and order than conceded to the imperious demands of absolute necessity; and the more so when we consider that the freedom which a nation strives to attain through the overthrow of existing institutions is but as hope to enjoyment, as preparation to perfection, when compared with that which a state, once constituted, can bestow.

PRESIDENT: Do you regard the Nebraskan as the soul of this mighty coalition against the Power-holding Class? SENATOR: No! Democracy needs but another push to leap from its hinges. The revolution of 2000 will be a splendid triumph for Democracy. It will be an acknowledgment and a practical exhibition of the great popular doctrine that all government, and all the forms and provisions which are necessary to its administration, must ultimately be referred to the happiness of the people.

There will be a new bill of rights, a new Magna Charta, a new enrollment of the prerogatives of the democratic part of the Constitution. The new Declaration will be totally on the popular side, declaratory entirely and exclusively of the rights and liberties of the people. It will settle for a century the prerogatives of political despots to deploy by indirect taxation the national wealth into the pockets of the Power-holding Class.

PRESIDENT: The government of nations, according to Solomon, should be based on wisdom:

I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have strength. By mẹ kings | reign and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. Riches and honor are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning or ever the earth was.

SENATOR: That may be the wisdom of Prudence, but it may yet transpire in its historical development that Pru

dence has not been the wisdom of the Republican party. It is entirely clear to my mind, as I said at the opening of the Ohio Convention, that this is a business campaign. The precept of Louis XI. must regulate our movements. The Republican leader who does not know how to dissimulate does not know how to rule the American Public nor to carry to victory the Republican colors. Our witty inventions have heretofore been Funded Debt, National Bank, High Tariff, Gold Standard, Trust, and Currency Bill. These have been our counsel and sound wisdom, our understanding and strength. By these witty inventions have our Power-holding Princes reigned and declared the justice of indirect taxation. Riches and honor, Glory and Gold are with them. It remains to be seen how durable they are, if we reflect it is as easy for eighty-odd millions by constitutional, conservative and equitable taxation, during a revolutionary torrent to divert the distribution as it was for the Power-holding Class under inequitable and unconstitutional legislation of indirect taxation to accumulate fifty-five out of the sixty-five billions of national wealth; Senator Wolcott, desiring to avoid the Charybdis of Imperialism, fell into the Scylla of Revolution by substantially declaring at Philadelphia, "We kicked the Constitution out in 1861 upon the slavery issue, and we'll kick it out again in 1900 upon the issue of Imperialism and Colonial Expansion."

PRESIDENT: The corner-stone of this campaign's witty invention you have left out.

SENATOR: Which one?

PRESIDENT: Prosperity.

SENATOR: The people may yet discover the rotten foundation of the airy edifice. Prosperity, Colonial Expansion, and Imperialism are the most sorry jugglers of political empiricism by which a people were ever attempted to be bullied into servitude of a Power-holding Class.

PRESIDENT: Only when they are landed in a bottomless abyss of undefined and irresponsible Imperialism will the people realize the impunity with which we have trampled on the impotent formalities of the Constitution that form the pretended bulwark of our freedom.

SENATOR: The people are not afraid of power colorably exercised. The question with us is how to protect our despotism from being consumed by that sun of liberty, the Constitution.

PRESIDENT: We have much reason to fear the ferocity of resentment peculiar to the back revenge of detected imposture. Our usurped authority has been prostituted to party purposes.

SENATOR: Unless historical analogy be altogether delusive, the symptoms of constitutional decrepitude are rapidly accumulating and the decease of a constitutional government cannot be distant.

PRESIDENT: The greedy spirit of Commercialism is a popular passion which will find a feeble obstacle in the solemn imbecility of the Constitution. It is in this fatal temper that the multitude who do not value the superior judgment of enlightened men become sufficiently debased and imbruted to sink into placid and political servitude. It is vain that their preceptors and benefactors point them to Imperialism as the arsenal from which Despotism borrows her thunders and her chains. The public have already forgotten or seem to have forgotten all constitutional powers have their degrees of importance, but the most unimportant power has its distinct and independent functions, and should be held as inviolable as the most important. No power is weak that is legally exercised. All powers become as nothing when centralized. It is clearly absurd to seek the principle of the political stability of government anywhere else but in the mobile

elements of society. It is a monstrous error to assume that any government can be strengthened by arbitrary power. Its tendency is always to weaken.

To govern a society of Freemen by a Constitution, founded on the Eternal Rules of right Reason, and directed to promote the Happiness of the whole, and of every Individual, is the noblest Prerogative which can belong to Humanity; and if a man may be said, without profaneness, to imitate God in any case, this is the case.

SENATOR: That is a fact powerful and splendid, but it is not "business." I cannot too often remind you of what I said in the opening of the Ohio campaign. This election means business and the Baryl. Leave all to me. Goodnight.

PRESIDENT: Let our stenographers compare and compile their notes of these interviews. They will be useful hereafter.

SENATOR: What shall we call them?

PRESIDENT: The Power-holding Class versus the Public. Imaginary Dialogue of President McKinley and Senator Hanna.

SENATOR: Excellent device. The morn is dawning.
PRESIDENT: Yes (looking through the window).

See how the morning opes her golden gates,
And takes her farewell of the glorious Sun.

SENATOR: Now for the Baryl, the battle, and the breeze. PRESIDENT (interjecting): While I look on with holy leer, soft smiling and demurely looking down.

SENATOR: Stern sagacity, mystical piety, posing, and prosperity are more effective with the multitude than overloaded gorgeous learning, or the loudest bagpipe of the spellbinders' squeaking train. Oh! for a forty-parson

power to chant the praise of those majestic souls which are conscious of the benevolent assimilations of our imperial mission.

PRESIDENT (in a reverie): A man, a corpse, a shade from the depth of the Past stretching a hand across centuries lays hold of me. Hear him! He says it is not because they have been free, but because they have a right to be free that the American people should demand to be freed from Imperialism. With unspeakable dread significance proclaiming Justice and Liberty have neither birth nor race, youth nor age, he repeats the noisy, tumultous, stormy, clamorous problem of the people's rights. (PRESIDENT gazing into vacancy.)

SENATOR: What do you see?

PRESIDENT: Three words, and then three words. They light up. I see the steady aspect of a large clear star. SENATOR: What words are they?

PRESIDENT (still peering into vacancy): “The people's rights." "Man! and forever."

SENATOR: That voice you heard is the echo of the importunate chirp of the meager, shriveled insects of the hour; the words and star are in your mind's eye.

While you insanely gaze into vacancy and register solemn puerilities and Tommy-rot fooleries, Manifest Destiny behind the Republican party gives the nod, pointing her to the regal diadem and royal seat of Imperialism. Henceforth assume the dispassionate imperialistic tone of a philosophic scientific statesman.

PRESIDENT: Has the spirit of Imperialism conferred upon me a criminal eminence so audacious?

SENATOR: My Colonial - Expansion - Commercial - Aggression policy has drawn a politic well-wrought veil over Imperialism.

PRESIDENT: Oh! Mark, I have no creed, no country, no