that all markets be enlarged, and that every obstruction to trade be removed at every point of the compass; that no burden, except taxation for the support of government, shall be imposed on any article; and that, when it is imposed for revenue, it shall be placed on such articles and at such rates as will, with revenues from other sources, be sufficient to support an honest and economical administration of government with the least possible disturbance of private business.

If reciprocity with one country is good, reciprocity with another country also is good; and there can be no sound reason for enlarging our trade with the countries south of us that does not apply with greater force to the country north of us. Our northern neighbors number only five millions, and those south of us number fifty millions; yet we export to the five millions almost as much as we do to the fifty millions, and if all restrictions on trade between Canada and the United States were removed, we should almost double our trade in one year. The Canadians stand on the same plane of civilization that we do; they speak the same language, have the same history, and possess almost the same political institutions. In the productiveness of their labor they are almost our equals, and they are very far ahead of our southern neighbors. They can easily produce $100,000,000 worth of surplus products which we want, and for which they would take with profit an equal value of our surplus products. Why, then, should we not have reciprocity with Canada? All trade is carried on for profit, and there is ten times as much profit in a trade of $100,000,000 as in one of $10,000,000. Canada takes from us more than $15,000,000 worth of breadstuffs and provisions annually, while the southern countries take less than $10,000,000. Why not open negotiations northward for "another bushel of wheat and another barrel of pork"?

But after all our efforts to secure reciprocity with the people of the western hemisphere shall have been crowned with the fullest measure of success, we shall have advanced but little from our present position. Our exports of agricultural products are worth more than $600,000,000, and ought to be worth $1,000,000,000. To find markets large enough to consume our surplus, we must look to the crowded populations of the eastern hemi

sphere. We should direct our negotiations toward the governments of England, France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Italy, and the other countries of Europe. We should lower our barriers against trade and then urge them to lower theirs. A reduction of our duties on foreign goods to 25 per cent. would double our trade in both imports and exports, and at the same time would bring to the treasury all the revenue the government would require. But instead of lessening duties so that our people might buy cheaper foreign goods and might pay for them with more bushels of wheat and more barrels of pork, Congress, backed by the Administration, has raised the duties to check imports and thus to make it impossible to enlarge our exports of agricultural products. All our industrial prosperity is based on the prosperity of our agriculture. By utilizing all the improvements in labor-saving machinery adapted to the farm, we are constantly increasing our surplus. What shall we do with our surplus breadstuffs, provisions, and cotton? Free trade with all the Americas and with the adjacent islands cannot consume a tenth of them. Two plans have been proposed by American statesmen to find a market for their consumption: one is to export them and to take in exchange the surplus of other nations, which these nations are anxious to give and which our people are anxious to take; the other is to keep the surplus at home and to import people enough from other countries to consume it.

The Finance Committee of the Senate in 1888, in its report on the tariff bill, showed that its members were expert scholars of our home-consumption philosophy. They assured the wheatgrowers of the West that the production of wheat for exportation is unprofitable; that we cannot produce it in competition with India, South America, Australia, and British North America; that they must look to "an enlargement of the certain and remunerative home market"; and that this enlarged home market can be had only "by increasing the number of people engaged in other than agricultural pursuits." What a stupendous stroke of statecraft! It fairly blinds with the brilliancy of its conception. If we look to our annual reports on foreign commerce, we shall see that we are exporting wheat at a lower price than any other country on earth. We sell it more cheaply

because we produce it more cheaply, and competition presses the market price down constantly toward the cost of production. The cost of producing a bushel of wheat in this country does not exceed forty cents. There is scarcely any competing country where the cost is not twice as much, if consular reports are to be credited.

But if, instead of exporting our wheat, we import people enough to consume it here, this fascinating problem is presented: How many people will it take to consume our surplus wheat? We grow now 500,000,000 bushels per annum. Five bushels per head will supply our home consumption; 320,000,000 bushels will amply satisfy that demand. This will leave a surplus of 180,000,000 bushels. We must import people enough to consume this, at five bushels per head. That will require the importation at once of 36,000,000 people! It is no argument, of course, that 36,000,000 people have not immigrated to this country in the last three hundred years. There has been no emergency heretofore requiring such an influx of population. That emergency is now come. We must have them, and, as Senator Aldrich says in his report, they must be people who are to be engaged in other than agricultural pursuits." It was perfectly evident to his mind that if farmers were imported they would make the surplus larger instead of consuming it. Our census shows that one third of our people are engaged in gainful occupations, "other than agricultural pursuits," and therefore probably one third of those imported will be engaged in such occupations. Twelve millions of them must, therefore, be laborers in manufactures, mining, transportation, and indoor employments. More than one third of the twelve million must be engaged in manufactures. Our four millions of operatives make $7,000,000,000 worth of products. Four millions more will bring the total up to $14,000,000,000. We can consume only $7,000,000,000 worth, and the immigrants would consume only about $2,000,000,000 worth. What are we to do with the rest? We cannot export it, because the tariff on raw materials shuts it out of the foreign market. Finding no market, either foreign or domestic, the production must stop; the immigrants must starve and the wheat-growers must go without a market. Their surplus loses

its value. They stop buying goods; and manufactures, mining, and transportation are stricken with paralysis.

How will this principle work when applied to cotton? Our crop is 3,500,000,000 pounds. We consume at home, in round numbers, 1,000,000,000 pounds, and export 2,500,000,000 pounds. Our consumption is 18 pounds per head; the English consume nine pounds per head; the people on the continent of Europe about five pounds per head. To consume our 2,500,000,000 pounds of surplus would take the people of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, all the people on the continent of Europe, all North Africa, and more than a tenth of Asia. And all this immense movement of population is to take place at once. The surplus is here and must be consumed, and as Mahomet refuses to go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mahomet. In order to see and comprehend the beauty and beneficence of this scheme, it must be borne in mind that not one of the vast industrial army is to be a farmer!

Such are the absurdities of arguments that are made to circumvent the laws of nature. The law of development demands that we trade with all parts of the world, and that our trade keep pace with population and production. Production is outstripping consumption in all branches of our national industry. We must export our surplus and receive its value in the surplus of others, or it must rot on our hands and bring us no value. To emancipate the people is the duty of American statesmen. Unfortunately for the country, Congress is riveting their fetters more closely. Instead of making laws to deprive the people of the right of representation, our law-makers should busy themselves in removing all commercial obstructions, and should enable us to cover the oceans with fleets of merchantmen, carrying rich cargoes from the granaries and workshops of American laborers, and exchanging them in all the ports of the world.

ROGER Q. MILLS.

SPAIN A DEMOCRATIC NATION.

FEW nations in the world are so democratic in their history as the Spanish nation is; but at the beginning of this century, the century of creative revolutions, none was so oppressed, not even the recently-dismembered Poland. Excepting the Basque Mountains, whose peaks and passes stopped both foreign invader and domestic tyrant so effectively that their inhabitants could continue under republican institutions, the nation had been reduced to such a state of weakness that kings, come from abroad through the accident of inheritance, could dispose of its territory and its laws as the ancient despots of the Asiatic continent disposed of their lands and their subjects. The people who had founded the Pyrenean democracies, so steeled by liberty that they were able to defy the Roman Cæsars and the Germanic Carlovingians; the people whose almost prehistoric municipalities are as firm to-day as the granite foundations of their native land; the people who possessed the Cortes of Castile and Navarre, the parliaments of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia; the people who dictated the Charters of Leon and the Aragonese customs and traditions before the British barons imposed Magna Charta on John Lackland-the Spanish people, within whose bosom the national soul was condensing, like the vapors of the air in an ocean storm, became so enfeebled as to allow the wizard Charles II. and the imbecile Charles IV. to bequeath or to grant to the conqueror and the foreigner, as if it were a private landed estate, the nation created by the sacrifice of so many martyrs.

Our own generation has seen a king like Ferdinand VII., comparable only to Nero and Caligula, and stained by all sorts of crimes; the clergy holding the national wealth, the greater part of which consisted of inalienable estates and uncultivated tracts of land surrounding churches and monasteries; generals like the Frenchman who was wont to hang a dozen patriots in the morn