Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1888 — GENERAL BUTTER. [ARTICLE]

GENERAL BUTTER.

Gen. Benj. F. Butler, Friday evening addressed a large audience in Tremont Temple, Boston, upon the tariff and fisheries questions. Theoretically, he said, free trade between all nations, as between all men, is correct in principle; that is, if all nations in all things were exactly of the same footing. But such conditions of equality cannot exist among nations, and, therefore, all theories upon the question of free trade become useless. Said General Butler: “I cite the President on my side as against free trade; but I must confess, at the same time, that the President seems to try to get as near being a free-trader as he can. I believe if he had observed and known, as I know, hoW much a protective tariff has ‘done for American workingmen, his tariff message would never have been penned. It is not his fault, but the laboring man’s misfortune, that he did not know the fact.” The speaker declared his opinion that during the late war we owed to the effort of the protective tariff the means which unheld the unity of the people, the consolidation of our government, the glory of our achievements and the military power of our country, and added: “Is it not a matter of remark that the attempted destruction of our protective system comes from those who did not defend the life of the country during that war, and the majority of them mourn the ‘cause’ which the protective tariff caused to be ‘lost’ to them?” General Butler attacked the Mills bill, and said the question now plainly before the people is, which will the people of this country sustain in carrying on our business—tlie system of our fathers, under which we so greatly prospered, or will they adopt a new experiment, which shall put every financial and industrial question upon a new basis, and introdnee a change in the industries of the farm, the mill and the workshop, and that, too, upon a plan so prepared as to exactly suit our commercial rival and enemy, England?” General Butler then turned to the fisheries question, touching upon various treaties that had been in force between the United States and Great Britain. He said: “I agree with the President that the bill giving him the power of retaliation was a poor bill, unworthy of the dignity of the United States government, and if’ he had vetoed it on that ground I should have been quite inclined to support him. My criticism of the bill is that it contained enactments in regard to keeping vessels and goods of Canadians in the British Dominion of North America out of our ports. When we learn that in these North American British possessions our' vessels are kept out of port, pray why don’t the United States take the bull by the horns —even if his first name is John — and give the President the power and the right, whenever he finds that a single vessel, however small, is kept out of any British port, or’'anywhere unlawfully, to keep out of the ports of the United States every British vessel, however great, until that wrong shall be redressed? Retaliate the wrongs done to* fishermen by Canadians by action against the Cunard steamships sailing under the ensign of the British government, and the thing will be brought to an end. The first question springs up to lip is, ‘ls the President in earnest?’ If yes, let him enforce the retaliation for outrages by the power he has had since March, 1877. It he will do that, he will show that his paper is the message of a statesman and not of a campaigner on the stump.”