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.
The assailants of protection apparently overlook the fact that excessive production is due, both in England and in America, to causes beyond the operation of duties either high or low.

No cause is more potent than the prodigious capacity of machinery set in motion by the agency of steam.