Mr. WADE. Mr. President, I have been taken entirely by surprise by this motion. I do.not think we have an right, because it is supposed we are overworked and have been in session a great while, therefore to neglect what we consider the best interests of the country. I do not believe any of us are so entirely over worked as that we ought to shrink from eu deavoring to maintain the best interests of the country according to our knowledge and ability. 1 can be more anxious than I am to get out of this place; I should like very much to go at large liir awhile, but Iwill never consent to desert my post as long as I think there are material interests that require investigation and action and labor, if necessary, here. I think, therefore, that that part of the argument ought not to apply. It is said that the merits of the bill are not before us for consideration, and they are not, because they are not open to our scrutiny at present; but we‘do know that there are some great outside reasons why this bill should not. be postponed for a single moment. We know that under the present tnritf bill foreign importations are pouringinto the country to such an extent that our exports bear no proportion whatever to our im orts; that the country is drained of all its go (I and silver the moment they are dug from the earth; and with all the capabilities of the great West to produce grain and provisions of all kinds, we are told, and I believe it is true, that wheat is now imported from Europe into this country for the suste nance of our people. Something therefore is wrong about it. I do not like to see this question dealt with as a sectional question, for, in my judgment, it is not. It has none of the characteristics of such a question; and if it has, in my judgment, the Northwest, to which I belong, is altogether more interested than any other portion of this country. What is the Northwest now endeav orin to do atavast expense to your Treasury, and am not averse to it? You are endeavoring somehow to hew out chahnels by which you can convey your gross materials to a market either in the eastern States orin Europe. I am told that corn has been burned for fire wood, or sold for ten or 12 cents a bushel in some arts of the Northwest, and you are endeavoring to make a channel whereby you may transport that article 1000s of miles‘to market and make something in that way. Sir, that has been tried long enough. It is utterly absurd. The Northwest will never prosper under such a state of things as that omething is wrong. I know it is said that eastern manufacturers grow rich by manufacturing. I hope they do; and I hope, if it should be proved that they do, that we of the Northwest will have the sense and sagucity to make use of the same means tficnrich ourselves that enrich the manufacters of the East. It is all idle to tell me that men in the East may be overgrown in wealth acquired by reason 0 a tariff on manufactures, and that we of the West cannot avail ourselves of it. In my judgment we ought to do it; in my judgment we ought not to let all of our produce go to Europe and take the avails of their pauper labor, rather than to bring manufactures nearer to hand. To me the proposition looks as absurd as the old fashion was said to be of putting your wheat in one end of a ha and a stone in the other and going to mill. hope we shall not leave the country in this condition for a single hour longer than is necessary for us to adjust this thing. But the Senator says it is to try an experiment. Since 1816 we have been trying the experiment of protection and free trade by turns, and every man conversant with the history of the country during this long pe riod will find that in every instance the pros perity of the country has been exactly com' mensurate with the degree of protection that you gave to your own manufactures and your own industry; for it is not manufactures alone that are benefited by a tariff. Every kind of labor that human ingenuity can devise is benefited by it. By a free trade system the countries of Euro e, with their overgrown wealth and their skilPin manufacturing, and by means of their pauper and an aid labor, are enabled to underbid us; and wlhen they do that they bring their articles into competition with every thing that we raise aswell in the Northwest as anywhere else. the Senator speaks ofiron. Will the people of Iowa be benehted by putting a further duty on the article ofiron, or will they be benefited by sending their wheat and their corn, and their beef to Europe, and having their iron and cutlery manufactured there and paid for in these gross articles at this immense expenditure of transportation 7 What is the iron manufactured abroad composed of? How much of the provisions that yon raise in Iowa for sale are comprised in a ton of iron, or in a given quantity of cutlery that you speak of? Do not the work men, from the time they enter the mines, have to feed upon some provisions that they get somewhere, and so on until the ore comes to be manufactured into cutlery and everything else? Those provisions are not of your furnishing, they are furnished abroad; they enter into every manufactured article that comes here, and which comes into competition with the provisions of the Northwest as much as it does with the‘manufactures of the East. It prevents our people from availing themselves of the benefit of their own labor, except that half savage labor that barely produces the grossest of articles. Sir, I am satisfied that the country can never prosper under it. As to the suggestion that we are not now informed on the subject, let me ask if we did not appoint commissioners to spend the whole of the last vacation in investigating this very subject, men who were supposed to be of the highest skill and the most competent for such an investigation. Have they not made a very elaborate report upon the whole subject? What was that done for? Why did we pay those commissionersif no heed was to be given to the result of the ir investigations when they reported it? Does anybody criticise their report? Does anybody say that those men did not come to Just conclusions? If we took such pains to ascertain what should be done, throu 'h competent persons, it would seem that we ong it to be somewhat preared now to enter upon the subject. When s all we be better prepared than we are now? Of course we cannot investigate the different items in this bill now while it is a sealed book to us; but there is no reason why we should not proceed to consider it. It has undergone the most thorough investigation in the other branch of Congress where the preper committee bestowed more labor upon it than was ever bestowed by any committee upon an subject before. After the committee reporte it to the House, that body perfected the bill with great deliberation and great indus t y, and have come to a conclusion satisfactory to themselves. Because it involves a little labor shall we fail to look into the bill, and thus defeat their work? Sir, out of respect to the other branch, out of respect to the earnest demands of the country, we ought to 2nd the motion they have made, take up this bill, discuss it, and if the bill is so absurd as some seem to suppose, reject it and be rid ofit; but if it is beneficial, we should shrink from no labor necessary to bring us to a result in which the country is so vitally interested. I hope it will not for any of these reasons be postponed.