MR. MeKINTLEY'S TRIUMPH.
WE see reason to believe that the effect of Mr. McKinley's election to the Governorship of Ohio has been underrated on this side of the water, and that it may presage another heavy blow to Free-trade. It seems certain that he carried the State as the apostle of Protection ; and if so, it is difficult to believe that the majority at the Presi- dential Election will not be Protectionist. Ohio is by no means a State secure for the Republicans. It was carried last year by the Democrats; it is full of small freeholders, who of all men benefit least by the tariff ; and it was believed that the dearness of everything produced by the high duties would induce them all to vote for Mr. Cleveland's side. It has not been so, however, and the majority secured by Mr. McKinley, who neither hedged nor vacillated, but adhered to his tariff as a necessary condition of national prosperity, certainly shows that the experience of high Protection, with all its results, one of which is so heavy a decline in imports that the revenue of the Union is no longer sufficient to meet the expenses, has in no way daunted the electors. In spite of their object-lesson, they elect the most prominent of Protectionists with enthusiasm, and avowedly hope that his view may sway the election to the Presidency, and so rivet the tariff on the nation for at least five years. Some of them may have been influenced by the silver question, on which Mr. McKinley's opponent was unsound, he desiring free coinage ; but the majority, in voting for Mr. McKinley, voted for the tariff and nothing -else, except perhaps their party. This is evidently Presi- dent Harrison's view in his letter of congratulation, and it is that of many of the best calculators of his side, who un- doubtedly will make of the McKinley Tariff a plank in the platform to be voted by the next Republican Convention. They are right, moreover, from their point of view. The tariff, on the evidence of the electors in Ohio and Penn- sylvania, is dearly no obstacle to their success ; while at lowest it brings to their side an enormous mass of belief, and some of the heaviest pecuniary interests in the country. It has, moreover, one new and most strange attraction, the great fall in the revenue, which deprives the Democrats of their best argument, the existence of a surplus need- lessly dragged out of the pockets of a suffering people. The Customs receipts for tho last four months have fallen off, as compared with the same four months of 1890, by no less a sum than seven millions sterling. The Ameri- cans, like the Australians, detest direct taxation ; and they will be asked by what means, if duties are reduced, they propose to meet the expenses of the Treasury. Are they to put on an income-tax, or break faith with their pen- sioners—a strong voting body in every State—or go back on their own policy of twenty-six years by in- creasing the Debt in a time of profound peace ? The idea that a reduction of duties will produce more money will be stoutly denied, or declared to be an "English fallacy," or derided as opposed to common-sense, and will probably exercise no more influence than it does in Russia.
The condition of the American mind on this question of Protection seems to baffle all reasonable explanation. We can understand very easily that a trade exposed to competition fancies that without competition it would be very prosperous, and that consequently the artisans in that trade would regard Protection as the safeguard of their wages. The ribbon-weavers of Coventry, if any of them are left, believe that doctrine now ; and as regards wheat, so does nearly every farmer in the country. And we can understand that freeholders who want protection for their produce, should be willing, as the price of that protection, to protect every manufactured article. They think, in fact, that they cannot do without incomes, and that they can, if necessary, do without almost all manufactured goods. That is the position at this moment of most peasants in France and Germany, who insist that the Legis- lature shall give them the home market, and in return will endure any duties which other trades may demand. But the farmers of the United States do not want the home market, which is theirs already, but a foreign market ; and their produce is not protected at all, nor, for that matter, threatened at home with any kind of competition. All their interests are in favour of Free-trade; yet a large section of them vote eagerly for the author of one of the highest tariffs ever tried, which distinctly reduces their power to obtain some of the articles which they most desire. They will grow fruit, for example, and desire to sell it abroad, yet consent to a heavy tax on the tinplates without which the fruit cannot be properly " canned " If there were any national need, or if the alternative lay between high duties and direct taxation, their motives could be guessed ; but when the new tariff was proposed, the Treasury was full to bursting, and the lower duties yielded so much money that they might have been reduced one-half without endangering the solvency of the Treasury. There must be some general abstract idea at work which over- comes the usual influence of self-interest ; but what it is, is nearly impossible for an Englishman to find out. It can hardly be the fallacy so much dwelt on by Republican orators, that the superior standard of American wages is kept up by Protection ; for the farmer knows that his own wages, which are the wages of a majority, rise and fall without any legislative intervention. And it can hardly be a secret spite against the foreigner ; for the American is acute, and would hardly feel gratified in his spitefulness by taxing himself. The mania, for it is a mania, may be the result of an idea that, as trade with the foreigner benefits that foreigner, every trade kept at home must in the long-run benefit America ; but if that idea is prevalent, Europe has reckoned the intelligence of Americans much too highly. Perhaps that is the true explanation, after all. The fifty-acre freeholders of Ohio, in spite of their excellent schools and their numerous elections, are peasants still,—that is, little cultivators who beyond their cultivation know little, and are consequently much at the mercy of interested orators. Americans themselves will reject that interpretation with scorn ; but then, how do they account, after experience of his tariff, for the election of Mr. McKinley, and the large chance which exists that the whole Republican Party may select him as the most popular candidate for the Presidency to be_found within the States ?
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