invited to the banquet, he being engaged to supply to all the London newspapers a slip containing a full transcript of his notes. A place was accordingly reserved for the Times reporter, the other London newspapers being ignored.

Had there existed among the morning press any means or habit of taking counsel and common action together, this precious arrangement would have come to swift and sudden end. It required only that the newspapers thus ignored should boycott the Academy Banquet, and the next year the cause of offence would cease to exist. There was, however, no such machinery for inter-communication between the managers of the morning papers. The Standard, to its honor, took an independent course, and in its columns the speeches at the Academy dinner were left unreported. In 1886 the Daily News, coming under new editorship, took the same line. The Academicians held out for another year and then capitulated. The lesson has not borne other fruit and the London newspapers, each in its way a power in the land, solemnly stalk along their own pathway, ludicrously ignoring the existence of other pedestrians.

Possibly it is, on the whole, well that the British press should not be united after the fashion of the ancient guilds. If it were, its power in the land might more nearly approach that of the House of Commons than is already achieved.

H. W. LUCY.

ISSUES AND PROSPECTS OF THE CAMPAIGN.

BY SENATOR W. E. CHANDLER AND THE HON. JOSIAH QUINCY.

I.

BEFORE stating what are in fact the leading issues of the coming presidential canvass, a moment may be wisely spent in speculating as to what those issues might possibly have been. It cannot be said that the Republican claims for the votes of the people could have been placed upon any basis different from that laid down by the St. Louis Convention. The principal points put in issue were (1) protection to American industries by means of tariff duties on imported goods; (2) sound money as defined and understood by the great mass of the Republicans, and (3) a patriotic and positive foreign policy. It is also not conceivable that the canvass would have been materially different with any other candidate for President. The Republican party's presentation of its claims, indeed, has been substantially fixed and settled beyond change during several years past.

But the Democratic claim for votes might have been very different from what it in fact is. The platform might have been (1) sound money as understood by the Cleveland Democrats, and (2) hostility to protection by tariff duties in any form. In that event, with any candidate, the Democrats would have been badly beaten at the polls.

Or, on the other hand, the Democratic platform might have been (1) for sound money as above, and (2) as to protection, it might have recognized as unobjectionable in levying tariff duties incidental protection by discrimination in favor of home products. In this event the presidential canvass would have been comparatively free from excitement, possibly tame, flat, and uninteresting The Populists would have made little figure with their demon

strations; the seceding silver Republicans would have accomplished little more than the carrying of three or four mountain States for silver; and although the South would have been generally Democratic, and the Republican victory would not have been overwhelming, yet the triumph would have been sure, complete, and in every way satisfactory in its essential results.

Passing from this speculation as to what the aspect of the presidential canvass possibly might have been, and coming to the actual situation, we find it to be this:

The claims of the Republicans are substantially as above indicated.

I. More distinctly, they are in favor of protection to American industries and to high wages for American labor by tariff duties imposed with the direct motive of affording such protection, while articles not produced in this country are to come in free of duty or with light duties, and in the case of these latter products the nations from which they come are to be induced upon the principle of reciprocity to admit free of duty the important staple products of the United States.

II. The Republicans are pledged to sound money; that is to say, to absolute and unqualified opposition to the free and unlimited coinage of silver bullion by the United States alone as an immediate measure of legislation—which, if it followed as a result of the approaching presidential canvass, would send gold at once to a premium, and destroy the present parity between gold and silver.

Making now no statement of the other important but not equally vital issues of the pending canvass, the two above-stated principles are the fighting issues of the Republicans. To represent them, Major McKinley is the presidential candidate. His nomination was principally due to a popular demand for a return to protection as a governing principle of tariff legislation, which would not accept any other Republican as the best representative of that principle. He is certain to receive the willing support of every Republican satisfied with the principles of his party. Some objections growing out of the contest for his nomination have disappeared and will be forgotten during the campaign. Petty evils will always attend the movements of a great political party, but fortunately, in the case of the Republican party, such evils generally carry with them their own antidote; and they have

done so in this case, as will appear in the course of the next year and a half.

Personally, Major McKinley is a man of upright character and life; warm and tender-hearted without being weak; intellectually strong, without being dogmatic; most thoroughly informed concerning the issues which he represents, and sure to constitute a cabinet of the ablest men of the nation, who, with the President, will prove safe and sound custodians of the national interests and the national honor.

The regular organization of the Democratic party, which has nominated Bryan and Sewall at Chicago, presents, against McKinley, protection, and sound money, a platform containing :

I. Denunciation of protection in any form. The absolute unconstitutionality either of direct or of incidental protection is not asserted as it was in the Cleveland platform of 1892, but the hostility of the Democratic party to protection of any sort is quite as distinctly marked as in the previous platform. No suggestion is made that if by any possibility the Democratic party has national power given to it, any law levying customs duties will be designed in any part to aid in protecting American products and the wages of American workmen from the competition of foreign products and the starvation wages of Europe and Asia.

The failure to 66 ease up" in that hostility to protection which has done so much to weaken the Democratic party during the last two years, is a marked feature, quite natural, to be sure, of a new political movement, the purpose of which is to enable the solid South, united with a sufficient number of Western States, to take possession of the national government.

II. A demand for unsound money; that is to say, for the immediate passage of a law which, without conditions, shall provide for receiving and coining at the mints of this country all the silver bullion which may be presented for coinage, at the ratio of 16 to 1, the parity between gold and silver to be thereby immediately broken, gold to be driven out of circulation, and the discarded silver of the whole world to be taken into our mints; all this as a fixed and permanent national policy.

A mere statement of the issues in the condensed form above adopted would seem to be sufficient to justify the prediction that there can be but one result of the canvass, namely, the triumph

of McKinley and the Republican party. There are, however, other pertinent facts to be considered.

On the money issue the Chicago Convention in effect fell to pieces. Two-thirds of the delegates being in favor of the money plank and having the power to nominate a candidate, the so-called sound-money Democrats from the North and East, who with their associates comprised a little less than one-third of the delegates, after having vainly struggled to prevent the adoption of that plank, sat silent in the Convention to the number of 160 while a candidate was being nominated. What these sound-money Democrats will do in the canvass is not yet apparent. They may content themselves without formal action, remain inactive in their respective localities, and allow or promote a shrinkage of the Democratic vote by Democratic abstentions and the casting of many Democratic ballots for McKinley; or there may be a soundmoney Democratic National Convention, which will present another Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and the split in the party will thus become marked and formal. The extent of Mr. McKinley's triumph will hardly be varied whichever course the Northern Democrats pursue.

It is suggested that the Republicans, in order to get Democratic votes for Mr. McKinley, ought to moderate their tariff notions and recognize the demand for honest money as the paramount issue of the canvass. This suggestion is not wisc. A Republican Congress, even with a clear, unconditional majority for protection in the Senate, which it does not seem possible to obtain, will not be likely to adopt an extreme tariff measure. But the tariff plank must stand as it is written, binding all Republicans, or we shall lose more Republican votes than we shall gain Democratic votes. On the other hand, a sound-money Democrat can vote for McKinley on the currency issue without committing himself in the least to protection or to any further connection with the Republican party.

What the Populists will do is at the moment of this writing quite uncertain. Undoubtedly Bryan is their logical candidate, for he has been of late more a Populist than a Democrat; yet on the other hand is Sewall, the candidate for Vice-President, who, although he theoretically favors the free coinage of silver, is a millionaire who has become wealthy in connection with protected monopolies. Even if the Populists consummate their seizure of