publican party, whose counselor pro tem. I am, both sides of these burning questions. If discreet he will give no opinion on the law or the facts, but practice the science of observation and silence.

PRESIDENT: Senator, you are a practical telautomaton. Your handy machinery has all its bodily or translatory movement, and the operation of the interior mechanism is controlled from a distance, without wire-pullers. You have operative power, propelling and steering machinery, and numberless other accessories, all of which are controlled by transmitting political oscillations to a circuit carried by the machine and adjusted to respond only to these oscillations. If the National Committee is not on board we shall have a crewless boat; but you are a great scientist on political oscillations.

SENATOR: With an iron arm we must organize a government assailant and impetuous to combat such barbarous fetichism as the equality of man. The Public shall not denounce indirect taxation by Funded Debt, double taxation by National Banks, the taxation of High Tariff for Trusts, the Gold Standard, Government by Injunction, and that imperial colonial policy of Glory and Gold which they call Cæsarism.

PRESIDENT: Has it never occurred to you to remind the National Committee member from Kentucky that assassination has never changed the history of the world? We must stem the tide of Democracy by some more magic, less tragic, incantation than murder.

SENATOR: Good-night, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT: Remember this is the great and last throw of the Republican dice. Be brief at our next meeting. Put together the pith of the matter. The genius of our age is common-sense brevity. In a coherent and logical manner

comprehend and grasp the veritable meaning of the Equality of man, the indirect taxation of Funded Debt, National Bank, High Tariff, Trust, and the Gold Standard. Present with lucidity and precision, but without copiousness, the recent economic changes of our industrial system.

SENATOR: I am copious only on the subject of our Imperial colonial possessions. Those twelve hundred islands in the archipelago will make Americans the Rothschildren of the world. My imagination admits of no other paradise. Our nouveaux riches will soon be sprinkled all over with eau-de-cologne. How we will labor for Christianity, commerce, and our country's weal-at the Republican Foreign, Admiralty, Treasury, and Home Offices! With what facetious irony we will dub ourselves evangelists taking up the white man's burden! What an array of banking firms of the type of Messrs. Fang, Gripfast, Squeezeall & Shaveclose we shall establish on the twelve hundred islands! Soon all our politicians will be prime ministers, barons, dukes, counts, and princes, donning the imperial purple. Their sons and daughters may add to society many insipid men and women, mere lumps of stupidity; clever at monopolylogue, at tête-á-tête; but what a lot of distinguished snobs Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines will eventually produce! Instead of reading, writing, arithmetic, they will be taught stealing, sniveling, and the use of the crowbar in Imperial housebreaking.

Our days to come will be happier and given to sweeter repose when we no longer dream of the Constitution, suited to the old era of the Republic, nor of Duncan or the Colossus of Nebraska, but of the Orient and a hierarchical staff of major-domos, ushers, valets, and liveried lackeys, stables and carriages, lay grand seigniors, vassals

of his suzerainty and figuring at his consecration, a princely ceremonial of parade and homage, a pompous show of receptions and of hospitalities.

Good-night, Mr. President.

(Exit SENATOR.)

ACT II.

Scene 2. After adjournment of Republican Convention. Private library of the President, White House. The President in deep reverie.

(Enter SENATOR HANNA.)

PRESIDENT: Good-evening, Senator. Have you fabricated the snare of plausible arguments which decently strangle the equality of right-individual-to the profit of his patron, Imperial America? Have you spun the Louis XI. tissue of the meshes in which the great American people will find themselves caught next November?

SENATOR: An historical impediment loomed up of a constitutional character which in Tilden's case threatened a revolution. Irreconcilable divergencies and differences of Republicans render a coup-d'état impracticable, unless by a barefaced steal of a State, as in the Tilden case, or the purchase of returning boards, a false count in a closely contested case, as in Cleveland's election, or by a generally fraudulent and violent election, which might, through the intervention of centralized Trust, result in establishing a military dictatorship is now our sole dependence. By their fiscal power and fiscal machinery the Trusts are the creators and representatives of public power, and they favor the establishment of a new empire of the West. The philosophic principle of popular sovereignty is revolutionary. That principle imposes no limitations upon the convergence

of new doctrines in the doubtful contingencies of the future. Trust, with the sword, and Purse might lawfully establish and confer royal prerogatives upon an American syndicate, which could choose a President by and with the consent of the Senate and Supreme Court.

PRESIDENT: Old legal muzzles often become unserviceable. Whatever grandeur America possesses as a republic, it would still become more grand and superhuman as an empire in alliance with Lord Salisbury. There would not be a "shred of independence" left either in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Orient, or North America. We must stop all outlets to these thoughts; in vain is the snare set in sight of the bird. If at all, we must speak discreetly and in moderation and even in a low tone of voice, for an infernal machine is not more offensive to the people than an Imperial machine. Evidently an empire in the West is a new motor to the soul of Trust-powerful, fresh, appropriate, and effective during its chrysalis state.

SENATOR: The Trusts are the wings of the new empire now in its chrysalis state.

PRESIDENT: Yes.

SENATOR: What black broth for the people! You are a grand pupil! In exploits of political adventure, dissimulation, and hypocrisy you and I can now send both Machiavelli and Louis to school.

PRESIDENT: Peaceably, if they can, the Republicans must get the verdict in November. With a surplus of ninety millions, billions more from High Protective Trust Tariff, and the undeveloped resources of our new Currency Measure, the country looks safely Republican. Still, it behooves cautious counselors to probe deeply the widespread record of the Republican party versus the American people. That record is as vast and spacious as America, but the vital points of every