or importer in his district feel himself injured by its operations, and few are the manufacturers or importers who do not take direct steps to safeguard their interests — all uniting to make the life of the manager of the bill miserable until it is passed. Though at all stages Morrill had loyal friends, such as his colleague Davis, John Sherman, the acting Chairman of the Committee, and even Democrats like Pendleton of Ohio, who, while warning him that he should vote against the bill, meantime lent valuable aid, he was nearly exhausted by the strain, so that, as he says, "weary and worn with unending day and night labor on the Committee of Ways and Means," he longed to retire from Congress. Not less wearing than the preparation of the bill was the long task of steering it through the shoals and past the dangerous reefs of the parliamentary channel, where many an enemy takes his last revenge by discharging against it a hostile motion, or diverting its course into a dead-water where there is no steerage way. And there was the everpresent sectional hostility which was rapidly making of Congress a battle-field where the forces, soon to meet in arms, tried their skill in wordy battles to the applause and hisses of the crowded galleries.

The bill met its first obstacle when it was brought in by the Committee. On the 12th of March, 1860, Morrill rose and in the usual phrase addressed the Speaker, "I desire to report from the Committee on Ways and Means a bill to provide for the payment of outstanding Treasury Notes, to authorize a loan, to regulate and fix the duties on imports, and for other purposes." Under ordinary circumstances this formality would have been met with acquiescence, but the Democratic members were in bad temper over the Homestead Bill which had just passed to their discomfiture, and their general disposition to regard all that came from a New England source with hostility being intensified, they blocked

the way. The bill could not be reported; in fact it was not reported until a new rule of procedure had been passed providing that the reception of bills should not be obstructed. Under this new rule Morrill introduced his bill on March 19th with the somewhat curt announcement, “I am directed by the Committee on Ways and Means to report a bill," etc. He then moved a resolution that the bill be printed and a thousand extra copies made.

The debate that followed was earnest, acrimonious, and at times embittered. It was difficult in that epoch to conduct ordinary business because the accursed slavery issue was always at the speaker's elbow, coloring every motive and reading dark purposes into the most innocent remark. Although both the President and the Secretary of the Treasury had urged that such a measure as the Morrill Bill be passed, their followers in the House showed a great unwillingness to support it, lest it conceal some Northern device. As a rule Southerners were for free trade, and held it as a grievance, even to the extent of using it as one of the excuses for secession, that the North enriched itself at their expense through the tariff. Nor could it be denied that the present bill gave some ground for attack. It was undoubtedly devised with the intention of winning over the State of Pennsylvania by the iron tariffs and securing some of the Western States by the wool tariff. Its strongest support came from Pennsylvania and it justified the hopes of its sponsors in the election of the next fall. "Thad" Stevens, the most formidable parliamentary combatant on the floor, of whom Blaine remarks, "He had the reputation of being somewhat unscrupulous as to political methods," supported the bill with his habitual trenchant force. To divert the Southern members from their usual attack, he revived an ancient bogy, "British gold," that recalls the device of the "bloody shirt" in 1880 and 1884. He repeated a journalist's charge that

"the tariff of 1846 was produced by the gold of England,” but "In 1850... the Queen Victoria party was no longer in power here." It seems a rather creaky dragon to expose to daylight, but the monster was probably more intended for duty in the rural districts of Pennsylvania than in Congress. Morrill, on the other hand, while he did not disdain in his set speeches to make use of the anti-British sentiment of Vermont, devoted himself in debate to the terms of the bill. As always, he was conciliatory and strove to win the Southern votes by a mild and persuasive address. To the objection that the bill was a protective measure he replied, "There are no duties proposed on any article for the simple purpose of protection alone," but rather, "following the great models of free trade, we have added a large number of articles not produced in the country and that cannot be produced here." Further to mollify Southern opinion, sensitive upon the lack of manufactures in the South, he added, "The average rates of duty upon manufactured articles are not higher, but rather lower, than they are now."

His set speech of April 23d, widely used as a campaign document in the succeeding fall, was not one of his great speeches because it touched too many subjects, but it was skillfully drawn. With the tone of explaining and excusing the errors of the Buchanan Administration, he succeeded in exposing its ineptitude and incapacity. He showed how the Secretary of the Treasury had underestimated the imports by over $150,000,000 and the revenue by $10,000,000, and how, while proclaiming that "the idea of increasing the public debt to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government should not be entertained for a moment," the debt had actually been increased by $47,000,000. Then, turning to the necessity for a revision of the tariff to provide revenue and meet the debt, he defended his bill as a moderate measure. He attacked free trade as a foreign, a British, doctrine.

"Free trade abjures patriotism and boasts of cosmopolitanism.... The most insidious scalping-knives we have to encounter are British free trade and British reciprocity." But for protection he had little to say. "The principles upon which the present tariff is founded do not necessarily raise the question of protection per se. Our manufacturers have made such advances that a revenue tariff, with proper discriminations, will be found, in most instances, all that may be required for a fair share of prosperity. No prohibitory duties have been aimed at; but to place our people upon a level of fair competition with the rest of the world is thought to be no more than reasonable. Most of the highest duties fixed upon have been so fixed more with a view to revenue than protection." Even the measure of protection now provided would soon be unnecessary; for "we have made more rapid strides in cheapening manufactures, and therefore lessening the necessity of incidental protection, than ever England made herself in any equal period of time.... The British tariff existing in 1842, with the difference of circumstances, was more discriminating and afforded more incidental protection than what we ask for America now. The pupil will soon overtake his mistress."

When he came to discuss the tariff on cottons he made a direct appeal to the South. "Many of the Southern States have really more at stake in cotton manufactures than many of the Northern, or than several of the New England States. ...A tariff to them, in my humble judgment, is a more vital necessity, and far less burdensome, than to any other States in the Union. They have more to gain by it, and less to lose."

In spite of the fact that the Administration admitted the necessity of such a revenue measure and was, in theory at least, committed to the support of it, the course of the bill through the House was anything but smooth. Its opponents

adopted the familiar method of loading it with amendments calculated to nullify its provisions, so that when the time came for a vote on it, whatever virtue it had possessed was gone. But the Republicans felt that a tariff bill must be passed. How it was finally accomplished has been told by Morrill himself: "John Sherman was acting Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means when we had to bring it to a vote. He came to me and said, 'Have you a clear copy of the bill as you want it to be? If you have, give it to me and I will have it passed.' The bill was being considered in Committee of the Whole at the time, and I went to the Clerk's desk and had to write as fast as I could in order to get the enactment into its proper form.... At a favorable opportunity a motion was made to discharge the committee and resume the regular business. Then the bill was reported to the House by Sherman and moved as a substitute for the bill which had been under consideration in Committee of the Whole, and was passed under the 'previous question" which precluded debate. It was thus passed by skillful parliamentary tactics, the bill as finally voted never having been discussed a parliamentary device to which Morrill was no stranger, but had availed himself of when his Land Grant College Bill was before the House.

Thus the Republicans were able to go before the country in the campaign of 1860 with a protective tariff bill passed in the face of Democratic opposition and blocked in the Senate by Democratic votes. The bill became one of the issues in Pennsylvania, the pivotal State in the great struggle; there Morrill went in October in response to the appeal, "Your tariff record will help us. All must be done that can be," and contributed to the victory which seated Lincoln in the White House.

It was the 10th of May when Morrill's bill passed the House, but months were to elapse and great events were to