the great leaders who have gone. The deeds of yesterday are in their turn a proof that what we promise we perform, and that the people who put faith in our declarations in 1896 were not deceived, and may place the same trust in us in 1900. But our pathway has never lain among dead issues, nor have we won our victories and made history by delving in political graveyards. We are the party of to-day, with cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows. The living present is ours, the present of prosperity and activity in business, of good wages and quick payments, of labor employed and capital invested, of sunshine in the market place, and the stir of abounding life in the workshop and on the farm. It is with this that we have replaced the depression, the doubts, the dull business, the low wages, the idle labor, the frightened capital, the dark clouds which overhung industry and agriculture in 1896. This is what we would preserve, so far as sound government and wise legislation can do it. This is what we brought to the country four years ago. This is what we offer now. Again we promise that the protective system shall be maintained, and that our great industrial interests shall go on their way unshaken by the dire fear of tariff agitation and of changing duties. Again we declare that we will guard the national credit, uphold a sound currency based on gold, and keep the wages of the workingman and the enterprise of the man of business free from that most deadly of all evils, a fluctuating standard of value. The deficit which made this great country in a time of profund peace a borrower of money to meet its current expenditures has been replaced by abundant revenues, bringing a surplus, due alike to prosperity and to wise legislation, so ample that we can now safely promise a large reduction of taxation without imperilling our credit or risking a resort to loans.

We are prepared to take steps to revive and build up our merchant marine, and thus put into American pockets the money paid for carrying American freights. Out of the abundant resources which our financial legislation has brought us we will build the Isthmian canal and lay the cables which will help to turn the current of Eastern trade to the Golden Gate. We are on good terms with all nations and mean to remain so, while we promise to insure our peace and safety by maintaining the Monroe Doctrine, by ample coast defences and by building up a navy which no one can challenge with impunity.

THE NEW QUESTIONS.

The new problems brought by the war we face with confidence in ourselves and a still deeper confidence in the American people, who will deal justly and rightly with the islands which have come into their charge, The outcry against our new possessions is as empty as the cant about "militarism" and "imperialism" is devoid of sense and meaning.

Regard for a moment those who are loudest in shrieking that the American people are about to enter upon a career of oppression and that the Republic is in danger. Have they been in the past the guardians of freedom? Is safety for liberty now to be found most surely in the party which was the defender of domestic slavery? Is true freedom to be secured by the ascendency of the party which beneath our very eyes seeks to establish through infamous laws the despotic rule of a small and unscrupulous band of usurpers in Kentucky, who trample there not upon the rights of the black men only but of the whites, and which seeks to extend the same system to North Carolina and Missouri? Has it suddenly come to pass that the Democratic party, which to-day aims whenever it acquires power to continue in office by crushing out honest elections and popular rule, has it indeed come to pass, I say, that that party is the chosen protector of liberty? If it were so the outlook would be black indeed. No! the party of Lincoln may best be trusted now, as in the past, to be true, even as he was true, to the rights of man and to human freedom, whether within the borders of the United States or in the islands which have come beneath our flag. The liberators may be trusted to watch over the liberated. We who freed Cuba will keep the pledge we made to her and will guide her along the road to independence and stable government until she is ready to settle her own future by the free expression of her people's will. We will be faithful to the trust imposed upon us, and if among those to whom this great work is confided in Cuba, or elsewhere, wrongdoers shall be found, men not only bad in morals but dead to their duty as Americans and false to the honor of our name, we will punish these basest of criminals to the extent of the law.

For the islands of Hawaii and Porto Rico the political problem has been solved, and by Republican legislation they have been given self-government, and are peaceful and prosperous under the rule of the United States.

NO BACKDOWN IN THE PHILIPPINES

In the Philippines we were met by rebellion, fomented by a self-seeking adventurer and usurper. The duty of the President was to repress that rebellion, to see to it that the authority of the United States, as rightful and as righteous in Manila as in Philadelphia, was acknowledged and obeyed. That harsh and painful duty President McKinley has performed firmly and justly, eager to resort to gentle measures wherever possible, unyielding when treachery and violence made force necessary. Unlike the opponents of expansion, we do not regard the soldiers of Otis, Lawton, and MacArthur as "an enemy's camp. In our eyes they are the soldiers of the United States, they are our army, and we believe in them and will sustain them. Even now the Democrats are planning, if they get control of the House, to cut off appropriations for the

army and thus compel the withdrawal of our troops from the Philippines. The result would be to force the retirement of such soldiers as would remain to Manila, and their retreat would be the signal for the massacre and plunder of the great body of the peaceful inhabitants of the islands who have trusted to us to protect and guard them. Such an event would be an infamy. Is the government, is the House, to be given over to a party capable of such a policy? Shall they not rather be entrusted to the party which will sustain the army and suppress the brigands and guerrillas who, under pretence of war, are now adding so freely to the list of crimes committed in the name of liberty by usurpers and pretenders, and who, buoyed up by Democratic promises, keep up a highwayman's warfare in hope of Democratic success in November? It is for the American people to decide this question. Our position is plain. The restoration of peace and order now so nearly reached in the Philippines shall be completed. Civil government shall be established, and the people advanced as rapidly as possible along the road to entire freedom and to selfgovernment under our flag. We will not abandon our task. We will neither surrender nor retreat. We will not write failure across this page of our history. We will do our duty, our full duty, to the people of the Philippines, and strive by every means to give them freedom, contentment, and prosperity. We have no belief in the old slaveholders' doctrine that the Constitution of its own force marches into every newly acquired territory, and this doctrine, which we cast out in 1860, we still reject. We do not mean that the Philippines shall come without our tariff system or become part of our body politic. We do mean that they shall, under our teaching, learn to govern themselves and remain under our flag with the largest possible measure of home rule. We make no hypocritical pretence of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others. While we regard the welfare of those people as a sacred trust we regard the welfare of the American people first.

We see our duty to ourselves as well as to others. We believe in trade expansion. By every legitimate means within the province of government and legislation we mean to stimulate the expansion of our trade and to open new markets. Greatest of all markers is China. Our trade there is growing by leaps and bounds. Manila, the prize of the war, gives us inestimable advantages in developing that trade. It is the corner-stone of our Eastern policy, and the briliant diplomacy of John Hay in securing from all nations a guarantee of our treaty rights and of the open door in China rests upon it. We ask the American people whether they will throw away those new markets and widening opportunities for trade and commerce, by putting in power the Democratic party, which seeks under cover of a newly discovered affection for the rights of man to give up these islands of the East and make Dewey's victory