… is from page 191 of the Irish-born Democratic U.S. Congressman from New York William Bourke Cockran‘s speech to the National Liberal Club of England, delivered on July 15th, 1903, as this speech appears in In the Name of Liberty: Selected Addresses by William Bourke Cockran, Robert McElroy, ed. (1925):
The protective system, stripped of all the misleading verbiage under which its operations are disguised, is simply the bestowal by Government on certain favorites of the power to tax for their own private benefit the vast majority of their fellow citizens.
DBx: Protectionism hides beneath a great number of lovely excuses. But at bottom, protectionism is legalized robbery. Nothing more.
