mentalities which contribute to the education of the children of the land; but while insisting upon the fullest measure of religious liberty we are opposed to any union of church and state.

"We reaffirm our opposition, declared in the Republican platform of 1888, to all combinations of capital, organized in trusts or otherwise, to control arbitrarily the condition of trade among our citizens. We heartily endorse the action already taken upon this subject, and ask for such future legislation as may be required to remedy any defects in existing laws and to render their enforcement more complete and effective.

"We approve the policy of extending to towns, villages, and rural communities the advantages of the free-delivery service now enjoyed by the larger cities of the country, and reaffirm the declaration contained in the Republican platform of 1888 pledging the reduction of letter postage to one cent at the earliest possible moment consistent with the maintenance of the Post Office department and the highest class of postal service.

"We commend the spirit and evidence of reform in the civil service, and the wise and consistent enforcement by the Republican party of the laws regulating the same.

"The construction of the Nicaragua canal is of the highest importance to the American people, both as a measure of national defense and to build up and maintain American commerce, and it should be controlled by the United States government.

"We favor the admission of the remaining Territories at the earliest practicable date, having due regard to the interests of the people of the Territories and of the United States. All the Federal officers appointed for the Territories should be selected from bona fide residents thereof, and the right of self-government should be accorded as far as practicable.

"We favor the cession, subject to the Homestead laws, of the arid public lands to the States and Territories in which they lie, under such Congressional restrictions as to disposition, reclamation, and occupancy by settlers as will secure the maximum benefits to the people.

"The World's Columbian Exposition is a great national under

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

taking, and Congress should promptly enact such reasonable legislation in aid thereof as will insure a discharge of the expenses and obligations incident thereto and the attainment of results commensurate with the dignity and progress of the nation.

"We sympathize with all wise and legitimate efforts to lessen and prevent the evils of intemperance and promote morality.

"Ever mindful of the services and sacrifices of the men who saved the life of the nation, we pledge anew to the veteran soldiers of the republic a watchful care and recognition of their just claims upon a grateful people.

"We commend the able, patriotic, and thoroughly American administration of President Harrison. Under it the country has enjoyed remarkable prosperity, and the dignity and honor of the nation, at home and abroad, have been faithfully maintained; and we offer the record of pledges kept as a guarantee of faithful performance in the future."

Democratic Party

Convention held in Chicago, June 21-23, 1892; temporary chairman, William C. Owens, of Kentucky; permanent chairman, William L. Wilson, of West Virginia.

Great preparations had been made by the supporters of David B. Hill, of New York, to secure the Presidential nomination for him. Grover Cleveland, however, was successful on the first ballot, which stood: Cleveland, 617 1-3; Hill, 114; Horace Boies, of Iowa, 103; Arthur P. Gorman, of Maryland, 361⁄2; Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois, 16 2-3; John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, 14; William R. Morrison, of Illinois, 3; James E. Campbell, of Ohio, 2; William E. Russell, of Massachusetts, 1; Robert E. Pattison, of Pennsylvania, 1; William C. Whitney, of New York, 1.

Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois, was nominated for Vice-President on the first ballot.

Platform:

"Section 1.-The representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, in national convention assembled, do reaffirm their allegiance to the principles of the party as formulated by Jefferson and exemplified by the long and illustrious line of his successors in Democratic leadership, from Madison to Cleveland; we believe the public welfare demands that these principles be applied to the conduct of the Federal government through the accession to power of the party that advocates them; and we solemnly declare that the need of a return to these fundamental principles of free popular government, based on home rule and individual liberty, was never more urgent than now, when the tendency to centralize all power at the Federal capital has become a menace to the reserved rights of the States that strikes at the very roots of our government under the Constitution as framed by the fathers of the republic.

"Section 2.-We warn the people of our common country, jealous for the preservation of their free institutions, that the policy of Federal control of elections to which the Republican party has committed itself is fraught with the gravest dangers, scarcely less momentous than would result from a revolution practically establishing monarchy on the ruins of the republic. It strikes at the north as well as the south, and injures the colored citizen even more than the white. It means a horde of Deputy Marshals at every polling-place armed with Federal power, returning boards appointed and controlled by Federal authority, the outrage of the electoral rights of the people in the several States, the subjugation of the colored people. to the control of the party in power, and the reviving of race antagonisms now happily abated, of the utmost peril to the safety and happiness of all-a measure deliberately and justly described by a leading Republican Senator as 'the most infamous bill that ever crossed the threshold of the Senate.' Such a policy, if sanctioned by law, would mean the dominance of a self-perpetuating oligarchy of office-holders, and the party first entrusted with its machinery could be dislodged

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

from power only by an appeal to the reserved right of the people to resist oppression, which is inherent in all self-governing communities. Two years ago this revolutionary policy was emphatically condemned by the people at the polls; but in contempt of that verdict the Republican party has defiantly declared, in its latest authoritative utterance, that its success in the coming elections will mean the enactment of the Force bill and the usurpation of despotic control over elections in all the States.

"Believing that the preservation of republican government in the United States is dependent upon the defeat of this policy of legalized force and fraud, we invite the support of all citizens who desire to see the Constitution maintained in its integrity with the laws pursuant thereto which have given our country a hundred years of unexampled prosperity, and we pledge the Democratic party, if it be entrusted with power, not only to the defeat of the Force bill but also to relentless opposition to the Republican policy of profligate expenditure, which in the short space of two years squandered an enormous surplus and emptied an overflowing treasury after piling new burdens of taxation upon the already overtaxed labor of the country.

"Section 3.-We denounce Republican protection as a frauda robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few. We declare it to be a fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the Federal government has no constitutional power to impose and collect tariff duties except for the purposes of revenue only, and we demand that the collection of such taxes shall be limited to the necessities of the government when honestly and economically administered.

"We denounce the McKinley Tariff law enacted by the Fifty-first Congress as the culminating atrocity of class legislation; we endorse the efforts made by the Democrats of the present Congress to modify its most oppressive features in the direction of free raw materials and cheaper manufactured goods that enter into general consumption, and we promise its repeal as one of the beneficent results that will follow the action of the people in entrusting power to the Democratic party. Since the McKinley tariff went into operation there have been ten reductions of the wages of laboring men to one increase. We

deny that there has been any increase of prosperity to the country since that tariff went into operation, and we point to the dullness and distress, the wage reductions and strikes in the iron trade, as the best possible evidence that no such prosperity has resulted from the McKinley act.

"We call the attention of thoughtful Americans to the fact that, after thirty years of restrictive taxes against the importation of foreign wealth in exchange for our agricultural surplus, the homes and farms of the country have become burdened with a real estate mortgage debt of over two thousand, five hundred million dollars, exclusive of all other forms of indebtedness; that in one of the chief agricultural States of the west there appears a real estate mortgage debt averaging $165 per capita of the total population, and that similar conditions and tendencies are shown to exist in the other agricultural exporting States. We denounce a policy which fosters no industry so much as it does that of the sheriff.

"Section 4.-Trade interchange on the basis of reciprocal advantages to the countries participating is a time-honored doctrine of the Democratic faith; but we denounce the sham reciprocity which juggles with the people's desire for enlarged foreign markets and freer exchanges by pretending to establish closer trade relations for a country whose articles of export are almost exclusively agricultural products with other countries that are also agricultural, while erecting a custom house barrier of prohibitive tariff taxes against the richest countries of the world, that stand ready to take our entire surplus of products and to exchange therefor commodities which are necessaries and comforts of life among our own people.

"Section 5.-We recognize in the trusts and combinations which are designed to enable capital to secure more than its just share of the joint product of capital and labor, a natural consequence of the prohibitive taxes which prevent the free competition which is the life of honest trade, but believe their worst evils can be abated by law; and we demand the rigid enforcement of the laws made to prevent and control them, together with such further legislation in restraint of their abuses as experience may show to be necessary.

"Section 6.-The Republican party, while professing a policy of