Here dawns a question with which some modern Sphinx may defy some coming OEdipus. Let us hope it will prove a question so adequately answered that the evil goddess using it as a challenge--the conventional deity of injustice, duplicity, and extortion--will dramatize her compulsory response to it by casting herself headlong into the sea! PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE--WHICH? BY HON. HENRY CABOT LODGE, M. C. The advocates of free trade in this country at the present time are very unlike Emerson's "fine young Oxford gentlemen" who said "there was nothing new, and nothing true, and no matter." They not only believe their pet doctrine to be true, but they seem to assume that it is also new. They further treat it as if it were an exact science and a great moral question as well. Unwarranted assumptions merely confuse and this question of national economic policy is too important to be clouded with confusions. It is worth while, therefore, to look at these assumptions one by one and try, before attempting any discussion of the tariff, to clear the ground from cant and to see the question exactly as it is. In the first place, the question of free trade or protection is in no sense a moral one. Free traders are prone to forget that their great prophet, Adam Smith, drew this distinction very plainly at the outset. He wrote two important works. One of them all the world has read. It is called "The Wealth of Nations," deals with the selfish interests of mankind, and embodies the author's political economy. The other is an equally elaborate work entitled "The Moral Sentiments." It is the complement of "The Wealth of Nations," which is devoted to the selfish side of human nature and the world at large has found no trouble in forgetting it. Adam Smith himself was under no confusion of mind as to his subject when he wrote about political economy. He knew that he was dealing with questions of a selfish character, of an enlightened selfishness, no doubt, but none the less questions of self-interest. He never for a moment thought of putting his political economy on a plane of pure morality.