We should no longer contribute directly or indirectly to the maintenance of the colossal marine of foreign countries, but provide an efficient and complete marine of our own.

Now that the American navy is assuming a position commensurate with our importance as a nation, a policy I am glad to observe the Republican platform strongly indorses, we must supplement it with a merchant marine that will give us the advantages, in both our coastwise and foreign trade that we ought naturally and properly to enjoy.

It should be at once a matter of public policy and national pride to repossess this immense and prosper

ous trade.

The pledge of the Republican National Convention that our civil service laws "shall be sustained and thoroughly and honestly enforced and extended wherever practicable" is in keeping with the position of the party for the past twenty-four years, and will be faithfully observed.

Our opponents decry these reforms. They appear willing to abandon all the advantages gained after so many years of agitation and effort. They encourage a return to methods of party favoritism which both parties have often denounced, that experience has condemned and that the people have repeatedly disapproved.

The Republican party earnestly opposes this reactionary and entirely unjustifiable policy. It will take

no backward step upon this question. It will seek to improve but never degrade the public service.

There are other important and timely declarations in the platform which I cannot here discuss. I must content myself with saying that they have my approval.

If, as Republicans, we have lately addressed our attention with what may seem great stress and earnestness to the new and unexpected assault upon the financial integrity of the Government, we have done it because the menace is so grave as to demand especial consideration, and because we are convinced that if the people are aroused to the true understanding and meaning of this silver inflation movement they will avert the danger.

In doing this we feel that we render the best service possible to the country, and we appeal to the intelligence, conscience and patriotism of the people, irrespective of party or section, for their earnest support.

We avoid no issues. We meet the sudden, dangerous and revolutionary assault upon law and order and upon those to whom is confided by the Constitution and laws the authority to uphold and maintain them which our opponents have made with the same courage that we have faced every emergency since our organization as a party, more than forty years ago.

Government by law must first be assured; everything else can wait. The spirit of lawlessness must be extinguished by the fires of an unselfish and lofty patriotism.

Every attack upon the public faith and every suggestion of the repudiation of debts, public or private, must be rebuked by all men who believe that honesty is the best policy, or who love their country and would preserve unsullied its national honor.

The country is to be congratulated upon the almost total obliteration of the sectional lines which for many years marked the division of the United States into slave and free territory and finally threatened its partition into two separate governments by the dread ordeal of civil war.

The era of reconciliation, so long and earnestly desired by General Grant and many other great leaders, North and South, has happily come, and the feeling of distrust and hostility between the sections is everywhere vanishing, let us hope never to return.

Nothing is better calculated to give strength to the nation at home than to increase our influence abroad and add to the permanency and security of our free institutions than the restoration of cordial relations between the people of all sections and parts of our beloved country.

If called by the suffrages of the people to assume the duties of the high office of President of the United States, I shall count it a privilege to aid, even in the slightest degree, in the promotion of the spirit of fraternal regard which should animate and govern the citizens of every section, State or part of the Republic.

After the lapse of a century since its utterance, let us, at length and forever hereafter, heed the admoni

tion of Washington, "There should be no North, no South, no East, no West, but a common country."

It shall be my constant aim to improve every opportunity to advance the cause of good government by promoting that spirit of forbearance and justice which is so essential to our prosperity and happiness by joining most heartily in all proper efforts to restore the relations of brotherly respect and affection which in our early history characterized all the people of all the States.

I would be glad to contribute toward binding in indivisible union the different divisions of the country, which, indeed, now "have every inducement of sympathy and interest" to weld them together more strongly than ever.

I would rejoice to see demonstrated to the world that the North and the South and the East and the West are not separated or in danger of becoming separated because of sectional or party differences.

The war is long since over; "we are not enemies, but friends," and as friends we will faithfully and cordially co-operate, under the approving smile of Him who has thus far so signally sustained and guided us, to preserve inviolate our country's name and honor, of its peace and good order, of its continued ascendancy amongst the greatest governments on earth.

WILLIAM M'KINLEY.

CHAPTER XX.

SALIENT EXTRACTS FROM MAJOR MCKINLEY'S ADDRESSES TO REPRESENTATIVE DELEGATIONS.

E

VEN before the date of the publication of his

brilliant letter of acceptance, and thence on

to the day of his triumphant election, Major McKinley was called upon daily-almost hourly-to address various visiting delegations upon the supreme issue of the campaign. His speeches were always to the point, pungent in phrase, and pregnant with fact. As in his letter of acceptance, so in his speeches, he multiplied the resources of the campaign for sound money, and gave convincing arguments for an honest standard of value.

Three days prior to his acceptance of the nomination, he addressed a body of 500 farmers, and made an earnest appeal for an honest currency. In the course of his address he said:

"Can the farmer be helped by free coinage of silver?

"He cannot be helped because if the nominal price of grain were to rise, through an inflation of the currency, the price of everything else would rise