It is interesting to compare the lectures which Mr. Godkin has been delivering for the last few days in Sever Hall with the lectures which Prof. Thompson of the University of Pennsylvania delivered last winter in the same place. Both of these gentlemen are fit representatives of the two great schools of political economy which they represent,-one founded on free trade, the other on protection,-and the college authorities are to be congratulated on securing the services of these gentlemen. That the students were aware of the opportunities which were thus offered them has been clearly shown by the large audiences which attended all the lectures by each gentieman. In most of the controversies between the advocates of free tade and protection, each speaker is very often in the habit of stating his own ideas, of which by the way he is very positive, without thinking it necessary to establish his views with solid facts, or with solid facts to refute the views of his opponents. Free traders as a rule express great contempt for their opponents, the protectionists, and smile in a pitying way at the follies and mistaken theories of the protectionists, often prefacing their remarks with the observation that really educated men can not possibly believe in protection. The protectionists, on the other hand, appeal to the tender side of their hearers' nature, and tell pitiful tales of the wretched condition of the Irish peasantry, and the natives of India,-all caused, as they say, by the introduction of free trade. When they turn their attention to this country, both fall into the same error. The protectionists calmly lay the whole prosperity of the country since the late war to the existence of a high tariff, while many free traders fall into a similar error by asserting that the prosperity of the country before that period was caused by the free trade tariff bill of 1846.

In controversies of this kind, it is easy to see that the student searching after the truth is often at fault. In the lectures, however, which we have recently heard on the controversy, their faults have been reduced to a minimum, and the students of the university have had a fair opportunity of judging of the relative merits of the arguments advanced by Prof. Thompson, and Mr. Godkin.