John Sherman

If Congress would allow such a bill to become a law we could dismiss the tariff free from party politics and lay the foundation for a durable system of national taxation, upon which domestic industries may be founded without the hazard…

My reply to the President's message is the best exposition I have made as to the principles and details of a protective tariff.

I believe that no judicious tariff can be framed by Congress alone, without the help of a commission of business men not personally interested in the subject-matter, and they should be aided by experienced officers in the revenue service.

The intense selfishness exhibited by many of those who demanded protection, and the error of those who opposed all protection, were alike to be disregarded.

This was a question not to be decided by interested capitalists, but by the careful estimate of business men.

I believed in the imposition of such a duty on foreign goods which could be produced in the United States as would fairly measure the difference in the cost of labor and manufacture in this and foreign countries.

But experience soon demonstrated that, whatever might be the law in force, the revenues of the government would vary from year to year, depending, not upon rates of taxation, but upon the financial condition of the country.

I have a sincere respect for President Cleveland, but I thought the message was so grave a departure from the customary annual message of the President to Congress that it ought to be answered seriatim.

This threatening announcement of a great national danger startled the general public, who had settled down into the conviction that all was going on very well with a Democratic administration.

You are confronted, at the threshold of your legislative duties, with a condition of the national finances which imperatively demands immediate and careful consideration.

It is much better to do our work by degrees, working slowly in the right direction, than to attempt to do it prematurely by wholesale, and fail.

It does seem to me that with all the intelligence of this community it is the duty of all its candid men, who are watching the tendencies of these two parties in this country, not to throw their votes away.

The Democratic party, if put in power, will repeal that law and will do nothing for prohibition that you will accept.

Then you have the repeated declaration of the Republican party, a party that never deceived the people with false promises, that they will do anything else that is necessary, or all that is possible by law, to check the evils that flow…

Will it not be better to choose between these two parties and give your assistance to the one that has done the most for the success of your principles?

You have a perfect right to vote for the smaller Prohibition party, and thus throw away your vote, but you know very well that either a Republican or a Democratic legislature will be elected, and that there will not be a single Prohibition…

There are but two great parties in this country, one or the other of which is to be put in power.

The good order of society now rests upon the intelligence and conservatism of the farmers of the United States, for to them all classes must look for safety against the dogmas and doctrines that threaten the social fabric, and sacred…

And so in mental culture, in the knowledge of chemistry, in granges and fairs, in books, magazines and pamphlets devoted to agriculture, the farmer of to-day has the means of information which lifts his occupation to the dignity of a…

Our farmers ought constantly to diversity their crops and add to the number of their productions.

He that by the plow would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive.

The same power which guided our fathers' fathers through the Revolutionary War, upheld the arms of the soldiers of the Union Army in the Civil War, and I trust that the same good Providence will guide our great nation in the years to come.

I do reverently recognize in the history of our war, the hand of a superintending Providence that has guided our great nation from the beginning to this hour.

A good Presbyterian would find in our history evidence of the truth of his theory that all things are ordained beforehand.

It was useless to preach to these men that Providence directly controls the history of nations.