in that memorable but disastrous contest, only two were reported in full and thus preserved-one delivered in the Cooper Institute, of New York, and one delivered at Goldsboro, North Carolina. In the Senate during 18723-4, he delivered elaborate speeches on election reform in support of the Centennial appropriation, and in perfecting the measures necessary to carry into effect the new Constitution that he had tirelessly advocated.

In 1874 he was nominated as the Citizens' candidate for Mayor and indorsed by the Democratic Convention, after he had published a positive declination, and that contest stands as entirely exceptional in the forensic political conflicts of Philadelphia. It called out the largest number of able campaigners ever heard in a local battle. Such masters of eloquent argument as William Henry Rawle, Henry Armit Brown, E. Joy Morris, John W. Forney, George W. Biddle and others took the stump to advocate his election, and such noted Republicans as Horace Binney, Alexander Henry, William Welsh, Amos R. Little and others heartily supported him. He left the Senate for three weeks and spoke from three to five times every night, and always to houses crowded to suffocation, and his speeches were as varied as they were impressive. The result of the contest was defeat, but the impress of that campaign is imperishable.

Of Mr. McClure's hundreds of important political speeches, delivered during a period of more than a generation, we have chosen from the few which have been preserved, four addresses which will be accepted as most typical of the methods and force of the speaker. He seldom prepared political addresses, and two of them which

we give were preserved in the Legislative reports, and the two others were fortunately reported stenographically. These four speeches cover a period of over thirty years, beginning with, his remarkable presentation of the issue of civil war, early in 1861, before Sumter had been fired upon, and ending with his equally remarkable arraignment of the McKinley tariff, in 1892.

The Senate speech of January 11, 1861, on the threat of civil war, was regarded by his fellow party leaders as bold beyond the lines of expediency, as it predicted the bloody destruction of slavery if fraternal war should be precipitated; but one year thereafter the party made that speech the text of Republican aim, and pointed to it with pride as coming from the then Chairman of the Republican State Committee, and the admitted leader of the Senate.

The second speech was delivered in the House after the close of the war, and it is the fitting sequel of the first. Both of these speeches are heroic arraignments of the Democratic party and policy of that day. The last two speeches we give are as heroic arraignments of the Republican party and policy. They present the earnest convictions and the ever-aggressive methods of his public utterances, and deal with the leading issues of the time and reflect the swift mutations in partisan supporters and antagonists in our free government. His North Carolina speech is the bold protest of a Republican against what he regarded as the prostitution of Republican power in the South, and his review of the McKinley tariff is the earnest protest of a life-long protectionist against what he regards as the prostitution of that principle to the interests of centrali

zation and monopoly. These four political deliverances are given as the best reflex of the party faith, methods and efforts of one who has made an enduring record in the annals of our best political disputants, and they need no apology or explanation.

THE THREAT OF CIVIL WAR.*

MR. SPEAKER :-I do not hesitate to say that if wrong has been done by our State, either by any act of commission or of omission, there is not a Senator here who will not meet the question of the existence of wrong frankly and manfully. We are told that personal liberty laws 'must be repealed; but no Senator pretends to say that we have such laws, at least in the general acceptation of the term. We have had no legislation on the subject of the rendition of slaves since the passage of the present fugitive slave law, except to liberalize our statutes to facilitate the return of such property. In 1852 we met the full measure of the demand of the Southern States by the repeal of the sixth section of the Act of 1847, and thus gave up our jails for the detention of fugitives; and since then we have not disturbed or added to our statutes. We have no personal liberty laws of any kind. The passage of such a bill has twice been attempted since I have been a legislator and as often failed by Republican votes. And yet Virginia, for whom the Senator from Berks (Mr. Clymer) made his appeal on this question, has a personal liberty law for the protection of free blacks, which would be pronounced treason on the Democratic side if advocated here to-day. Slave-holding Virginia guarantees to any one "conceiving himself unlawfully detained as a slave," the right to a trial by a "jury free from exception, without the formality of pleading," and if unlawfully deprived of his liberty, is entitled to costs and damages. But in Pennsylvania a discomfited party

* Delivered in the Pennsylvania Serate, January 11, 1861.