by Russia, Austria, and Prussia shortly after the battle of Waterloo in 1815, for the ostensible purpose of pacifying Europe, maintaining the purity of religion, hence "holy," - returning to the rightful owners some of the plunder of which Napoleon had deprived them, and of being prepared for the contingency of another possible Napoleon. Other nations of Europe joined it; but England, through Canning, was the first to perceive that its real object was conquest and despotic rule. She therefore withdrew, taking self-protective action, as has been stated. France followed England's example a year or two afterward, and the Alliance was broken up a few years later, all its ambitious schemes being dissipated; after which Europe became comparatively tranquil for a season.

The last paragraph or two in which Mr. Cleveland's threat is contained, and which caused the panic, are said to have been composed as an addendum to the original document as agreed upon by Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Olney. Perhaps the idea of this unfortunate addition to the message entered the brain of Mr. Cleveland while on the duck-shooting expedition. His notion seems to have been that if Great Britain got an inch in Venezuela she would take an ell, put to rout the existing government, and set up the English system in its place; and if it had been manifest that this was the intention of Great Britain, then the Monroe Doctrine would have been applicable in the case, as with the French in Mexico. Under such conditions, the belligerent language of the President might have been justifiable, but hardly so until all attempts at arbitration had been exhausted. There is no evidence, however, that England had any intention of conquest; neither had she committed any overt act that the United States could consider "dangerous to its peace and safety," which would be necessary to create a casus belli, according to another clause in Mr. Monroe's message. Consequently, to say the least, Mr. Cleveland was rather precipitate in his patriotic purpose, and his rash and premature action cost this country about $2,000,000,000 in the shrinkage of all securities and the almost total suppression of credit, or more than two thirds of the amount of the national debt at the

close of the Civil War. Credit paper became of little or no value or use, thus contracting the medium with which we do most of our business at least 75 per cent. Nothing would pass but coin or its convertible equivalent, and so business was brought to a general condition of stagnation. As all the nations of Europe regarded the concluding part of the message as a menace of war which England must regard either by accepting or by showing the white feather, business with foreign nations was also largely blocked, and all our foreign relations became immediately strained. We were almost as much isolated for a short time, in a financial sense, as if we had been surrounded by a Chinese wall.

The worst feature of the predicament was that the message was popular before the people began to think and reflect upon it, and this feeling was further fomented by Congress catching the "Jingo" contagion. Speculators and investors were tumbling over one another in their excitement to get rid of their securities and to obtain gold, no matter at what sacrifice, for the purpose of hoarding it in safe-deposit boxes against threatened business disaster and the probable upheaval of thrones and kingdoms in prospect; for if war should break out between two of the greatest civilized nations in the world, there was no knowing where it would end. Money, in consequence of this state of affairs, became stringent, and our securities were sold by European holders as fast as they could get rid of them, the gold meantime flowing from our shores in a steady and rapid stream. The United States Treasury reserve of $100,000,000, melted away like snow before the noonday sun until it fell to $49,000,000, and the faster it decreased the more the panic increased, and the tighter grew the money market, so that there was scarcely a spot in our whole broad land that the panic did not cover. Failures of bankers, brokers, and merchants were reported daily and sometimes hourly; there was a tremendous run on nearly all the savings banks, and general disorganization in the whole financial world seemed imminent.

Lord Salisbury may have felt like William Pitt at the breaking out of the European campaign of his day, when the powers of

Europe were beginning to league themselves against Napoleon. "Roll up that map of Europe," said Pitt, "it will not be required for the next ten years." His words were truly prophetic, and the thought of his prophecy being fulfilled, as it was afterward, is said to have caused his death. There was no fear of such a fatal result, however, in the case of Salisbury. He is not so sensitive; yet the circumstances afford food for very serious reflection to the people of the United States, when it is considered that Mr. Cleveland's faux pas, made with honest intentions and but slightly wrong in theory, cost this country nearly one half of the aggregate debt incurred by England during her fifteen years' war with Napoleon, including the period that she assisted the allies with money and munitions of war when she was not actually in the field herself.

This country had never before met such a sudden revolution in business. The panic of 1873 had hitherto been considered quick and expansive in its action, but it hardly compared with that of 1895. This latter reduced business transactions generally to a retail basis, a kind of hand-to-mouth operation, and on purely cash principles. The strained relations between buyer and seller were of a very disagreeable character, making commercial transactions quite irritating, and threatening to sap the foundations of our prosperous system of trade and commerce. Business was thus pent up within exceedingly narrow limits, and profits accordingly must have been reduced to the very lowest ebb. All securities, as a matter of course, experienced a tremendous fall in prices, many of them seeking a lower level than in the panic of 1893. That panic was not to be compared to the Venezuela message panic, because it did not carry with it a total annihilation of credits, which the later hobgoblin of war did.

The paralysis in business that ensued, growing out of this terrible disaster, was continued without much visible abatement up to the time of the Chicago Free Silver Convention, July 9, 1896. The agony had been endured by the most long-suffering people on the face of the earth from December 17, 1895, the date of the message. It is not an exaggeration, I think, nor am

I guilty, I believe, of attaching too much importance to that part of the message productive of the panic, when I say that it was mainly due to it that a few men, some of them quite obscure previously and others notorious for their revolutionary predilections, were enabled at Chicago to organize the new democracy.

CHAPTER XXXV.

OUR NATION'S CREDIT.

Why should this credit, as illustrated in the market value of our bonds, not be on as high a plane as the credit of other nations? A plea for the Sherman Silver Law and how it was instrumental in tiding the financial world over the Baring panic. — A brief retrospect of bond issues and cognate subjects of national interest.

RE

EGARDING the credit of our nation there seems to have been a great deal of misconception and loose thinking in the past. I here reproduce a few points which I published some time ago on this and kindred subjects, viewing them from that common-sense point of view which everybody the ordinary business man, the farmer, and the mechanic- can understand as easily as the professional financier. There may be, however, certain college and other financial professors, men who have been in the habit of bending and torturing statistics to dovetail with preconceived opinions and theories, who will not understand the subject from my point of view.

Though I am an uncompromising advocate of the gold standard under existing conditions, yet I am not afraid to do justice to silver and silver legislation internationally considered, through fear that some cranky critic, who looks superficially on financial subjects, should charge me with inconsistency.

The Sherman Silver Law, for instance, served an excellent purpose that could probably not have been achieved at the time by any other instrumentality, but it was right to repeal an objectionable part of it when through altered circumstances and the march of events it became really objectionable. Whether the time of repeal was exactly opportune or not is a point which has afforded scope for controversy, and which I have discussed in another chapter and need not therefore