“And, first, I remark that the mere amount of the appropriations is

in itself no test. To say that this government is expending two

hundred and ninety-two million dollars a year, may be to say that we

are penurious and niggardly in our expenditures, and may be to say

that we are lavish and prodigal. There must be some ground of

relative judgment, some test by which we can determine whether

expenditures are reasonable or exorbitant. It has occurred to me

that two tests can be applied.

TEST OF POPULATION.

“The first and most important is the relation of expenditure to the

population. In some ratio corresponding to the increase of

population it may be reasonable to increase the expenditures of a

government. This is the test usually applied in Europe. In an

official table I have before me the expenditures of the British

government for the last fifteen years, I find the statement made

over against the annual average of each year of the expenditure _per

capita_ of the population. The average expenditure _per capita_ for

that period, was two pounds, seven shillings and seven pence, or

about twelve dollars in gold, with a slight tendency to decrease

each year. In our own country, commencing with 1830 and taking the

years when the census was taken, I find that the expenditures, _per

capita_, exclusive of payments on the principal and interest of the

public debt were as follows:

In 1830 $1 03

In 1840 1 41

In 1850 1 60

In 1860 1 94

In 1870 4 26

or, excluding pensions, three dollars and fifty-two cents. No doubt

this test is valuable. But how shall it be applied? Shall the

increase of expenditures keep pace with the population? We know that

population tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, that is, at a

per cent. compounded annually. If the normal increase of

expenditures follow the same law, we might look forward to the

future with alarm. It is manifest, however, that the necessity of

expenditures does not keep pace with the mere increase of numbers;

and while the total sum of money expended must necessarily be

greater from year to year, the amount _per capita_ ought in all

well-regulated governments in time of peace to grow gradually less.

TEST OF TERRITORIAL SETTLEMENT AND EXPANSION.

“But in a country like ours there is another element besides

population that helps to determine the movement of expenditures.

That element can hardly be found in any other country. It is the

increase and settlement of our territory, the organic increase of

the nation by the addition of new States. To begin with the original

thirteen States, and gauge expenditure till now by the increase of

population alone, would be manifestly incorrect. But the fact that

there have been added twenty-four States, and that we now have nine

territories, not including Alaska, brings a new and important

element into the calculation. It is impossible to estimate the

effect of this element upon expenditures. But if we examine our own

records from the beginning of the Government, it will appear that

every great increase of settled territory has very considerably

added to the expenditures.

“If these reflections be just, it will follow that the ordinary

movement of our expenditures depends upon the action of two forces:

first, the natural growth of population, and second, the extension

of our territory and the increase in the number of our States. Some

day, no doubt—and I hope at no distant day—we shall have reached the

limit of territorial expansion. I hope we have reached it now,

except to enlarge the number of States within our borders; and when

we have settled our unoccupied lands, when we have laid down the

fixed and certain boundaries of our country, then the movement of

our expenditure in time of peace will be remitted to the operation

of the one law, the increase of population. That law, as I have

already intimated, is not an increase by a per cent. compounded

annually, but by a per cent. that decreases annually. No doubt the

expenditures will always increase from year to year; but they ought

not to increase by the same per cent. from year to year; the rate of

increase ought gradually to grow less.

EXPENDITURES OF ENGLAND.

“In England, for example, where the territory is fixed, and they are

remitted to the single law of increase of population, the increase

of expenditure during the last fifteen years of peace has been only

about one and three-quarter per cent. compounded annually. I believe

nobody has made a very careful estimate of the rate in our country;

our growth has been too irregular to afford data for an accurate

estimate. But a gentleman who has given much attention to the

subject expressed to me the belief that our expenditures in time of

peace have increased about eight per cent. compounded annually. I

can hardly believe it; yet I am sure that somewhere between that and

the English rate will be found our rate of increase in times of

peace. I am aware that such estimates as these are unsatisfactory,

and that nothing short of the actual test of experience can

determine the movements of our expenditures; but these suggestions

which have resulted from some study of the subject, I offer for the

reflection of those who care to follow them out.

EFFECTS OF WAR ON EXPENDITURES.

“Thus far I have considered the expenditures that arise in times of

peace. Any view of this subject would be incomplete that did not

include a consideration of the effect of war upon national

expenditures. I have spoken of what the rate ought to be in time of

peace, for carrying on a government. I will next consider the effect

of war on the rate of increase. And here we are confronted with that

anarchic element, the plague of nations, which Jeremy Bentham called

‘mischief on the largest scale.’ After the fire and blood of the

battle-fields have disappeared, nowhere does war show its destroying

power so certainly and so relentlessly as in the columns which

represent the taxes and expenditures of the nation. Let me

illustrate this by two examples.

“In 1792, the year preceding the commencement of the great war

against Napoleon, the expenditures of Great Britain were less than

twenty million pounds sterling.

“During the twenty-four years that elapsed, from the commencement of

that wonderful struggle until its close at Waterloo, in 1815, the

expenditures rose by successive bounds, until, in one year near the

close of the war, it reached the enormous sum of one hundred and six

million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

“The unusual increase of the public debt, added to the natural

growth of expenditures from causes already discussed, made it

impossible for England ever to reach her old level of expenditure.

It took twenty years after Waterloo to reduce expenditures from

seventy-seven million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the

annual average of the second decade of the century, to forty-five

million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the expenditure for

1835.

“This last figure was the lowest England has known during the

present century. Then followed nearly forty years of peace, from

Waterloo to the Crimean war in 1854. The figures for that period may

be taken to represent the natural growth of expenditures in England.

During that period the expenditures increased, in a tolerably

uniform ratio, from forty-five million seven hundred and fifty

thousand pounds, the amount for 1835, to about fifty-one million

seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the average for the five

years ending 1853–’54. This increase was about four million dollars

of our money per annum. Then came the Crimean war of 1854–1856,

during one year of which the expenditures rose to eighty-four

million five hundred thousand pounds.

“Again, as after the Napoleonic war, it required several years for

the expenditures of the kingdom to get down to the new level of

peace, which level was much higher than that of the former peace.

“During the last ten years the expenditures of Great Britain have

again been gradually increasing; the average for the six years

ending with March 31, 1871, being sixty-eight million seven hundred

and fifty thousand pounds.

WAR EXPENDITURES OF THE UNITED STATES.

“As the second example of the effect of war on the movement of

national expenditures, I call attention to our own history.

“Considering the ordinary expenses of the Government, exclusive of

payments on the principal and interest of the public debt, the

annual average may be stated thus:

“Beginning with 1791, the last decade of the eighteenth century

showed an annual average of three million seven hundred and fifty

thousand dollars. During the first decade of the present century,

the average was nearly five million five hundred thousand dollars.

Or, commencing with 1791, there followed twenty years of peace,

during which the annual average of ordinary expenditures was more

than doubled. Then followed four years, from 1812 to 1815,

inclusive, in which the war with England swelled the average to

twenty-five million five hundred thousand dollars. During the five

years succeeding that war, the average was sixteen million five

hundred thousand dollars, and it was not until 1821 that the new

level of peace was reached. During the five years, from 1820 to

1825, inclusive, the annual average was eleven million five hundred

thousand dollars. From 1825 to 1830, it was thirteen million

dollars. From 1830 to 1835, it was seventeen million dollars. From

1835 to 1840, in which period occurred the Seminole war, it was

thirty million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1840 to 1845, it

was twenty-seven million dollars. From 1845 to 1850, during which

occurred the Mexican war, it was forty million five hundred thousand

dollars. From 1850 to 1855, it was forty-seven million five hundred

thousand dollars. From 1855 to June 30, 1861, it was sixty-seven

million dollars. From June 30, 1861, to June 30, 1866, seven hundred

and thirteen million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and

from June 30, 1866, to June 30, 1871, the annual average was one

hundred and eighty-nine million dollars.

“It is interesting to inquire how far we may reasonably expect to go

in the descending scale before we reach the new level of peace. We

have already seen that it took England twenty years after Waterloo

before she reached such a level. Our own experience has been

peculiar in this, that our people have been impatient of debt, and

have always determinedly set about the work of reducing it.

DURATION OF WAR EXPENDITURES.

“Throughout our history there may be seen a curious uniformity in

the movement of the annual expenditures for the years immediately

following a war. We have not the data to determine how long it was,

after the war of independence, before the expenditures ceased to

decrease; that is, before they reached the point where their natural

growth more than balanced the tendency to reduction of war

expenditure; but in the years immediately following all our

subsequent wars, the decrease has continued for a period almost

exactly twice the length of the war itself.

“After the war of 1812–’15, the expenditures continued to decline

for eight years, reaching the lowest point in 1823.

“After the Seminole war, which ran through three years, 1836, 1837,

and 1838, the new level was not reached until 1844, six years after

its close.

“After the Mexican war, which lasted two years, it took four years,

until 1852, to reach the new level of peace.”

Probably the most remarkable portion of this speech is the following

prophecy:

WHEN SHALL WE REACH OUR NEW LEVEL OF EXPENDITURES?

“It is, perhaps, unsafe to base our calculations for the future on

these analogies; but the wars already referred to have been of such

varied character, and their financial effects have been so uniform,

as to make it not unreasonable to expect that a similar result will

follow our late war. If so, the decrease of our ordinary

expenditures, exclusive of the principal and interest of the public

debt, will continue until 1875 or 1876.

“It will be seen by an analysis of our expenditures, that, exclusive

of charges on the public debt, nearly fifty million dollars are

expenditures directly for the late war. Many of these expenditures

will not again appear, such as the bounty and back pay of volunteer

soldiers, and payment of illegal captures of British vessels and

cargoes. We may reasonably expect that the expenditures for pensions

will hereafter steadily decrease, unless our legislation should be

unwarrantably extravagant. We may also expect a large decrease in

expenditures for the internal revenue department. Possibly, we may

ultimately be able to abolish the department altogether. In the

accounting and disbursing bureaus of the treasury department, we may

also expect a further reduction of the force now employed in

settling war claims.

“We can not expect so rapid a reduction of the public debt and its

burden of interest as we have witnessed for the last three years;

but the reduction will doubtless continue, and the burden of

interest will constantly decrease. I know it is not safe to attempt

to forecast the future; but I venture to express the belief that if

peace continues, the year 1876 will witness our ordinary

expenditures reduced to one hundred and twenty-five million dollars,

and the interest on our public debt to ninety-five million dollars;

making our total expenditures, exclusive of payment on the principal

of the public debt, two hundred and thirty million dollars. Judging

from our own experience and from that of other nations, we may not

hope thereafter to reach a lower figure. In making this estimate, I

have assumed that there will be a considerable reduction of the

burdens of taxation; and a revenue not nearly so great in excess of

the expenditures as we now collect.”

Seven years afterwards, in the June number (1879) of the _North American

Review_, General Garfield quoted the above paragraphs from the speech of

January, 1872, and called attention to the fulfillment of his prediction

in the following words:

“Reviewing the subject in the light of subsequent experience, it

will be seen that the progress of reduction of expenditures from the

war level has been very nearly in accordance with these expectations

of seven years ago.

“The actual expenditures since the war, including interest on the

public debt, as shown by the official record, were as follows:

1865 $1,297,555,224 41

1866 520,899,416 99

1867 357,542,675 16

1868 377,340,284 86

1869 322,865,277 80

1870 399,653,560 75

1871 292,177,188 25

1872 277,517,962 67

1873 290,345,245 33

1874 287,133,873 17

1875 274,623,392 84

1876 258,459,797 33

1877 238,660,008 93

1878 236,964,326 80

“Omitting the first of these years, in which the enormous payments

to the army swelled the aggregate of expenses to $1,297,000,000, and

beginning with the first full year after the termination of the war,

it will be seen that the expenditures have been reduced, at first

very rapidly, and then more slowly, from $520,000,000 in 1866 to

about $237,000,000 in 1878.

“The estimate quoted above was that in 1876 expenditures would be

reduced to $230,000,000, including $95,000,000 for interest on the

public debt. In 1877, one year later than the estimated date, the

actual reduction had reached $238,000,000, including $97,000,000 for

interest on the public debt. [He means the expenditures _had been

reduced to_ $238,000,000.]

“It is evident that in 1877 we had very nearly reached the limit of

possible reduction, for the aggregate expenditures of 1878 show a

reduction below that of the preceding year of less than $2,000,000;

and the expenditures, actual and estimated, for the current year

ending June 30, 1879, are $240,000,000. It thus appears that 1878

was the turning-point from which, under the influence of the

elements of normal growth, we may expect a constant, though it ought

to be a small, annual increase of expenditures.”

If anywhere there is to be found a more scientific statesmanship than

this, the average man knows not the place to seek it out. Garfield had

discovered the law of the increase and decrease of national

expenditures. It was as fixed as the laws which lengthen and shorten the

day. Scientists agree that the laws of society are far more difficult of

discovery and of demonstration than the laws of nature. Only one man in

a generation makes any real advance in the study of those laws which

pervade the affairs of men. In his philosophy of public expenditures,

James A. Garfield was that man of his political generation. On March 5,

1874, in another speech on the same topic, he unfolded the philosophy

and laws of growth of the public debt. As usual, it is an illumination

of a vast and foggy subject. It is impossible to give, in our already

crowded pages, even a synopsis of this address.

There can be no question that Garfield was the most perfect master of

the themes of revenue and expenditure in his generation. With the

exception of the tariff, they were not questions which could be brought

into politics. In their nature, they were so dry and complicated that

the House itself, much less the people, knew but little of the enormous

labor performed by General Garfield on the subject. He applied his

immense energies to the task as cheerfully as if the questions were

those of the next campaign, instead of being known only in the

committee-room. His research would gain him no contemporary laurels, his

toil bring him no applause. But he grappled with the monster of public

debt, which had its clutch on England’s throat, and was reaching toward

the New Republic. He who knew so well how to thrill the audience and

shake the building with plausive thunders, embodied the results of his

work in speeches, which his friends possibly thought impractical and

certainly tiresome. They lie embalmed in the mighty mausoleum of the

_Congressional Record_, hidden away from the prying eyes of mankind.

Some future statesman, with more industry or genius than his

contemporaries, will, perchance, come with pick and shovel to excavate

and disinter the buried children of the brain. If so, like the

recently-discovered remains at Mycenæ and Thebes, they will be

pronounced of royal blood.

We now pass to the last branch of the subject discussed in this chapter.

This relates to the record of Garfield in relation to questions

concerning the general character and tendency of American institutions.

This question opens the door to what would make a volume of General

Garfield’s speeches. Under a rigid necessity of condensation, we can

only give broken extracts from three addresses.

On July 2, 1873, before the students of the Western Reserve College, at

Hudson, Ohio, he spoke on—

THE FUTURE OF THE REPUBLIC.

“What do men mean when they predict the immortality of any thing

earthly?

“The first Napoleon was one day walking through the galleries of the

Louvre, filled with the wonders of art which he had stolen from the

conquered capitals of Europe. As he passed the marvelous picture of

Peter Martyr, one of the seven masterpieces of the world, he

overheard an enthusiastic artist exclaim: ‘Immortal work!’ Turning

quickly upon his heel, the Emperor asked: ‘What is the average life

of an oil-painting?’ ‘Five hundred years,’ answered the artist.

‘Immortal!’ the Corsican scornfully repeated as he passed on,

thinking doubtless of Austerlitz and Marengo. Six years ago the

wonderful picture of Peter Martyr was dissolved in the flames of a

burning church at Venice, and, like Austerlitz, is now only a memory

and a dream.

“When the great lyric poet of Rome ventured to predict immortality

for his works, he could think of no higher human symbol of

immortality than the Eternal City and her institutions, crowded with

seven centuries of glorious growth; and so Horace declared that his

verses would be remembered as long as the high-priest of Apollo and

the silent vestal virgin should climb the steps of the Capitol.

Fifteen centuries ago the sacred fires of Vesta went out, never to

be rekindled. For a thousand years Apollo has had no shrine, no

priest, no worshiper on the earth. The steps of the Capitol, and the

temples that crowned it, live only in dreams, and to-day the

antiquary digs and disputes among the ruins, and is unable to tell

us where on the Capitoline hill the great citadel of Rome stood.

“There is much in the history of dead empires to sadden and

discourage our hope for the permanence of any human institution. But

a deeper study reveals the fact that nations have perished only when

their institutions have ceased to be serviceable to the human race;

when their faith has become an empty form, and the destruction of

the old is indispensable to the growth of the new. Growth is better

than permanence; and permanent growth is better than all. Our faith

is large in time; and we—

“‘Doubt not through the ages, an increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.’

“It matters little what may be the forms of national institutions,

if the life, freedom, and growth of society are secured. To save the

life of a nation, it is sometimes necessary to discard the old form

and make room for the new growth; for—

“‘Old decays but foster new creations;

Bones and ashes feed the golden corn;

Fresh elixirs wander every moment

Down the veins through which the live part feeds its child, the life

unborn.’

“There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction determine

the condition of a nation—the forces of repression and expression.

The one acts from without—limits, curbs, restrains. The other acts

from within—expands, enlarges, propels. Constitutional forms,

statutory limitations, conservative customs belong to the first. The

free play of individual life, the opinion and action belong to the

second. If these forces be happily balanced, if there be a wise

conservation and correlation of both, a nation may enjoy the double

blessing of progress and permanence.

“How are these forces acting upon our nation at the present time?

“Our success has been so great hitherto, we have passed safely

through so many perils which at the time seemed almost fatal, that

we may assume that the Republic will continue to live and prosper,

unless it shall be assailed by dangers which outnumber and outweigh

the elements of its strength. It is idle to boast of what we are,

and what we are to be, unless at the same time we compare our

strength with the magnitude of our dangers.

“What, then, are our dangers: and how can they be conquered?...

“In the first place, our great dangers are not from without. We do

not live by the consent of any other nation. We must look within to

find the elements of danger. The first and most obvious of these is

territorial expansion—overgrowth; the danger that we shall break in

pieces by our own weight. This has been the commonplace of

historians and publicists for many centuries; and its truth has

found many striking illustrations in the experience of mankind. But

we have fair ground for believing that new conditions and new forces

have nearly, if not wholly, removed the ground of this danger.

Distance, estrangement, isolation have been overcome by the recent

amazing growth in the means of intercommunion. For political and

industrial purposes, California and Massachusetts are nearer

neighbors to-day than were Philadelphia and Boston in the days of

the Revolution. The people of all our thirty-seven States know more

of each other’s affairs than the Vermonter knew of his Virginia

neighbor’s fifty years ago. It was distance, isolation, ignorance of

separate parts that broke the cohesive force of the great empires of

antiquity. Public affairs are now more public, and private less

private, than in former ages. The Railroad, the Telegraph, and the

Press, have virtually brought our citizens, with their opinions and

industries, face to face; and they live almost in each other’s

sight. The leading political, social, and industrial events of this

day will be reported and discussed at more than two millions of

American breakfast-tables to-morrow morning. Public opinion is kept

in constant exercise and training. It keeps itself constantly in

hand—ready to approve, condemn, and command. It may be wrong, it may

be tyrannical; but it is all-pervading, and constitutes, more than

ever before, a strong band of nationality.

“After all, territory is but the body of a nation. The people who

inhabit its hills and its valleys are its soul, its spirit, its

life. In them dwells its hope of immortality. Among them, if

anywhere, are to be found its chief elements of destruction.”

In the latter part of the address, he discussed Lord Macaulay’s famous

letter, in which he predicted that, with universal suffrage, our

Republic was all sail and no ballast; that when the country was

populated like Europe, the Government would fall in the inevitable

conflict between labor and capital.

“With all my heart I repel that letter as false. My first answer is

this: No man who has not lived among us can understand one thing

about our institutions; no man who has been born and reared under

monarchical governments can understand the vast difference between

theirs and ours. How is it in monarchical governments? Their society

is one series of caste upon caste. Down at the bottom, like the

granite rocks in the crust of the earth, lie the great body of

laboring men. An Englishman told me not long ago that in twenty-five

years of careful study of the agricultural class of England, he had

never known one who was born and reared in the ranks of farm

laborers that rose above his class and became a well-to-do citizen.

That is a most terrible sentence, that three millions of people

should lie at the bottom of society, with no power to rise. Above

them the gentry, the hereditary capitalist; above them, the

nobility; above them, the royalty; and, crowning all, the

sovereign—all impassable barriers of caste.

“No man born under such institutions can understand the mighty

difference between them and us in this country. Thank God, and thank

the fathers of the Republic who made, and the men who carried out

the promises of the Declaration, that in this country there are no

classes, fixed and impassable. Here society is not fixed in

horizontal layers, like the crust of the earth, but as a great New

England man said, years ago, it is rather like the ocean, broad,

deep, grand, open, and so free in all its parts that every drop that

mingles with the yellow sand at the bottom may rise through all the

waters, till it gleams in the sunshine on the crest of the highest

waves. So it is here in our free society, permeated with the light

of American freedom. There is no American boy, however poor, however

humble, orphan though he may be, that, if he have a clear head, a

true heart, a strong arm, he may not rise through all the grades of

society, and become the crown, the glory, the pillar of the State.

“Again, in depicting the dangers of universal suffrage, Macaulay

leaves wholly out of the account the great counterbalancing force of

universal education. He contemplates the government delivered over

to a vast multitude of ignorant, vicious men, who have learned no

self-control, who have never comprehended the national life, and who

will wield the ballot solely for personal and selfish ends. If this

were indeed the necessary condition of Democratic communities, it

would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to escape the logic of

Macaulay’s letter. And here is a real peril—the danger that we shall

rely upon the mere extent of the suffrage as a national safeguard.

We can not safely, even for a moment, lose sight of the _quality_ of

the suffrage, which is more important than its quantity.

* * * * *

“Our faith in the Democratic principle rests upon the belief that

intelligent men will see that their highest political good is in

liberty, regulated by just and equal laws; and that in the

distribution of political power it is safe to follow the maxim,

‘Each for all, and all for each.’ We confront the dangers of the

suffrage by the blessings of universal education.”

We present next a brief extract from an address delivered February 11,

1879,

ON THE RELATION OF THE GOVERNMENT TO SCIENCE.

“What ought to be the relation of the National Government to

science? What, if any thing, ought we to do in the way of promoting

science? For example, if we have the power, would it be wise for

Congress to appropriate money out of the Treasury to employ

naturalists to find out all that is to be known of our American

birds. Ornithology is a delightful and useful study; but would it be

wise for Congress to make an appropriation for the advancement of

that science? In my judgment manifestly not. We would thereby make

one favored class of men the rivals of all the ornithologists who in

their private way, following the bent of their genius, may be

working out the results of science in that field. I have no doubt

that an appropriation out of our Treasury for that purpose would be

a positive injury to the advancement of science, just as an

appropriation to establish a church would work injury to religion.

“Generally the desire of our scientific men is to be let alone to

work in free competition with all the scientific men of the world;

to develop their own results, and get the credit of them, each for

himself; not to have the Government enter the lists as a rival of

private enterprise.

“As a general principle, therefore, the United States ought not to

interfere in matters of science, but should leave its development to

the free, voluntary action of our great third estate, the people

themselves.

“In this non-interference theory of the Government I do not go to

the extent of saying that we should do nothing for education—for

primary education. That comes under another consideration—the

necessity of the nation to protect itself, and the consideration

that it is cheaper and wiser to give education than to build jails.

But I am speaking now of the higher sciences.

“To the general principle I have stated, there are a few obvious

exceptions which should be clearly understood when we legislate on

the subject. In the first place the Government should aid all sorts

of scientific inquiry that are necessary to the intelligent exercise

of its own functions.

“For example, as we are authorized by the Constitution, and

compelled by necessity, to build and maintain light-houses on our

coast and establish fog-signals, we are bound to make all necessary

scientific inquiries in reference to light and its laws, sound and

its laws—to do whatever in the way of science is necessary to

achieve the best results in lighting our coasts and warning our

mariners of danger. So, when we are building iron-clads for our

navy, or casting guns for our army, we ought to know all that is

scientifically possible to be known about the strength of materials

and the laws of mechanics which apply to such structures. In short,

wherever in exercising any of the necessary functions of the

Government, scientific inquiry is needed; let us make it to the

fullest extent, and at the public expense.

“There is another exception to the general rule of leaving science

to the voluntary action of the people. Wherever any great popular

interest, affecting whole classes, possibly all classes of the

community, imperatively need scientific investigation, and private

enterprise can not accomplish it, we may wisely intervene and help,

where the Constitution gives us authority. For example, in

discovering the origin of yellow fever, and the methods of

preventing its ravages, the nation should do, for the good of all,

what neither the States nor individuals can accomplish. I might

perhaps include, in a third exception, those inquiries which, in

consequence of their great magnitude and cost, can not be

successfully made by private individuals. Outside these three

classes of inquiries, the Government ought to keep its hands off,

and leave scientific experiment and inquiry to the free competition

of those bright, intelligent men whose genius leads them into the

fields of research.”

Passing abruptly from valley to mountain-peak, we present the substance

of one of the most characteristic and original speeches mentioned in

this book. It was delivered March 29, 1879. Though political in its

immediate object, it will probably be remembered and quoted from as long

as the name of Garfield lingers on the lips of men. The speaker states

the question before the House better than any one else could do.

REVOLUTION IN CONGRESS.

“Let me, in the outset, state as carefully as I may, the precise

situation. At the last session, all our ordinary legislative work

was done, in accordance with the usages of the House and the Senate,

except as to two bills. Two of the twelve great appropriation bills

for the support of the Government were agreed to in both Houses as

to every matter of detail concerning the appropriation proper. We

were assured by the committees of conference in both bodies that

there would be no difficulty in adjusting all differences in

reference to the amount of money to be appropriated and the objects

of its appropriation. But the House of Representatives proposed

three measures of distinctly independent legislation; one upon the

Army Appropriation Bill, and two upon the Legislative Appropriation

Bill. The three grouped together are briefly these: first, the

substantial modification of certain sections of the law relating to

the use of the army; second, the repeal of the jurors’ test oath;

and third, the repeal of the laws regulating elections of members of

Congress.

“These three propositions of legislation were insisted upon by the

House, but the Senate refused to adopt them. So far it was an

ordinary proceeding, one which occurs frequently in all legislative

bodies. The Senate said to us, through their conferees: ‘We are

ready to pass the appropriation bills, but are unwilling to pass, as

riders, the three legislative measures you ask us to pass.’

Thereupon the House, through its conference committee, made the

following declaration. And, in order that I may do exact justice, I

read from the speech of the distinguished Senator from Kentucky [Mr.

Beck]:

“‘The Democratic conferees on the part of the House seem determined

that unless those rights were secured to the people—’

“Alluding to the three points I have named—‘in the bill sent to the

Senate they would refuse, under their constitutional right, to make

appropriations to carry on the Government, if the dominant majority

in the Senate insisted upon the maintenance of these laws and

_refused to consent_ to their appeal.’

“Then, after stating that if the position they had taken compelled

an extra session, and that the new Congress would offer the

repealing bills separately, and forecasting what would happen when

the new House should be under no necessity of coercing the Senate,

he declared that—

“‘If, however, the President of the United States, in the exercise

of the power vested in him, should see fit to veto the bills thus

presented to him, ... then I have no doubt those same amendments

will be again made part of the appropriation bills, and it will be

for the President to determine whether he will block the wheels of

Government and refuse to accept necessary appropriations rather than

allow the representatives of the people to repeal odious laws which

they regard as subversive of their rights and privileges.... Whether

that course is right or wrong, it will be adopted, and I have no

doubt adhered to, no matter what happens with the appropriation

bills.’

“That was the proposition made by the Democracy in Congress at the

close of the Congress now dead.

“Another distinguished Senator [Mr. Thurman]—and I may properly

refer to Senators of a Congress not now in existence—reviewing the

situation, declared, in still more succinct terms:

“‘We claim the right, which the House of Commons in England

established after two centuries of contest, to say we will not grant

the money of the people unless there is a redress of grievances.’

“These propositions were repeated with various degrees of vehemence

by the majority in the House.

“The majority in the Senate and the minority on this floor expressed

the deepest anxiety to avoid an extra session and to avert the

catastrophe thus threatened—the stoppage of the Government. They

pointed out the danger to the country and its business interests of

an extra session of Congress, and expressed their willingness to

consent to any compromise consistent with their views of duty which

should be offered—not in the way of coercion but in the way of fair

adjustment—and asked to be met in a spirit of just accommodation on

the other side. Unfortunately no spirit of adjustment was manifested

in reply to their advances. And now the new Congress is assembled:

and after ten days of caucus deliberation, the House of

Representatives has resolved, substantially, to reaffirm the

positions of its predecessors.

THE VOLUNTARY POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT.

“I had occasion, at a late hour of the last Congress, to say

something on what may be called the voluntary element in our

institutions. I spoke of the distribution of the powers of

Government. First, to the nation; second, to the States; and third,

the reservation of power to the people themselves.

“I called attention to the fact that under our form of government

the most precious rights that men can possess on this earth are not

delegated to the nation, nor to the States, but are reserved to the

third estate—the people themselves. I called attention to the

interesting fact that lately the chancellor of the German Empire

made the declaration that it was the chief object of the existence

of the German government to defend and maintain the religion of

Jesus Christ—an object in reference to which our Congress is

absolutely forbidden by the Constitution to legislate at all.

Congress can establish no religion; indeed, can make no law

respecting it, because in the view of our fathers—the founders of

our government—religion was too precious a right to intrust its

interests by delegation to any body. Its maintenance was left to the

voluntary action of the people themselves.

“In continuation of that thought, I wish now to speak of the

voluntary element inside our Government—a topic that I have not

often heard discussed, but one which appears to me of vital

importance in any comprehensive view of our institutions.

“Mr. Chairman, viewed from the stand-point of a foreigner, our

Government may be said to be the feeblest on the earth. From our

stand-point, and with our experience, it is the mightiest. But why

would a foreigner call it the feeblest? He can point out a

half-dozen ways in which it can be destroyed without violence. Of

course, all governments may be overturned by the sword; but there

are several ways in which our Government may be annihilated without

the firing of a gun.

“For example, if the people of the United States should say we will

elect no Representatives to the House of Representatives. Of course,

this is a violent supposition; but suppose they do not, is there any

remedy? Does our Constitution provide any remedy whatever? In two

years there would be no House of Representatives; of course no

support of the Government, and no Government. Suppose, again, the

States should say, through their Legislatures, we will elect no

Senators. Such abstention alone would absolutely destroy this

Government; and our system provides no process of compulsion to

prevent it.

“Again, suppose the two Houses were assembled in their usual order,

and a majority of one, in this body or in the Senate should firmly

band themselves together and say, we will vote to adjourn the moment

the hour of meeting arrives, and continue so to vote at every

session during our two years of existence; the Government would

perish, and there is no provision of the Constitution to prevent it.

Or again, if a majority of one of either body should declare that

they would vote down, and did vote down, every bill to support the

Government by appropriations, can you find in the whole range of our

judicial or our executive authority any remedy whatever? A Senator,

or a member of this House is free, and may vote ‘no,’ on every

proposition. Nothing but his oath and his honor restrains him. Not

so with the executive and judicial officers. They have no power to

destroy this Government. Let them travel an inch beyond the line of

the law, and they fall within the power of impeachment. But, against

the people who create Representatives; against the Legislatures who

create Senators; against Senators and Representatives in these

Halls, there is no power of impeachment; there is no remedy, if, by

abstention or by adverse votes, they refuse to support the

Government.

“At a first view, it would seem strange that a body of men so wise

as our fathers were, should have left a whole side of their fabric

open to these deadly assaults; but on a closer view of the case

their wisdom will appear. What was their reliance? This: The

sovereign of this nation, the God-crowned and Heaven-anointed

sovereign, in whom resides ‘the State’s collected will,’ and to whom

we all owe allegiance, is the people themselves. Inspired by love of

country and by a deep sense of obligation to perform every public

duty; being themselves the creators of all the agencies and forces

to execute their own will, and choosing from themselves their

representatives to express that will in the forms of law, it would

have been like a suggestion of suicide to assume that any of these

voluntary powers would be turned against the life of the Government.

Public opinion—that great ocean of thought from whose level all

heights and depths are measured—was trusted as a power amply able,

and always willing, to guard all the approaches on that side of the

Constitution from any assault on the life of the nation.

“Up to this hour our sovereign has never failed us. There has never

been such a refusal to exercise those primary functions of

sovereignty as either to endanger or cripple the Government; nor

have the majority of the representatives of that sovereign in either

House of Congress ever before announced their purpose to use their

voluntary powers for its destruction. And now, for the first time in

our history, and I will add for the first time for at least two

centuries in the history of any English speaking nation, it is

proposed and insisted upon that these voluntary powers shall be used

for the destruction of the Government. I want it distinctly

understood that the proposition which I read at the beginning of my

remarks, and which is the programme announced to the American people

to-day, is this: that if the House can not have its own way in

certain matters, not connected with appropriations, it will so use,

or refrain from using, its voluntary powers as to destroy the

Government.

“Now, Mr. Chairman, it has been said on the other side that when a

demand for the redress of grievances is made, the authority that

runs the risk of stopping and destroying the Government, is the one

that resists the redress. Not so. If gentlemen will do me the honor

to follow my thought for a moment more, I trust I will make this

denial good.

FREE CONSENT THE BASIS OF OUR LAWS.

“Our theory of law is free consent. That is the granite foundation

of our whole superstructure. Nothing in this Republic can be law

without consent—the free consent of the House; the free consent of

the Senate; the free consent of the Executive, or, if he refuse it,

the free consent of two-thirds of these bodies. Will any man deny

that? Will any man challenge a line of the statement that free

consent is the foundation rock of all our institutions? And yet the

programme announced two weeks ago was that if the Senate refused to

consent to the demand of the House, the Government should stop. And

the proposition was then, and the programme is now, that, although

there is not a Senate to be coerced, there is still a third

independent branch in the legislative power of the Government whose

consent is to be coerced at the peril of the destruction of this

Government; that is, if the President, in the discharge of his duty,

shall exercise his plain constitutional right to refuse his consent

to this proposed legislation, the Congress will so use its voluntary

powers as to destroy the Government. This is the proposition which

we confront; and we denounce it as revolution.

“It makes no difference, Mr. Chairman, what the issue is. If it were

the simplest and most inoffensive proposition in the world, yet if

you demand, as a matter of coercion, that it shall be adopted

against the free consent prescribed in the Constitution, every

fair-minded man in America is bound to resist you as much as though

his own life depended upon his resistance.

“Let it be understood that I am not arguing the merits of any one of

the three amendments. I am discussing the proposed method of

legislation; and I declare that it is against the Constitution of

our country. It is revolutionary to the core, and is destructive of

the fundamental element of American liberty, the free consent of all

the powers that unite to make laws.

“In opening this debate, I challenge all comers to show a single

instance in our history where this consent has been coerced. This is

the great, the paramount issue, which dwarfs all others into

insignificance. Victor Hugo said, in his description of the battle

of Waterloo, that the struggle of the two armies was like the

wrestling of two giants, when a chip under the heel of one might

determine the victory. It may be that this amendment is the chip

under your heel, or it may be that it is the chip on our shoulder.

As a chip it is of small account to you or to us; but when it

represents the integrity of the Constitution and is assailed by

revolution, we fight for it as if it were a Koh-i-noor of purest

water. [Applause.]

“The proposition now is, that after fourteen years have passed, and

not one petition from one American citizen has come to us asking

that this law be repealed; while not one memorial has found its way

to our desks complaining of the law, so far as I have heard, the

Democratic House of Representatives now hold if they are not

permitted to force upon another House and upon the Executive against

their consent the repeal of a law that Democrats made, this refusal

shall be considered a sufficient ground for starving this Government

to death. That is the proposition which we denounce as revolution.

[Applause on the Republican side.]

“And here I ask the forbearance of gentlemen on the other side while

I offer a suggestion which I make with reluctance. They will bear me

witness that I have in many ways shown my desire that the wounds of

the war should be healed; that the grass that has grown green over

the graves of both armies might symbolize the returning spring of

friendship and peace between citizens who were lately in arms

against each other.

“But I am compelled by the necessities of the case to refer to a

chapter of our recent history. The last act of Democratic domination

in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and dramatic,

perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic party said to the Republicans,

‘If you elect the man of your choice as President of the United

States we will shoot your Government to death;’ and the people of

this country, refusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted

as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln President of

the United States.

“Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of

Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling

down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we

recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all

the risks, and fight it out on the open field. Notwithstanding your

utmost efforts to destroy it, the Government was saved.

“To-day, after eighteen years’ defeat, the book of your domination

is again opened, and your first act awakens every bitter memory, and

threatens to destroy the confidence which your professions of

patriotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of the history that

recorded your last act of power in 1861, and you have now signalized

your return to power by beginning a second chapter at the same page;

not this time by a heroic act that declares war on the battle-field,

but you say if all the legislative powers of the Government do not

consent to let you tear certain laws out of the statute-book, you

will not shoot our Government to death as you tried to do in the

first chapter; but you declare that if we do not consent against our

will, if you can not coerce an independent branch of this Government

against its will, to allow you to tear from the statute-books some

laws put there by the will of the people, you will starve the

Government to death. [Great applause on the Republican side.]

“Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know

that the American people will see any great difference. The end, if

successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you

have it in your power to kill this Government; you have it in your

power by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve-centers of

our Constitution with the paralysis of death; and you have declared

your purpose to do this, if you can not break down that fundamental

element of free consent which, up to this hour, has always ruled in

the legislation of this Government.”

The question stated at the beginning of this chapter is: Was Garfield a

Statesman? In view of what the reader has perused since that question

was put, it must at this point be restated—Was Garfield _not_ a

Statesman? The burden of proof has shifted. It is, of course, too soon

to form a complete estimate of Garfield’s stature. We are too near to

the man we loved. It will be for some future generation, farther removed

from the spell of his name, and more able calmly to contemplate his life

apart from the bloody death. This is the task for the historian of the

future.

But what we say enters into the contemporary estimate of the dead

President’s life and work. While the relative height of the mountain

peak can only be told by viewing it from a long distance, where the

entire range pictures its upper outline on the eye, the people who dwell

at the foot of the mountain know it as the highest of their

neighborhood. Moreover, some of the strongest objections to the

contemporary estimates of a public man are entirely wanting in the

present case. One of these is the popularity of his opinions or

achievements. Men are apt to overestimate the abilities of a man who

agrees with them. But time and again, on different questions, as in the

currency and the enforcement act, the Wade-Davis manifesto, and the

defense of Bowles and Milligan, we have seen General Garfield, not

merely opposing, but openly defying the opinions of the people who

elected him. When he thought a thing was true, no personal consideration

could affect his public utterance. Such a spectacle is rare indeed in

American politics.

Another reason why the present contemporary estimate of Garfield is more

likely than usual to pass into history is that, in a sense, the

vindication of his policy is already accomplished. When Cromwell died

his work was incomplete. It was only one act in the great drama of the

struggle against kings. The result was unknown at the time. Other fields

were to run red with patriot blood, other monarchs to expire on the

scaffold, before the solution of the deadly struggle should appear. It

was uncertain whether any other government than monarchy was possible.

No man was wise enough to tell, at Cromwell’s death, whether he had

advanced or retarded civilization and progress. But this is a more rapid

age. Events hurry on quickly. The questions growing out of the Civil War

are very largely settled already. The historic genius which sits in

judgment upon men and institutions is no longer in doubt as to those

questions. Similarly, too, the stupendous problem of national finance,

to which Garfield devoted such herculean labor, has reached its

solution. It may be that all men are not willing to surrender yet, but

beyond a doubt the return to a specie basis, and the wonderful

improvement of the times following it, are a vindication of General

Garfield’s statesmanship. It is the same with his position on the Force

Bill and the Tariff. Some things, however, are still incomplete. The

railway problem and the perpetuity of American institutions the future

alone can pass upon; but these are the exceptions. The completeness of

Mr. Lincoln’s work at the time of his assassination was not generally

recognized, but we see it now. So with Garfield’s labors. They were in a

sense complete. We may pass judgment upon them. The vindication of

history is already at hand.

There is still another reason why the contemporary estimate of James A.

Garfield is likely to become permanent. It is because the field of his

principal achievements was not one of popular interest. It was not one

which takes hold of the people’s hearts, and sweeps the popular judgment

from its moorings. It lacked the glamour of military fame. The present

age will hand down to posterity the fame of mighty soldiers, but their

glory must be viewed with some reserve, some mistrust for the present.

Julius Cæsar, who was assassinated as a tyrant, now takes his place at

the head of all secular history. Napoleon Bonaparte, the mention of

whose name has, for three quarters of a century, been enough to convulse

Paris and fill every wall with placards and every street with

barricades, is likely to become the most odious figure of modern times.

Garfield’s chosen field of work, that where his fame must rest, was to

the careless masses dull. Men grow excited over battles, but not a pulse

beats higher over a computation of interest on the public debt. The

stories of marches and sieges thrill the reader a thousand years after

every combatant has been vanquished by the black battalions of Death.

But the most eloquent orator in America finds it difficult to hold an

audience with the discussion of the tariff list or of public

expenditures or of the currency, even when every man in the audience

knows that his pocket is touched. If such discussions are thrown into

newspaper editorials they are but little read. No argument, however

powerful, on the fallacy of fiat money ever drew a tear or roused a

cheer. No table of the reduction of public expenditure is ever greeted

with huzzas. When the news of a victory comes, every corner has a

bonfire and every window an illumination. But the change of the balance

of trade in our favor only awakens a quiet satisfaction in the

merchant’s heart as he glances through the morning papers. A new kind of

gun attracts world-wide attention; it is talked over at every

breakfast-table and described in every paper, but a new theory of

surplus and deficits in the public treasury is utterly unnoticed. We see

no flushed assemblies straining to catch every word that falls from the

orator’s lips as he discusses the tariff on sugar or quinine. But when

Kearney shouts his hoarse note of defiance to capital, the street is

packed with listening thousands.

Hence it is that the man who significantly whispers “Garfield is

overestimated” is more likely to be wrong than right. There is no tide

of popular excitement over his work. The calm conviction of his

abilities is a different thing from the feverish hurrahs of a campaign.

In 1859 his old neighbors in his county had this conviction when they

sent him to the State Senate. From the county, this spread to his

Congressional district; from the district to the State of Ohio; from

Ohio to the Union. It was gradual, and sure.

Garfield’s speeches must be the foundation for his fame. To these

history will turn as a basis for its estimate. The first thing which is

to be said of them, is that they dealt _with the real problems of the

epoch_. That he was a great orator is true; that he was much more than

this is equally true. While other men busied themselves with political

topics Garfield took hold of the great non-political problems of the

time. He refused to view them from a partisan or a personal stand-point.

He grappled with the leviathans of reconstruction, tariff, and currency

in the spirit of the statesman. That he was always right, we are not

prepared to say; that he was right in his views on the great questions

above mentioned, that with regard to them he was a leader of leaders,

seems hardly to admit of a doubt. He was so radical in opinion that on

almost every question he was ahead of his party and the country. This

was the case in his arguments on the status of the rebel States, and

what ought to be done with them; in his arguments in favor of a

reduction of the tariff as prices declined after the war, and in his

discussion of the currency and banking problems. Yet so nearly right was

he that in every one of these instances Congress and the country

gradually moved up to and occupied the position which he had taken in

advance of them.

On the other hand, he was so conservative in practice that on no

question was he ever an extremist. While he was a strong believer in the

nationality of the Republic, and its powers of self-preservation, he

faced the entire North in his opposition to the provisions of the “Force

Bill,” for the suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_ and the

declaration of martial law in a country bleeding at every wound from

war, but in a state of peace. Let no reader omit his speech of April 4,

1871. We say it the more willingly because at the time we thought

Garfield was wrong. While he was a protectionist, he believed in a

tariff which avoided both extremes. While he was an original and

unintermittent hard-money man, he believed in the necessity of an

elastic volume of currency. As the end of resumption forbade inflation,

he demanded that every part of the country should have its share of

banks, and the drafts and checks which they threw into the circulation.

Of the variety as well as the quantity of his work, men will not soon

cease to wonder. There were few who could equal him in the discussion of

any one of the great topics of the day, much less all of them. His name

and fame can never be identified with any single question or measure,

for he displayed the same ability on every subject alike.

In other respects he also differed from the men around him. He was a

scholar in the broadest sense. His speeches are absolutely unequaled

anywhere for their scientific method. In their philosophical discussions

they were the product of the ripest scholarship; in their practical

suggestions and arguments, they were, they are the product of the

highest statesmanship.

Finally, a man of more spotless honor and loftier integrity never trod

the earth than James A. Garfield. He lived in an atmosphere of purity

and unselfishness, which, to the average man, is an unknown realm. After

all, there are men enough with intellect in politics, but too few with

character. An estimate of Garfield would be incomplete which failed to

include the inflexible honesty of the great orator and legislator,

whether in affairs public or private. History shows that while no

institutions ever decayed because of the intellectual weakness of the

people among which they flourished, empire after empire has perished

from the face of the earth through the decay of morals in its people and

its public men. History repeats itself. What has been, will be. Name

after name of the great men of the new Republic is stained with private

immorality and public crime. The noblest part of Garfield, with all his

genius, was his spotless character. There was, there is, no greater,

purer, manlier man.

“His tongue was framed to music,

His hand was armed with skill,

His face was the mold of beauty,

And his heart the throne of will.”

The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death. · 第 11 / 18 章

“As a matter of fact, the poor man, the laboring-man, can not get