the consumers 10 per cent. lower than goods by the same manufacturer fetch in New York or Philadelphia. The monopoly of the market of his country enables him to produce an extra supply which he can sell to the foreigner at a cheaper rate. Whilst the Republicans appeal to American jealousy of the Europeans, they suppress the fact that the native manufacturers are under the tariff system subsidised out of taxes paid by the suffering masses in the West and South.

The general tendency of their teaching has largely contributed to stimulate the agitation started by the owners of silver mines. The Silverites have for the time taken possession of the other great political organization, that of the Democrats, but the Republicans coquetted with them up to the last moment, and it has been shown that Mr. McKinley himself repeatedly encouraged them. It is to It is to a public strongly impressed by Protectionist theory that the owner of American silver has been able to appeal.

Whilst the Republican party includes the great proportion of the capitalist and manufacturing class, their rivals represent the aggregate of local interests. Opponents of central government and preachers of universal equality, they rely on the Declaration of Independence and the teachings of Jefferson as sufficient training for a plain people. They, too, are traders; but their industry is more closely connected with rural life, on the farm and plantation, and they have had a long-standing quarrel with the money dealer in the city. The great achievement of Jackson was the destruction of the Bank of the United States; and, although he has been condemned by his countrymen for his crusade against Biddle, it cannot be seriously denied that in refusing to continue the Bank charter he was carrying out the principles laid down by Jefferson and Madison. He was a soldier and a pioneer abounding in ready expedients rather than a statesman, and he had the usual fate of a self-made man in a democratic system. Instead of rising to a higher level he sank to the homage of ignoble followers; but for all that Jackson remains the greatest figure in American history between the Revolution and the Civil War. His passionate temper involved him in continuous quarrels, and he was thus deprived of that personal assistance which might have enabled a man of his sterling character to develope, in accordance with democratic theory, the financial work of Hamilton, Morris, and Gallatin. In the struggle with the Bank the great personality of Jackson was victorious. He compelled Congress to expunge the resolution in which, not daring to impeach him, they had recorded their animosity. He was able to say, like the Roman Vol. 184.-No. 368. warrior,

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warrior, that he had made peace, for the Bank of the United States had disappeared, but what was to replace it neither he nor the Kitchen Cabinet' could tell. The wild-cat' banking of 1835-36 and the crash of 1837 have been almost forgotten in the absorbing interest of the struggle between North and South. The Democrats had thus old traditions of conflict with the Eastern States as the home of the money power, and, when they returned to active public life after the termination of the Civil War, they were tempted to dispute the payment of United States' bonds in coin and the resumption of the gold standard. Better influences prevailed over these inherited tendencies, and all the chiefs of the party cordially adopted the principle of resumption established by the Act of 1875.

The policy and meaning of that Act were that, as gold returned into circulation, the vast paper issues of the Treasury, which by the authority of the law had been made to do the work of the precious metals, should be gradually withdrawn. There arose, however, a great outcry against calling in the notes issued by the Government, and known as greenbacks. Before the date for resuming cash payments a new Act was passed directing that all greenbacks paid in should be re-issued. The provision of gold for all who desired to have it after 1879 was retained, but the Treasury notes were to be kept in circulation. Nor did the belief in the value of an abundant currency find its most mischievous expression in the supplemental Act requiring the Treasury to re-issue the greenbacks. The discovery of vast deposits of silver in the States on either side of the Rocky Mountains created a new party in the Union almost as distinct as the old slave-owning interest, and, like slavery, limited to a particular section of the country. Before the changes consequent on the return of peace had come into full operation, it was ascertained that the States of the Rocky Mountains boasted supplies of silver hitherto undreamed of, and modern inventions made their extraction easier and cheaper. People rushed to buy shares in the silver mines, and, when they found their new acquisitions much less valuable than they expected, came to believe that the fall in the price of that commodity was due, not to excessive production, but to the combinations of European bankers, all, it was alleged, interested in carrying out the policy of England.

The substitution of a single gold standard for the old double standard of gold and silver in the ratio of 16 of silver to 1 of gold had been effected without controversy by a departmental Act in 1873. It was a measure of detail regulating the business of the Mint, with a view to the passing of the more important

laws

laws for the return to cash payments, and it provided that the standard money of the Union should be the gold dollar, whilst the silver dollar and its sub-denominations should be available for settlement of smaller transactions not exceeding fifty dollars in amount.

The unanimity with which the Mint Act of 1873 was passed has given rise to a number of popular legends. The advocates of inflated currency and the speculators in silver, who have long carried on an active campaign under various names, describe this law as the result of a dark conspiracy, and all the resources of the American oratory of the present generation have been called into play to give an impression of its wickedness. It was a stab in the dark.' Its authors proceeded with 'cat-like tread.' The simple fact was that the public paid noattention to the difference between the one metal and the other. The difficulty during the decade between 1870 and 1880 was to reconcile the American people to paying the expenses of the war, and in order to settle this question a return to cash payment was essential. A settlement in coin was the main purpose of the Government, and the only cash at that time thought about was gold. It is quite true that in old times a bi-metallic system had been acclaimed as part of American policy, but the silver dollar had not been in general use since 1834, and the men who had carried the country through the crisis of the war naturally turned their minds to the metallic standard of the great commercial nations of Europe. That was the model on which they sought to reconstruct the currency of their country, and the wisdom of their purpose cannot be disputed. Probably nobody would have raised any question about it, had it not been for the sudden growth of the great mining interest in the Western States and the rapidity with which European nations proceeded to protect their currencies against a flood of the cheaper metal. Almost contemporaneously with the silent change in the United States from what was nominally a double metallic standard to a single gold standard came the adoption of gold as the standard of value in Germany, whilst the production of silver from American mines within three years more than doubled.

A strong reaction against sound financial policy set in between the passing of the Resumption Act in 1875 and its coming into operation in 1879. The clamour in favour of retaining greenbacks was so loud as to endanger the carrying out of the whole scheme; and in order to maintain the right to use gold in 1879, it was agreed, by way of compromise, not only that greenbacks should be kept in circulation, but it was further provided by

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the

the Bland Act that the Treasury should pay a bounty to the mining interest by undertaking to purchase silver every month to the amount of not less than 2,000,000 dollars' worth, the bullion so purchased to be forthwith coined into dollars. This provision, it was hoped, would check the fall in silver. Its only effect was to stimulate the business of mining. The American production of the metal rose from 39,000,000 dollars in 1877 to 59,000,000 dollars in 1889. The dollars coined under this Act (the Bland Act) remained stored up in the Treasury. If the Government attempted to force them into circulation, they were immediately brought back to the subTreasuries and gold was asked for in exchange.

Then, in the administration of President Harrison, when the Protectionists were endeavouring to secure a tariff system to make everyone rich at the expense of the foreigner, the silver owners, who had secured a compact party in the United States Senate, renewed their outcry for the restoration of the right to have silver coined at the Mints in unlimited quantities and made available for payment of all debts. The futility of the arrangement under the Bland Act had been denounced vigorously by Mr. Cleveland during his first Presidency, but the Protectionists wanted the help of the Silver party to pass the McKinley Act. A new law, the Sherman Act, was adopted, imposing on the Treasury the duty of taking 4,000,000 ounces of silver every month in exchange for Treasury notes payable in coin, and these notes were made legal tender for payment of all debts, public and private. These Treasury notes constitute a large addition to a currency which was already dangerously inflated by the retention of greenbacks after the return to cash payments.

The present state of things is the more discouraging for admirers of Republican government, because American public life of to-day boasts a man of distinguished abilities and high character who for twelve years past struggled manfully against the tide of corruption and folly. When Mr. Cleveland was first elected in 1884, the world was inclined to believe that a new era had opened. The true spirit of popular institutions would, we were told, be made manifest. He was called to office over the heads of professional politicians from a wellfounded belief in his resolution and integrity. He has since increased his reputation in every respect, if we except perhaps his conduct of foreign policy, and that is a matter to which no attention is paid just now by the American voter. After two terms in the Presidential office he remains without the slightest blemish on his honour or his consistency, but he is now an object

of

of invective to his own party, the Democrats, and of derision to his political opponents, the Republicans.

His election to the Governorship of New York was supposed to promise the purification of the old Democratic party in that State. His administration of New York was brilliant; but when he was called to Washington, his place was filled by Mr. D. B. Hill, a perfect type of the professional politician, and since 1884 Mr. Hill, as Governor or Senator, has maintained his hold on the Democratic party of the State. The American voter deserves every credit for having discovered Mr. Cleveland and made him President; but how accidental was this recognition of ability and patriotism is manifest when we find that he has been replaced in New York State by Mr. Hill, and in national politics by Mr. Bryan.

The Convention of the Republicans at St. Louis last June began by denouncing

'the calamitous consequences of full and unrestricted Democratic control of the Government. It has been a record of unparalleled incapacity, dishonour, and disaster. In administrative management it has ruthlessly sacrificed indispensable revenue, entailed an unceasing deficit, eked out ordinary current expenses with borrowed money, piled up the public debt by $262,000,000 in time of peace, forced an adverse balance of trade, kept a perpetual menace hanging over the Redemption Fund, pawned American credit to an alien syndicate, and reversed all the measures and results of successful Republican rule.'

It is notorious that, during the period referred to, Mr. Cleveland had been struggling with irresponsible combinations of Republicans and Democrats, who maimed his tariff policy and, by their efforts to force the nation to buy silver, convulsed the money market, and delayed recovery from the panic of 1893.

That disaster was brought about by two primary causes. There was, first, the inflation of the currency, due to the ignorant belief that plenty of currency means abundant wealth, and to the subsidies given to the silver owners by the Bland and Sherman Acts. The second cause was the enormous disturbance of trade by the far-reaching McKinley scheme and the fluctuations in the public mind.

In order to understand the position of Mr. Bryan and the success which has so far attended the Free Silver movement, it is necessary to mark the continuous evasions of the Republican party on the subject of currency. Whilst their attacks upon foreign nations, their rhapsodies in favour of home products of every kind, their repeated assertions of the all-sufficiency of the Union for its own wants, whilst all these topics laid a foundation