And here I must frankly confess to small respect for the politician,--the man whose voice is continually heard, whether from the Senate Chamber or the Hustings. There is in those of his class a continual and most noticeable tendency to what may best be described as the _post ergo propter_ dispensation. With them, the eye is fixed on the immediate manifestation. Because one event preceded another, the first event is obviously and indisputably the cause of the later event. For instance, in the present case, the cause or seat of our existing and very manifest social, political and financial disturbances is attributed as of course to some peculiarity of legislation, either a subtreasury bill passed in the administration of General Jackson, or a tariff bill passed in the administration of Mr. Taft, or the demonetization of silver in the Hayes period,--that "Crime of the Century," the Crucifixion of Labor on the Cross of Gold! Once for all, let me say, I contemplate this school of politicians and so-called "thinkers" with sentiments the reverse of respectful. In plain language, I class them with those known in professional parlance as quacks and charlatans. Not always, not even in the majority of cases, does that which preceded bear to that which follows the relation of cause and effect. A marked example of this false attribution is afforded in more recent political history by the everlasting recurrence of the statement that American prosperity is the result of an American protective system. Yet in the Protectionist dispensation, this has become an article of faith. To my mind, it is undeserving of even respectful consideration. If I were asked the cause of that change, little short of revolutionary, if indeed in any respect short of it, which has occurred in the material condition of the American people, and consequently in all its theories and ideals, within the last thirty years, I should attribute it to a wholly different cause. Mr. Lecky some years ago, in his book entitled "Liberty and Democracy," made the following statement, in no way original, but, as he put it, sufficiently striking: "The produce of the American mines [incident to the discoveries made by Columbus] created, in the most extreme form ever known in Europe, the change which beyond all others affects most deeply and universally the material well-being of men: it revolutionized the value of the precious metals, and, in consequence, the price of all articles, the effects of all contracts, the burden of all debts."