Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/729

Rh of the tariff to my young friend Morris, while I spoke for justice and humanity, as did that noble woman and peerless orator, Miss Anna E. Dickinson, whose heart has ever been true to the oppressed, and who was a speaker in the same campaign. I took it to be the vital and animating principle of the Republican party. I found the people more courageous than their party leaders. What the leaders were afraid to teach, the people were brave enough and glad enough to learn. I held that the soul of the nation was in this question, and that the gain of all the gold in the world would not compensate for the loss of the nation's soul. National honor is the soul of the nation, and when this is lost all is lost. The Republican party and the nation were pledged to the protection of the constitutional rights of the colored citizens. If it refused to perform its promise, it would be false to its highest trust. As with an individual, so too with a nation, there is a time when it may properly be asked, "What doth it profit to gain the whole world and thereby lose one's soul?"

With such views as these I supported the Republican party in this somewhat remarkable campaign. I based myself upon that part of the Republican platform which I supported in my speech before the Republican convention at Chicago. No man who knew me could have expected me to pursue any other course. The little I said on the tariff was simply based upon the principle of self-protection taught in every department of nature, whether in men, beasts or plants. It comes with the inherent right to exist. It is in every blade of grass as well as in every man and nation. If foreign manufacturers oppress and cripple ours and serve to retard our natural progress, we have the right to protect ourselves against such efforts. Of course this right of self-protection has its limits, and the thing