'But as soon as a tax, losing its fiscal character, aims at the exclusion of foreign produce, to the detriment of the Treasury itself, in order to raise artificially the price of similar national products, and thus to levy contributions on the community for the advantage of a class, from that instant Protection, or rather robbery, displays itself, and _this_ is the principle which the association proposes to eradicate from the public mind, and to expunge from our laws, independently of all reciprocity, and of the systems which prevail elsewhere. 'Though this association has for its object the complete destruction of the system of protection, it does not follow that it requires or expects such a reformation to be accomplished in a day, as by the stroke of a wand. To return even from evil to good, from an artificial state of things to one more natural, calls for the exercise of much prudence and precaution. To carry out the details belongs to the supreme power--the province of the association is to propagate the principle, and to make it popular. 'As to the means which the association may employ to accomplish its ends, it will never seek for any but what are legal and constitutional. 'Finally, the association has nothing to do with party politics. It does not advocate any particular interest, class or section of the country. It embraces the cause of eternal justice, of peace, of union, of free intercourse, of brotherhood among all men--the cause of public weal, which is identical in every respect with that of the _public consumer_.' Is there a word in this programme which does not show an ardent wish to confirm and strengthen, or rather perhaps to re-establish, in the minds of men the idea of property, perverted, as it is, by the system of Protection? Is it not evident that the interest of commerce is made secondary to the interest of society generally? Remark that the tariff, in itself good or evil in the financial point of view, engages little of our attention. But, as soon as it acts _intentionally_ with a view to Protection, that is to say, as soon as it develops the principle of spoliation, and ignores, in fact, the right of property, we combat it, not as a tariff, but as a system. _It is there_, we say, that we must eradicate the principle from the public mind, in order to blot it from our laws.*