The words had unusual weight, for Arthur was the only President we have had who could speak from a practical experience in administering the customs. For seven years (1871 to 1878) he had been Collector of the Port of New York. It was at a time when the Custom House was undergoing a series of rude shocks, the combined results of the ambiguities of the tariff laws, the greed of importers, the dishonesty of some of its officials, and the “pernicious activity” in politics of others. Arthur had been obliged to fight for the honor of his own administration, and he had finally been suspended by President Hayes. That is, President Arthur knew much from close contact of the ambiguities, the frauds, the injustice of the duties then in force, so that any expression of his had the merit of being “practical.” It had additional force, because nobody could doubt Arthur’s devotion to protection. He had been from boyhood a “Henry Clay Whig.” Everybody recognized that nothing but a profound conviction that the country demanded lower duties would have driven him to ask for them. The country indeed had not long before this given the Republicans a stern rebuke on its tariff policy by electing a good-sized Democratic majority to the House in the next Congress—the forty-eighth, meeting in December, 1883. Spurred to action by Arthur’s message, the report of the Tariff Commission, and by their own defeat, the Republicans lost no time in getting to work. The report of the Tariff Commission was sent at once to the Committee of Ways and Means in the House and to the Finance Committee in the Senate, and both bodies began to frame bills. Under ordinary circumstances, the Senate would have been obliged to wait for a bill from the House before expressing itself,—the House alone having the right to originate revenue bills,—but the circumstances were not “ordinary.” The Senate at this moment had before it a bill for reducing the internal revenue. This bill had come from the House in the preceding session and had only been kept from becoming a law by the filibustering of certain Democratic Senators. It was somebody’s bright idea now to tack to this internal revenue bill, as an amendment, a tariff bill of the Senate’s own making. It was, of course, an adventure of uncertain issue. The House was notoriously jealous of its constitutional rights. Would it recognize a measure proposed by the Senate? The Senate thought it worth the trial at least, and fell to work. The two committees which at opposite ends of the Capitol now began to sit daily over the tariff were remarkable bodies. At the head of the Senate committee was Mr. Morrill, who twenty-three years before had introduced into the House of Representatives the bill with which this narrative opened. Since 1867 he had been a member of the Senate, giving the bulk of his time to revenue questions. He was seventy-two years old now, and in spite of over twenty years’ labor on tariff schedules was still dignified and courteous!