Mr. Kelley and his sympathizers had saved the doctrine of high protection, and they accompanied their victory by a manœuvre which they evidently hoped would preserve them in the future from the necessity of considering such troublesome arrays of facts about the effects of particular tariffs as those forced upon them in the last four years by Mr. Wells’s reports. They persuaded the President to refuse to continue the office of special commissioner of revenue, which Mr. Wells had filled since his appointment by President Lincoln in March, 1865. The majority of Congress deeply deplored this move, and joined in signing a letter to him expressing their appreciation of his services. The wise men of the party realized only too well how they would be crippled without Mr. Wells. It was a loss which time has only intensified. It is not too much to say, that if he had continued to study and expound officially the revenue system for the next twenty years with the same dispassionate thoroughness and clearness that characterized the five years’ work he did do, the problem of the equitable distribution of wealth in this country would be much nearer an intelligent solution than it is to-day. The passage of the Schenck Bill and the removal of Mr. Wells only intensified the sentiment of the tariff reformers. A most interesting movement had sprung up in that year (1870) in Missouri. It was a new organization, called the Liberal party, headed by Colonel William M. Grosvenor, the editor of the St. Louis _Democrat_, Carl Schurz, United States Senator from Missouri, and Gustavus Finkelnburg, a Representative from that State. The Liberal Republicans asked for several things which they felt they were not getting under Grant: general amnesty, revenue reforms, resumption of specie payment, and civil service reform. They had put up a ticket in Missouri, and elected it. Sympathy with their aims was widely diffused, and all over the country Republican conventions began to put tariff planks into their platforms similar to theirs, or to the one General Brinkerhoff had slipped into the Ohio platform in 1869, while party organs, like the Portland (Me.) _Advertiser_, the Chicago _Tribune_, the St. Louis _Democrat_, redoubled their efforts. In the fall the Free Trade League again sent out General Brinkerhoff and Professor Perry on a lecture tour. General Brinkerhoff made a stir with a lecture, which he called “The Tyrants of Syracuse.” It was a scientific dissection of the Salt Trust, which surpassed in completeness and convincingness anything which had been achieved in any one of the many analyses which had been given in Congress. The cumulative effect of the agitation began to stir the rulers of Congress, particularly Mr. Blaine, who was a candidate for re-election as Speaker. Unless he could make a compromise with the tariff reformers he saw there was danger of their uniting with the Democrats and thereby defeating him.