Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1891 — An English Opinion of McKinleylsm. [ARTICLE]

An English Opinion of McKinleylsm.

W. S. Lilly, the eminent English essayist, has an article in the March Forum, in which he expresses his opinion of the McKinley law in very forcible terms. Mr. Lilly is evidently no believer in the Cobden typo of free trade, to which he refers contemptuously as “Cobden’s freetrade nostrum and calico millennium. ” Indeed the writer goes to the length of saying: “That weighty political considerations may be urged on behalf qf a protectionist policy in America, and, indeed, in most ether countries, I am far from denying.” This sounds very much like an indorsement of one of the familiar positions of the protectionists. Mr. Lilly, however, does not bolieve that any such “weighty political considerations” had any part in the passing of the McKinley bill. This is his opinion of the McKinley law: “Here is a measure which impoverishes the largest industry in the Republic, which sensibly increases the cost of living, which confers upon the President the power of imposing or remitting taxes to the amount of fifty or sixty million dollars annua'ly; a power certainly exercised by no European monarch. And what Is the explanation of this singular measure? As lam informed, the explanation Is simply this: that It has been devised In order to put money into the already overflowing purses of a gang of monopolists, and driven through the two houses by the most nefarious means. * * * * * There seems to be irrefragable evidence that the American people is in hopeless bondage to pdrlmpt wirepullers, and is sold them, with hardly the pretense of concealment, to wealthy robbers—the financiers of speculative trusts and rings, which are really nothing else but organized and state-pro-tected swindling.”