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government intelligence must supplement instinct. In the highest form of government, as in our own republic, where there is scarcely a gap between the source of the governing force and its outward expression or even active application, intelligence ought to be the supreme qualification. Therein alone lies national stability and safety; therein only exists hope for the benefit of healthy, pure, responsive government, and for the glory of free institutions.

Therefore the awful responsibility of a vote is commensurate with the mighty right to vote. Both are exalted with the magnitude, importance or complexity of the problems seeking solution. Public questions do not grow fewer with the years, nor become less momentous. On the contrary they by right expand in number and importance just as territory grows, industries increase, commerce multiplies, and all social and economic interests amplify. Even should there come exceptional times when issues are narrow in number and complexity, it will be found that like finer metals they weigh all the more, and involve quite as much, as when they are many or less simple. The situation of this very hour may not be, comparatively speaking, complicated as to national issues, but who has ever seen the time in our political history when they concerned so intimately the pocket, food, raiment, shelter, health and happiness of the toiling masses, or were regarded so nervously by the farmer, manufacturer, merchant, banker and creditor?

However careless the American voter may have hitherto been about preparation to cast a satisfactory ballot, or however much he may have striven to exercise an intelligent will at the polls, it cannot at this juncture escape him that it is encumbent on him to do all in his power to make his exercise of personal sovereignty as clear

and decisive as possible. This work has been prepared with a view to helping him. If it should be accepted as his preparatory hand-book, he can readily prime himself for the election occasion and form a judgment which he can defend in the forum of conscience and before the world. One thing he can be sure of to start with, and that is that he will be unhampered by any attempt on the part of the author to sway his feelings or influence his inclinations. As partisanship is not a proper part of free education, and as every fountain of knowledge should be of unadulterated liquid, so the information offered in this volume is neither speculative nor biased, but only such as the historic verities warrant.

The problems of the times are most serious, the issues broad. Voters are in no humor to "go it blind" for the sake of party. The spirit of this work meets their spirit. It presents the living questions, the issues that burn for solution, not as seen by partisan or party, not in any narrow, controversial view, but as the intelligent, independent voter would have them, and had best have them, so that he can see them from all sides and form for himself an estimate of their worth.

The constant aim of the author has been to steer clear of the narrowness, selfishness, partisanship and perishability of the ordinary campaign book, and to present the problems involved in the national election in all their phases, so that both, or all, sides may be studied, and so that their study may not be for to-day only, but for all the time the problems may be uppermost. In no other form could a work touching on political questions, and issued during a period of political controversy, prove as high a compliment to the intelligence and independence of the reader.

In no other form could it deserve or find

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so permanent a place in the library and great school of the home.

The problems amplified are those of President Making, Parties, Free Trade, Protection, Silver and Gold, Tariff Legislation, Reciprocity, Monroe Doctrine, Cuban Relations-all vital and urgent. They are introduced with a horoscope of the campaign, interspersed with frequent portraits of eminent statesmen and political leaders of all parties, together with their biographies, and supplemented with lives of the presidential candidates.

The publishers have greatly helped the purpose of the author to provide a plain, impartial educational work of a political kind for legislators, public speakers and voters, by gracing it with so many beautiful illustrations, so clear and readable a type and such unsurpassed excellence and beauty of paper and binding.

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