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[265] brains? Have we not a country unrivalled in the variety and abundance of its natural productions, and the abounding riches of its mineral resources? What more need we to claim, or ought we to have? If, in an open field, we cannot successfully compete with “the cheap and pauperized labor of Europe,” in all that is necessary to our comfort, or even to our luxury, then let us go to the wall! Was the slave labor of the South at all a match for the free labor of the North? In which section of the Union was industry best protected or wealth most augmented? Is it not ludicrous to read what piteous calls are made for the protection of the strong against the weak, of the intelligent against the ignorant, of the well-fed against the half-starving, of our free republican nation against the effete governments of the Old World, in all that relates to the welfare of the people? With all that God has done for us in giving us such a goodly heritage, cannot we contrive to live and flourish without erecting barriers against the freest intercourse with all nations? Must we guard our ports against the free importation of hemp, iron, broadcloth, silk, coal, etc., etc., as though it were a question of quarantine for the smallpox or the Asiatic cholera? Refusing to do so, will the natural consequences be “vacant factories, furnaces standing idle, the shops of manufacturing industry closed, labor begging and starving for the want of employment,” and all the other fearful results that are so confidently predicted by the advocates of the protective policy, falsely so-called? Similar predictions were made by the defenders of Southern slavery in regard to the abolition of that nefarious system, and in order to subject to popular odium those who demanded the immediate and unconditional emancipation of the oppressed. Freedom, as well as Wisdom, is justified of her children; and in proportion as she bears sway will it go well with any people.

On the 10th of December, 1875, Mr. Garrison celebrated at once his 70th birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation from the Herald office, by going to Newburyport and again taking up the composing-stick in the familiar place. Selecting Whittier's beautiful poem, ‘My Psalm,’ he set it with almost his old-time rapidity and expertness; and though the type was small, and the ‘case’ not over well supplied with it, not an error was found in the seventeen verses when the first proof was

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