"The Alhambra," desired to return to Spain in 1842, he sought Mr. Webster, who, as Secretary of State, remained in Tyler's cabinet after his colleagues broke with the new Executive. The modest request of this most modest of men was that he be allowed to enjoy, upon his return to Spain, the perquisites due the bearer of despatches to the minister to Spain, then about to be appointed. Mr. Webster gravely told him that if he would call the next day he would, after conference with the President, answer him. In the interview that followed, after a long prelude, Webster told Irving, with apparent embarrassment, that he was exceedingly sorry circumstances over which he had no control made it impossible that his request should be granted. When, in the best of humor, Irving attempted to make his way out, Webster, with a genial smile, explained to him the fact that he could not be commissioned as the bearer of despatches to the new minister to Spain as he was himself to fill that office. In the same generous spirit Bancroft, Motley, Lowell and Wallace were sent abroad on the strength of their literary laurels. Certainly, no country in the world is more able, or really more willing, than our own to sustain, in a becoming manner, its diplomatic representatives in foreign capitals. There is, certainly, no desire that the men who have the right, by virtue of their gifts, to represent us should be set aside to relieve our government of charges which other governments bear. And yet, through a strange carelessness and a false conception of what the nation owes to its own dignity, this very important matter has been neglected, until our changed and larger relations to the world's politics have made it a subject for urgent consideration.

Those who have seen anything of diplomatic life in European capitals, no matter whether in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome or St. Petersburg, have been impressed by the salient fact that its centres are the embassies or legations founded by the several governments at their own expense, and maintained as permanent official establishments. As all the world knows, the English embassy at Paris, purchased by the Duke of Wellington from Pauline Bonaparte for the British Government about 1817, has since remained the residence of the British ambassador, and is as familiar an institution in Paris as the Foreign Office in London. The European idea is that such residences should be not only official, but permanent, and that the ambassadors or ministers should

go into and come out of such furnished houses just as the Presidents of the United States go into and come out of the White House. Above all, the place must be official, the place of the government to which it belongs, and not the private residence or social enterprise of the particular incumbent. No sporadic outlay of money, however lavish, by a very rich man, who has perhaps stumbled into diplomacy because he is rich, can constitute an establishment which is official in the European sense of that term. And here is the crux of the whole matter, so far as the present American plan is concerned. It is a mistake to suppose that our condition is improved by a rich American diplomat breaking out at Paris or Berlin with a palace whose rent consumes more than his whole salary, when the fact remains that he may be succeeded by a poor man who is forced to take modest apartments in some obscure quarter. The inequality which thus results produces a grotesque and undignified effect. It simply increases an evil which must be magnified each year unless it be decided that no American, however accomplished or distinguished, is eligible to diplomatic office, if he is unable to maintain its dignity out of his private purse. What the United States requires in European capitals is permanent and official diplomatic residences, in which all envoys, whether rich or poor, shall be expected to reside in a condition of quiet and unostentatious elegance consistent with republican institutions. Palaces are neither necessary nor desirable. The need is for elegant residences provided by this government, and furnished by it in such a style as to enable its representative to maintain its dignity without meanness or ostentation. If, in each capital, every American envoy were required to live in the house provided by the government, there would be produced at once an external uniformity in the outward life of each which would conceal the difference between the rich merchant diplomat and the brilliant, yet poor, scholar diplomat. It is true that the former could give more dinners, and pour out more champagne, and serve more truffles, than the latter; but otherwise their general mode of life would be equal. To provide such houses, it is not at all necessary or desirable that we should purchase them. Property-owners in Europe are only too willing to make long leases, with the right of renewal, to a government as a tenant; while the cost of furnishing would not be very considerable. When a careful calculation is made, it will be found that adequate unfurnished residences can

be leased in all the European capitals at an annual cost of less than a hundred thousand dollars for all. How petty an expenditure, when compared with the end to be attained! Thus relieved of the burden of providing houses, our ambassadors and ministers could get along very well on their present salaries. If the salaries were simply increased, without a provision for permanent official homes, no real good would be accomplished, because the chief evil would remain.

There never was a better time than the present for the accomplishment of this urgent reform, made more necessary than ever by our increased importance in the world's diplomacy-an importance not imperial, but democratic. The triumphant election of President Roosevelt proves beyond all question that his popular tendencies, his equal regard for the poor and the rich, have endeared him to all classes of the American people. His Secretary of State, whose popularity extends beyond his own party, is, like his chief, a member of that class of literary men from whose ranks American diplomats were, at one time, chosen. Certainly, two such statesmen would be willing to lend a helping hand to a reform which could not but appeal with peculiar force to both.

JULIEN GORDON.

TARIFF REFORM.

BY CHARLES J. BULLOCK, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

I.

THE problem of tariff reform, like the poor, seems to be ever with us. Repeated victories for protectionist policies have often made it appear a dead issue, but it has never proved to be a satisfactory corpse. Twenty years ago Congress thought it had found a happy solution of the matter, in the Act of 1883; but in a comparatively short time the accumulation of an enormous surplus revenue made the reduction of federal taxation a live topic for political discussion. After a decade of controversy, in which the fortunes of the contestants varied and a peculiar complication of issues was caused by the rise of the silver question, the protectionists believed that they had won a definitive triumph when, in 1897, they placed the Dingley law upon the statute-book. The country seemed to have been convinced that the crisis of 1893 had been induced by a tariff law enacted in 1894; while the revival of prosperity in 1898 was commonly attributed to the Act of 1897. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc was the all-sufficient argument in the latter case; ante hoc, ergo propter hoc was the conclusive logic employed in the former. Tariff reform had been once more consigned to the grave, and the protectionists chanted a solemn requiem for the repose of its soul; yet it had been slain by logic so foul that its troubled spirit has never ceased to disturb the dreams of the beneficiaries of the present law. The dead issue has again awakened to new life, and has found fit embodiment in a growing demand that certain clauses of the existing tariff shall be revised.

Popular discontent with the Dingley act is based upon at least four separate reasons, which appeal with varying force to different sections of the country. In the first place, there are many pro

tectionists who believe that the tariff was intended to stimulate the growth of infant industries, and feel that it has now fulfilled the purpose for which it was designed. Even Mr. McKinley, in his address at Buffalo, intimated that certain duties are no longer needed on this score, and suggested that they might be used as a means of negotiating for commercial advantages in other countries. Then the increased exportation of manufactured products in recent years has given added force to this contention, since it is hard to demonstrate that there is urgent need of protecting an industry that can maintain a continuous trade in foreign markets. Moreover, remarks about the pauper labor of Europe lose their impressiveness when French and German statesmen begin to consider measures for protecting their countries against the competition of American workmen.

A second reason for dissatisfaction developed when our manufacturers began to organize trusts. From the very inception of their favorite policy, protectionists have been compelled to meet the standing objection that their system benefits particular classes at the expense of the rest of the community. Free-traders have asserted that the Government, when it levies a protective duty, holds up the consumer at the custom-house while the domestic manufacturers go through his pockets. The answer of the protectionists has always been the same as that which Hamilton advanced in his famous "Report on Manufactures ": "When a domestic manufacture has attained to perfection, and has engaged in the prosecution of it a competent number of persons, it invariably becomes cheaper. . . The internal competition which takes place soon does away with everything like monopoly, and by degrees reduces the price of the article to the minimum of a reasonable profit on the capital employed. This accords with the reason of the thing and with experience." It is no part of our present purpose to consider the relative values of the objection and the answer; our only object is to point out the fact that the argument for protection has always rested upon the assumption that domestic competition ensures fair treatment of the consumer. Even Hamilton conceded that it "is not an unreasonable supposition that measures that serve to abridge the free competition of foreign articles have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices"; and his followers have invariably adopted the line of defence which he employed. Now, it is self-evident that the VOL. CLXXX.-No. 578.

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