Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1889 — Protection and the Constitution. [ARTICLE]

Protection and the Constitution.

The average free-trade preacher has a magazine of invective ready to launch against the policy of Protection to Home Industries whenever occasion may require. Not content with results when discussion is confined to the expediency of the protective policy, its opponents speedily resorted to denunciation in the course of which the listener is soon confronted with the assertion that Protection is unconstitutional. This plea, comparatively a modern one—never having been made during the lifetime of the framers of the Constitution—if substantiated, would insure the triumph of the free trade policy, and would seem to afford the readiest mode of attack open to the tariff reforiner. Why Das the power of Congress to enact laws for the defense and building up of domestic industries not been assailed in the practical manner here indicated, if the men who oppose that policy believe what they preach to others? Almost daily, questions are arising under the enforcement of our tariff laws, largely the outgrowth of attempts by practical free traders to evade the payment of specified duties on foreign products. Every conceivable device has been employed to avoid payment of a tariff from which they could have permanent exemption, if at some stage of adjudication competent courts could be induced to pronounce its enforcement without warrant in the Constitution. The first Congress, composed largely of the same patriots who aided in framing the Constitution, among its first labors passed a law avowedly for the encouragement of dSmestic manufactures. During the discussions accompanying this action no one assailed the proposed law as unconstitutional, and for long years thereafter the fathers and and framers of the Constitution were found differing only upon questions of expediency in the shaping of tariff lawß. It remained for philosophers and theorists of a later day to find out that the men who framed our organic la\v were the first to violate it by insuring the defense of industries then, as now, essential to the growth and independence of the country. If the free-trade preachers believe their own teachings, why does not some one of them get the supreme court to determine the constitutionality of protective-tar-iff laws? With an honorary member of the free-trade Cobden Club appointed as one of said court by the last administration, the prospects for a fovorable d ecision are not likely ever to be better than now. The uso of calomel for derangements of tho liver has ruined many a tine constitution. Those who, Cor similar troubles, have tried Ayer’s Pills testily to their efficiency in thoroughly rem edying the malady, without injury to the system. J. M._Laose Red Clover Co.—Gents: I have been a sufferer for the past five years from rheumatism across the shoulders, and by using your Fluid Extract Red Clover, am entirely relieved; believe it has driven it from my system, and won’t be a weather barometer any longer. Yours Truly, F. D. Dibble, Palmer House, Chicago. ttrC.i ' *«<♦»»•«—■■»•■■-•,. Sec the dollar hat sale at Hemphill > Honan's, Saturday, September 21.