Thus, in less than five months after its passage the Morrill Bill, a protectionist measure, framed when there was but little protectionist sentiment in the country and made a law by the signature of a Democratic president elected on a platform of free trade throughout the world, a bill so changed from its first condition that its author had been inclined to abandon it, loaded with jobs, the cause of serious business disturbances in the North, of the alienation of European sympathy, of great gain and satisfaction to the South, had been accepted with resignation by its most intelligent enemies. Almost without knowing it the country had returned to a policy which nearly 20 years before it had abandoned. It is not too much to call the measure the foundation of a revolution in our commercial life. Henry C. Cary, the economist, did not greatly exaggerate its importance when he wrote Mr. Morrill: “You have connected your name with what is destined, I think, to prove the most important measure ever adopted”; nor did Mr. Blaine when he said, in his Recollections, that if the Morrill Bill had been passed under other circumstances, it would have been regarded as an “era in the history of the government.” Mr. Chase had calculated that the receipts from the amended Morrill Bill would amount to about $80,000,000 a year, but they fell far short—only about 51 millions, of which the customs yielded 49 millions. The expenses of the war increased at a frightful rate, and it was soon evident that the struggle was to be longer than had been expected. Early in 1862 new schemes of taxation began to be considered. The result was that the Ways and Means Committee decided to ask Congress to pass an internal revenue bill, and still further to add to the duties provided for in the Morrill Bill. It was in June when the two new measures came from the committee. Taken together they were calculated to make the country gasp. The tax bill touched almost every article of daily life. It provided for licenses on a man’s business whatever it was—running a bowling alley, a hotel, or an attorney’s office; for taxes on his income and his inheritances, on his carriages, his gold watch, his silver plate; for revenue stamps on the documents he signed, the telegrams he sent, the matches he struck; nothing that he ate or drank or made escaped. The direct taxation on manufactured articles was so high that in many cases it would have acted as a bonus to foreigners to bring in their goods if the Ways and Means Committee had not foreseen this, and aimed to amend the tariff law so that increased duties would compensate for the internal taxes. As might have been expected from the hurried way in which the bill had been prepared, the duties intended as compensations were not always exact. Sometimes, as in the case of books and umbrellas, they were insufficient, and the foreigner could bring over his wares and undersell the overtaxed domestic producer. Again, the