An argument much relied upon and strongly presented by the advocates of free-trade is the alleged tendency to over-production of protected articles, followed uniformly by seasons of depression and at certain intervals by financial panic and wide-spread distress. These results are unhappily too familiar in the United States, but the protectionists deny that the cause is correctly given. They aver indeed that a glut of manufactured articles is more frequently seen in England than in the United States, thus proving directly the reverse of the conclusion assumed by the free-traders, and establishing the conservative and restraining power of a protective tariff. The protectionists direct attention to the fact that the first three instances in our history in which financial panic and prolonged depression fell upon the country, followed the repeal of protective tariffs and the substitution of mere revenue duties,--the depression of 1819-24, that of 1837-42, and that of 1857-61. They direct further attention to the complementary fact that, in each of these cases, financial prosperity was regained through the agency of a protective tariff, the operation of which was prompt and beneficent. On the other hand the panic of 1873 and the depression which lasted until 1879 undoubtedly occurred after a protective tariff had been for a long time in operation. Free-traders naturally make much of this circumstance. Protectionists, however, with confidence and with strong array of argument, make answer that the panic of 1873 was due to causes wholly unconnected with revenue systems,--that it was the legitimate and the inevitable outgrowth of an exhausting war, a vitiated and redundant currency, and a long period of reckless speculation directly induced by these conditions. They aver that no system of revenue could have prevented the catastrophe. They maintain however that by the influence of a protective tariff the crisis was long postponed; that under the reign of free-trade it would have promptly followed the return of peace when the country was ill able to endure it. They claim that the influence of protection would have put off the re-action still longer if the rebuilding of Chicago and Boston, after the fires of 1871 and 1872, had not enforced a sudden withdrawal of $250,000,000 of ready money from the ordinary channels of trade to repair the loss which these crushing disasters precipitated.