safely on friendly shores. Even supposing candidatures to be inordinately multiplied, the room for wise choice can hardly be said to be so curtailed as to provoke lengthy doubt or impel to disastrous mistake.

And this is particularly true because in all the outcrops of the present campaign thus far, the matter of mere men has been subordinated to the matter of measures. Considering the earnestness of all, the magnitude of measures, the solemnity of the political situation, what we as a people of workers and business are to escape, what to remedy, what to confront, there is no good reason to suppose that campaign beginnings do not exactly reflect their endings, and that the final verdict will be the proclamation of a much needed and desirable result.

This displacement of leaders, especially the candidates, by the measures they represent, happily leaves little provocation for vulgar, personal politics. All must remember with humiliation the indecent opening of the campaign of 1884. For weeks, and even months, it was a game of personal sharpshooting, an occasion of revilement, a fiery furnace of character attacks and defences, most degrading to party honor and despicable in the eyes of individuals whatever their political predilections. Such an exhibition cannot be repeated now, if ever. Candidates are not standing for more than measures. In this, as very likely in all the political battles of the near future, it is hardly probable that voters will permit an overthrow of their deliberative mood, and an eclipse of issues at stake, by halting to indulge in the vile tactics of personalism.

Honorable partisanship is the making of a campaign. As issues broaden and deepen, their very solemnity smoothes the rough and acerb edges of partisanship, gives it healthy tone, adapts it to the high and noble work of

clear, fair, truthful statement, and calm, deliberative, forceful defence. The true partisan becomes the best of political school-teachers. He may be the statesman of the hour, the leader of the future. This campaign is prolific of opportunities for that class of partisans who have honest convictions, fearless natives, clear judgments, fair spirits and gifted expression. The partisan of only heated words, loud expletives, false assertions, specious logic and idle promises, will find himself without a mission, or ought to so find himself, at a time when dispassionate discussions should rule the hour and when all bitterness and falsehood should be at lowest discount. The orator of this grandest of all political occasions, a presidential election, will have before him such an audience as he never before addressed. It will be a large audience, for the masses are in motion; a critical audience, for the masses are inquiring; a studious audience, for the masses are thinking; a subdued audience, for the masses are not in jubilee humor, but in grimly defiant mood. A forcible fact is going to avail far more than a pyrotechnic spurt. Vituperative thunder is going to addle very few brains. Sophistical balloons will find themselves punctured ere they reach a floating medium. There may be localities in which all this will prove an exception, but they will be few and wide apart. There may be men foolish enough, or ignorant enough, to rely for argument and effort on sarcasm, bitterness, vituperation and deceit, but they will certainly look in vain for spirited applause or sincere converts.

The activities and energies of the campaign can hardly fail to prove variegated and interesting. What will be lacking in the spectacular will be made up in that assiduity of speech and competitive vigor of work which the political situation demands. The crisis warrants a

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The popular vote was-Cleveland, Democrat, 5.545,227; Harrison, Republican, 5,126,418; Weaver, Populist, 1,125,842; Bidwell, Prohibitionist, 262,386.

THE POPULAR VOTE.-Harrison, 5,438,157-20 States; Cleveland, 5,535,626-18 States; Prohibition, 250, 157; Labor, 150,624.

PARTIES, PAST AND PRESENT.

POLITICAL parties are inseparable from republican institutions. They are the birth of free thought and expression. If at all times they are the birth of high and noble sentiment and have for a purpose something definite and useful, they are both a necessity and blessing. If, on the contrary, they find birth in ignorance, fanaticism or sheer arbitrariness, and in their exercise of power use only low and brutish forces, they become elements of danger, and are not to be classed as among the welcome political energies.

Happily for our free institutions, volcanic parties, those of quick rise and fierce outburst, those that bear on their foreheads their own danger signal, are of short life. This is so for two great reasons. First, a high state of effervescence soon exhausts itself, and a high state of explosiveness generally leads to a speedy bursting of the bands of organization. Second, the sober intelligence of the country, the property instinct, the solid business interests, the peace and order sentiment, will not, for any long time, tolerate threats of danger or intolerable disturbance.

There are therefore philosophers who look upon parties of any and every kind as essential. Their argument is that no matter what may be the aim of a party, nor how narrow and fanatical, or even dangerous, it may be, it is better that it should find the rebuke and correction which