As this is a Tariff Reform meeting pure and simple, I am anxious not
to approach the subject in any party spirit or in any spirit of
acrimonious controversy. The question is a difficult and complicated
one, and though I am a strong Tariff Reformer myself I hope I am not
incapable of seeing both sides of the case. I certainly should have
reason to be ashamed if I could not be fair to those whom, for the
sake of brevity and convenience, I will call Free Traders, though I do
not altogether admit the correctness of that designation. My views
were once the same as theirs, and though I long ago felt constrained
to modify them, and had become a Tariff Reformer some years before the
subject attained its present prominence in public discussion, it would
ill become me to treat as foolish arguments which I once found so
convincing or to vilify opinions which I once honestly shared.

What has happened to me is what I expect has happened to a good many
people. I still admire the great Free Trade writers, the force of
their intellect, the lucidity of their arguments. There can be no
clearer proof of the spell which they exercised over the minds of
their countrymen than the fact that so many leading public men on both
sides of politics remain their disciples to this very day. But for my
own part I have been unable to resist the evidence of facts which
shows me clearly that in the actual world of trade and industry things
do not work out even approximately as they ought to work out if the
Free Trade theory were the counsel of perfection which I once thought
it. And that has led me to question the theory itself, and so
questioned it now seems to me far from a correct statement of the
truth, even from the point of view of abstract inquiry. But I am not
here to engage in abstract arguments. What I want to do is to look at
the question from a strictly practical point of view, but at the same
time a very broad one. I am anxious to bring home to you the place of