From boyhood he had believed in a protective tariff, and throughout his active life he was its most trenchant advocate and propagandist. Besides constantly urging it in the columns of _The Tribune_, he appeared as early as 1843 in a public debate on "The Grounds of Protection," with Samuel J. Tilden and Parke Godwin as his opponents. A series of popular essays on the subject were published over his own signature in _The Tribune_ in 1869, and subsequently republished in book form, with a title-page describing protection to home industry as a system of national co-operation for the elevation of labour. He opposed woman suffrage on the ground that the majority of women did not want it and never would, and declared that until woman should "emancipate herself from the thraldom to etiquette," he "could not see how the 'woman's rights theory' is ever to be anything more than a logically defensible abstraction." He aided practical efforts, however, for extending the sphere of woman's employments. He opposed the theatres, and for a time refused to publish their advertisements. He held the most rigid views on the sanctity of marriage and against easy divorce, and vehemently defended them in controversies with Robert Dale Owen and others. He practised and pertinaciously advocated total abstinence from spirituous liquors, but did not regard prohibitory laws as always wise. He denounced the repudiation of state debts or the failure to pay interest on them. He was zealous for Irish repeal, once held a place in the "Directory of the Friends of Ireland," and contributed liberally to its support. He used the occasion of Charles Dickens's first visit to America to urge international copyright, and was one of the few editors to avoid alike the flunkeyism with which Dickens was first received, and the ferocity with which he was assailed after the publication of his _American Notes_. On the occasion of Dickens's second visit to America, Greeley presided at the great banquet given him by the press of the country. He made the first elaborate reports of popular scientific lectures by Louis Agassiz and other authorities. He gave ample hearing to the advocates of phonography and of phonographic spelling. He was one of the most conspicuous advocates of the Pacific railroads, and of many other internal improvements.