As,  however,  Mr.  Howard  Vincent  has  been  among  us,  and  has
got  hie  associates  to  vote  for  a  return  to  Protection,  and  has  re-
solved to  revive  a  controversy  which  we  aU  thought  dead  and  buried,
he  therefore  should  be  met.  I  purpose  in  the  next  two  lectures —
'  on  this  and  next  Monday's — to  deal  with  the  history  of  Protection
up  to  1846,  when  it  received,  as  it  deserved,  its  coup  de  grace  here,
•  on  its  continuance,  perhaps  its  extension  in  foreign  countries  and
■some  of  our  colonies ;  and,,  in  the  next  place^to  show  you  how  you
must  interpret  the  tables  of  exports  and  imports,  in  other  words,
the  foreign  trade  of  England,  so  as  to  give  reality  to  the  figures
which  appear  in  the  small  annual  Blue-book  known  as  the  Statis-
•tical  Abstract.  The  widespread,'  but  at  the  same  time  extraordinary,
delusion  which  possesses  many  nations  on  the  subject  of  Protec-
tion, is  almost  as  much  an  ethical  as  it  is  an  economical  portent.
In  the  United  States  it  is  a  widespread  opinion,  especially  in  New
England  and  Pennsylvania,  and  I  am  informed  that  a  New  England
or  Pennsylvanian  fi»e- trader  is  almost  a  caput  lupinum,  a  man  whom
Mr.  Howard  Vincent,  in  his  old  capacity,  would  have  had  to  take
«are  of^  or,  in  technical  language,  to  want.  But  in  the  earher  and
more  pious  days  of  New  England  there  was  a  similar  horror  of
■Quakers  and  witches,  and  the  sceptic  as  to  the  supernatural  -wicked-
ness of  these  two  imaginary  malefactors  ran  the  risk  of  a  probable
tarring  and  feathering,  and  a  possible  hanging.
