After so many historical illustrations of the evil effects of abandoning the policy of protection for that of a revenue tariff, we are again confronted by the suggestion that the principle of protection shall be eliminated from our tariff legislation. Have we not had enough of such experiments? Does not the history of our tariff legislation tell us that every revenue tariff has been followed by business and industrial crashes, and that a return to the policy of protection has stimulated our industries and set our throbbing workshops again in motion? [Cheers.] And yet, again and again, the Democratic party comes forward with this pernicious proposition--for it has been from that party always that the proposition to abandon our protective policy and to substitute a revenue tariff has come. [Cries of "That's so!"] I had placed in my hands yesterday a copy of the London News for September 13. The editor says in substance that, judging the purposes of the Democratic party by the executive message of last December, the English people were justified in believing that party meant free trade; but if they were to accept the more recent utterances of its leader, protesting that that was not their purpose, then the editor thus states the issue presented by the Democratic party. I read but a single sentence: "It is, at any rate, a contest between protection and something that is not protection." [Prolonged and wild cheering.] It is not of the smallest interest to you what that other thing is. [Continued cheering.] It is enough to know that it is not protection. [Renewed cheering.] Those who defend the present Democratic policy declare that our people not only pay the tariff duty upon all imported goods, but that a corresponding amount is added to the price of every domestic competing article. That for every dollar that is paid into the Treasury in the form of a customs duty the people pay several dollars more in the enhanced cost of the domestic competing article. Those who honestly hold such doctrines cannot stop short of the absolute destruction of our protective system. [Cries of "No, no!"] The man who preaches such doctrines and denies that he is on the road to free trade is like the man who takes passage on a train scheduled from here to Cincinnati without a stop, and when the train is speeding on its way at the rate of forty miles an hour, denies that he is going to Cincinnati. [Great laughter and cheering.] The impulse of such logic draws toward free trade as surely and swiftly as that engine pulls the train to its appointed destination. It inevitably brings us to the English rule of levying duties only upon such articles as we do not produce at home, such as tea and coffee. That is purely revenue tariff, and is practically free trade.