again, we find that whenever men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionably great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism; like shipwrecked mariners clinging to a bare and rugged rock as a refuge from the waves." Another refers to Schlegel: "A state is a corporation armed for the maintenance of peace. Its existence is bound up with all the other corporations; it lives and moves in them; they are its natural organs; and as soon as the state, whether with despotic or anarchical views, attempts to impede the natural functions of these organs, to disturb or derange their peculiar sphere of action, it impairs its own vital powers and prepares the way sooner or later for its own destruction."

A clear-sighted, honest, proud, and powerful-minded man writes (reads from a letter):

We are living to-day under a government of, by, and for special interests and privileged classes. Monopolies, created by tariff and other special legislation, have through a system of unscrupulous political, legal, and stock brokerage usurped the taxing power of the government and are using it to the oppression of the people. They are using it to destroy competition, to crush individual enterprise, to control production, fix wages, and dictate prices. Such is the work of the trusts and combines, and, both politically and industrially, it is a tyranny as unjust, as oppressive, and as subversive of the rights of the people to rule themselves as that which, practiced by George III., gave birth to the Fourth of July.

When I was a young man- -I am now sixty-eight—I had the world before me, and there was an absolutely fair field for me. Take all of our most successful business men of to-day, and their experiences were like mine. They entered the race without a handicap and their grit and capacity won. Now this building up of trusts puts a stop to fair and equal opportunities for the young men of to-day. The young man just out of college has no opening, as a rule.

He cannot begin business on his own account against organized capital. He must join the procession. He must content himself with being a mere clerk, and the chances are that he will never get any further, because there are so many in his class.

An eminent Republican writes (reads):

When Congress, in the spring of 1898, intrusted absolutely to Mr. McKinley the enormous sum of $50,000,000, it gave him his first taste of arbitrary and unrestricted. power. He drank deeply of the dangerous draught. He has been drinking copiously ever since. He to-day assumes prerogatives from the very thought of which he would have shrunk aghast on that day in March, 1897, when he delivered his inaugural address. Conditions have changed, but no change of conditions can overturn or reverse the principles, the institutions, the traditions of this country unless the people so will, and the people have not willed it.

Listen to this letter (reads):

The time has come when the great corporate interests of the country, that are united under the general designation of trusts, must be compelled in a legitimate way to recognize that essential principle of democracy—that the rights of the masses are superior to those of the individual or the classes, and therefore must prevail. Popular clamor and political agitation against a recognized evil that stops short of effective and intelligent action are as senseless as they are useless. The adoption of a sound political platform does not make good government, and general denunciation, no matter how well founded, will never destroy a trust or reform a public abuse. The same power that creates that privilege by the grant of a charter to a number of persons to do business with some advantage over the individual citizen is in duty bound to protect the rights of those who have not received similar favors, in order that all may enjoy the equal rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the nation and the organic laws of the States.

But yesterday a statesman whom we all approach with reverence said that under Imperial and unconstitutional misrule we have to-day in America a republic of a character the most restless, the most enterprising, the most impious, the most fierce and bloody, the most hypocritical and perfidious, the most bold and daring that ever has been seen or, indeed, that can be conceived to exist without bringing on it certain ruin. A Wall Street financial king writes (reads):

We have had a period of four years of extraordinary excitement, which is now on the ebb. That kind of business cannot live when the excitement is over. You have that overcapitalization to look at in the eye. Trade is always going on, but that is not going to help you if you have overcapitalization.

There is going to be a struggle during the next twenty years with these trusts, just as there has been with the railroads. The directors have pocketed the surplus similarly, and thousands of millions in securities have been added to the general volume during the last few years.

Six hundred million dollars have been made in the last three years, but not three hundred millions of fresh money have been placed in circulation. How are you going to do it? How can business be conducted with all those floating securities? All nations to-day demand gold. Five thousand millions of silver for business purposes have been withdrawn. If that money could be restored, just look how you could coal up! Look at the consequent depression in India and in the United States of silver.

In the United States, to take a conservative figure, the property of the country from all manner of things which the industry and the money of the people have created each year increases by $2,000,000,000. Add to that the increases of England and France, and you reach $10,000,000,000 of property added each year and added to the already existing volume.

Now, what we want to ascertain is how fast is the circulating medium-how fast is gold-increasing.

Remember, the supply from South Africa has been very much curtailed of late, but the supply of gold is increasing by $400,000,000 per annum. When you come to think of the increase of property by ten to fifteen hundred millions among the people, I ask, Where does the money come from to buy such property?

You understand people build up properties that they may sell them. When a man who has developed land, fenced it in and built his farm, wants to sell it, who is going to buy it? Where is the money when silver is stricken out of its real value and its equality with gold is destroyed?

Bimetallism is just as much a tenet of faith with Republicans as with Democrats. The only thing is the Republicans evade the issue; the Democrats do not. The Republicans join in the nonsensical cry of dishonest money.

The great proposition I hold to is that agriculture is the base of the prosperity of the country-that and such collateral things as beef, pork, and lard. You may attempt to evade the proposition, but it is of no use. Bad crops give bad stock markets; good crops give good stock markets. Without them you have no prosperity. We have been increasing our exports of manufacturers' goods in a way which is very flattering, but this increase has been made at the expense of the American, who has paid very high for it, because the tariff is excessive. Our manufacturing business is on stilts, Americans paying 30 per cent. more for manufactured goods than they should.

SENATOR: The hubbub comes from the agitation and whirl produced by Senator Hoar's imitation of the soaring wings and dazzling flights of Charles Sumner.

PRESIDENT: Senator Hoar is one of those terrible beings who exalt themselves above men. He is waiting till he passes from the earth for the gods to abdicate and leave the choice to him of the thrones in heaven.

SENATOR: The politically dead ride fast. I hate those insipid, pietistical saints forever gnawing like moths. Let us speak no evil of the dead.

PRESIDENT: Before the ides of November you will find the Crazy Giant reincorporated in our jeweled constellation of Imperialists. Here (handing SENATOR Hanna a letter), read.

(SENATOR HANNA, reading:)

The rivers are not hastening more surely to mingle their waters with the sea than are the corruptors of the Power-holding Class to the annihilation of constitutional government. They are doing through corporations what despotic power would not attempt. You can destroy a constitution as readily by corruption as you can overcome it by a revolution. They are different roads which lead to the same end. Heroic courage and consummate prudence are now essential to support the Republic. It is only when they had arrived at the highest pitch of prosperity that the Romans encountered the ambition of Mithridates. Like Alciphron, the Republican party swings in air and darkness and knows not what winds of Imperialism may drift our property and people from their constitutional moorings.

PRESIDENT: Senator, we must put our heads to this discussion and not stand aloof until we arrive at the end. Though a golden mean in matters of state policy is difficult, yet the path of the statesman should be a safe and sure one. It is history which teaches us to fear the underhand intrigues of the close and secret maskers and deep dissemblers in this headlong career of Imperial folly.

SENATOR: These letters are nothing but plain impudence. There is always a disposition to exaggerate extraordinary facts. The public have an outrageous appetite for lies. The widespread apprehension respecting the safety of property comes of the universal foolery of those greasy sophisters, the Gold Democrats. Our Currency Measure has interred bimetallism, but the question of all questions is that of the broad fiscal polity of the American