Those who teach that the import duty upon foreign goods sold in our market is paid by the consumer, and that the price of the domestic competing article is enhanced to the amount of the duty on the imported article--that every million of dollars collected for customs duties represents many millions more which do not reach the treasury, but are paid by our citizens as the increased cost of domestic productions resulting from the tariff laws--may not intend to discredit in the minds of others our system of levying duties on competing foreign products, but it is clearly already discredited in their own. We cannot doubt, without impugning their integrity, that if free to act upon their convictions they would so revise our laws as to lay the burden of the customs revenue upon articles that are not produced in this country, and to place upon the free list all competing foreign products. I do not stop to refute this theory as to the effect of our tariff duties. Those who advance it are students of maxims and not of the markets. They may be safely allowed to call their project "Tariff Reform," if the people understand that in the end the argument compels free trade in all competing products. This end may not be reached abruptly, and its approach may be accompanied with some expressions of sympathy for our protected industries and our working people, but it will certainly come if these early steps do not arouse the people to effective resistance.