We next come to that industrial factor which I have referred to as the issue between the Free Trade of Adam Smith and Protection, as inculcated by the so-called American school of political economists. The phases which this issue has assumed are, I submit, well calculated to excite the attention of the observant and thoughtful. I merely allude to them now; but, in so far as it is in my power to make it so, my allusion will be specific. I frankly acknowledge myself a Free-Trader. A Free-Trader in theory, were it in my power I would be a Free-Trader in national practice. There has been, so far as I know, but one example of absolute free trade on the largest scale in world history. That one example, moreover, has been a success as unqualified as undeniable. I refer to this American Union of ours. We have here a country consisting of fifty local communities, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from tropical Porto Rico to glacial Alaska, representing every conceivable phase of soil, climate and material conditions, with diverse industrial systems. With a Union established on the principle of absolutely unrestricted commercial intercourse, you here in South Carolina, and more especially in Columbia, are to-day making it, so to speak, uncomfortable for the cotton manufacturer in New England; and I am glad of it! A sharp competition is a healthy incentive to effort and ingenuity, and the brutal injunction, "Root hog or die!" is one from which I in no way ask to have New England exempt. When Massachusetts is no longer able to hold its own industrially in a free field, the time will, in my judgment, have come for Massachusetts to go down. With communities as with children, paternalism reads arrested development. One of the great products of Massachusetts has been what is generically known as "footwear." Yet I am told that under the operation of absolute Free Trade, St. Louis possesses the largest boot and shoe factory in its output in the entire world. That is, the law of industrial development, as natural conditions warrant and demand, has worked out its results; and those results are satisfactory. I am aware that the farmer of Massachusetts has become practically extinct; he cannot face the competition of the great West: but the Massachusetts consumer is greatly advantaged thereby. So far as agricultural products are concerned, Massachusetts is to-day reduced to what is known as dairy products and garden truck; and it is well! Summer vegetables manufactured under glass in winter prove profitable. So, turning his industrial efforts to that which he can do best, even the Massachusetts agriculturalist has prospered. On the other hand, wherever in this country protection has been most completely applied, I insist that if its results are analyzed in an unprejudiced spirit, it will be pronounced to have worked unmitigated evil,--an unhealthy, because artificially stimulated and too rapid, growth. Let Lawrence, in Massachusetts, serve as an example.