“It is not a question of political partnership. It is a question of affecting every interest in this country and every class, and because of the great interests involved should receive careful consideration at our hands irrespective of partisanship.... I warn those who insist so pertinaciously upon a retention of these high duties upon necessary articles of consumption that they only hasten the time when a more radical change will be made in our tariff laws. What manufacturers need most of all is stability in legislation, avoiding sudden and sweeping changes. The changes which I have proposed would reduce the revenue only a few million dollars, while to the consumers of manufactures produced they would reduce the cost of those products many million dollars. In my judgment such a policy would revive many industries now languishing, and not interfere with the great industries already established, and which under any change we are likely to make will still be largely protected. Our policy should be so to cheapen manufactured products that we can revive our export trade, now swept away, because we cannot compete with other nations in the markets of the world. If we could restore what we have lost, and in addition greatly enlarge our exportations of manufactures, we should then have an enlarged home market for our agricultural products, which would then be exported in a concentrated form in exchange for other commodities which we do not now and cannot produce.” The debate on the bill occupied the House much of the time from the middle of March until the 6th of June, when it was passed. The Senate took it up at once, and the debate there followed very much the same lines as in the House:—protestation that it was not an academic question—pleas from Mr. Morrill and his friends to remember the war time pledges—warnings against the “smell of monopoly”—plans for removing the causes of the decline of ship-building. In short, the Republicans themselves rehearsed fully and forcibly the injustice in certain tariffs then in force, and asked the party to correct them. All of the correction they got was $2.00 a ton off pig-iron. Salt, leather, lumber, wool, copper, and other articles were not touched. The relief demanded for the consumer came in the breakfast table. Thus the bill, which the President signed on July 14, reduced the duties on tea about 40 per cent; on coffee, 40 per cent; on sugar of the lower grades, 33⅓ per cent; on clarified sugars, 21-3/7 and 12½ per cent; on spices from 33⅓ to 75 per cent. On brandy the reduction was $3.00 to $2.00 per gallon, or 33⅓ per cent; on spirits from grain, 20 per cent. The free list was largely increased, certain important materials for manufacturing, ivory, India rubber, and rags for paper making, being included in a far greater number of unimportant items.