bills were the meagre fruits of a long and unprofitable session. Never in American history was there so gross an exhibition of legislative incompetence as was displayed by this Democratic House. If the leaders had any serious purpose, it was that of making a record which would be considered conservative and safe by the mass of the electors. But they lacked even the intelligence required for producing a plausible party programme.

TARIFF POP GUNS.

The leaders sought to make themselves useful to the "Tariff Reform" cause; but they did not know how to do it. The Democratic House, with its overwhelming majority, did not lack power. If it had repealed the McKinley Act and enacted in its place the Mills bill revised on broad lines, it would have fulfilled its principal pledge to the country. In that way it would have presented a clear and intelligible issue in the elections of this year. Both courage and capacity were lacking. What was flaunted East and West as the "High Tariff Waterloo " had been fought; but no sooner was the "Low Tariff victory" won than something like a retreat was sounded with the random firing of pop-gun artillery. The Democratic House, after a fierce struggle over the leadership, revealed its inabilty to deal with the Tariff Question as a whole in an intelligent, coherent manner. Tariff holepunching became the recreation of small minds.

A SILLY POLITICAL GAME.

Nothing could have been more puerile or insincere than the tariff policy of the Democratic majority. A Republican Congress had done its work thoroughly and scientifically. Not only had a great impulse been imparted to the industries of the nation, but the surplus revenues of the Government had also been reduced so heavily that a deficit in income was not impossible, though highly improbable. The Democratic leaders recklessly declared that the nation was on the verge of bankruptcy, and that the Secretary of the Treasury was deceiving the public with misleading statements; yet, even while they were gloating over the prospect of exhaustion of revenues, they proposed revenue legislation which, according to their own calculations, would deprive the Government of $50,000,000 or $60,000,000 a year. A free wool and woolen bill was passed, and was followed by another repeal bill placing cotton ties, gins and bagging on the free list; and a third, repealing the duties on binding twine. Subsequently, bills reducing the duties on tin-plate and lead ores were forced through the House under pressure of gag rule. Nothing could have been more childish than the passage of a few illogical and unconnected repeal bills when there were no surplus revenues to be reduced, as there had been before the McKinley Bill was passed. The Democracy was playing a silly little political game at a time when it ought to have been at work upon a large measure of tariff revision as an alternative policy for the McKinley Act.

GAG RULE ADOPTED.

Barren as were the results of Democratic legislation, even the little that was done had to be carried through the House under high pressure. "The tyranny of the Czar" was so good a phrase that the leaders were reluctant to take the edge from it by adopting the rules of the Republican House, by which partisan obstruction had been paralyzed, and even a small majority had been enabled to dispatch public business. The Democratic majority was so large that it thought it could afford to allow the minority old-time privileges. The leaders affected great regard for minority rights and freedom of debate, and ostentatiously sly declined to follow "the evil precedents" of Speaker Reed's management of the House Long before the session ended, the new rules were generally admitted to be a failure. The debates were more disorderly, and the blocks in business more frequent than ever before. Time has been wasted on roll-calls and trivial discussion. In place of freedom of debate there has been unlicensed filibustering and obstruction, all carried on by Democrats themselves against Democratic measures, and all the measures of any importance have been railroaded through the House under suspension of the rules and by sheer strength of numbers. Even while they were still mouthing phrases about "the ukases of the Czar from Maine" and "the tyranny of gag law," they were themselves registering the arbitrary decrees of the Committee on Rules, having recourse to unscrupulous suppression of debate and, enacting measures with precipitate haste and utterly without deliberation.

EXAMPLES OF GAG LAW.

The Legislative, Executive and Judicial Appropriation Bill, covering thousands of items, containing 150,000 words and carrying $22,000,000, was carried with fifteen minutes' debate on each side. Bills for the admission of Arizona and New Mexico were passed with only half an hour of debate allowed for each. On the same day the Anti-Option bill was hustled through the House with fifteen minutes for discussion on each side. This was a measure which might disorganize the commerce of the world, yet it was driven through the House virtually without debate, although a prominent leader on the Democratic side found time to denounce it as unconstitutional. The second series of tariff-repeal bills were railroaded through the House without discussion. Rules which had received the approval of the collective wisdom of a Democratic caucus were practically suspended before the close of the session. The Democratic majority were bound hand and foot by their own regulations and unable to transact business. Even when a vote had been obtained upon the appropriation for the World's Fair, it was possible for Mr. Holman to lead an insurrection against the majority, and, after blocking business for two weeks, to dictate a compromise to a Democratic caucus. Even then it was necessary to imitate closely the procedure of the last Republican House in order to extricate the majority from their embarrassments.

RULES OF THE TWO HOUSES.

Under Speaker Reed's rules legislative paralysis had been removed, business was transacted in an orderly way and the House had full control over its time. Under Democratic organization faction ran riot, deliberate legislation was impracticable, gag law regulated debate, and business could only be transacted by the suspension of all rules passed for the protection of the minority.

REPUDIATION OF PLEDGES.

The record of the last Republican Congress involved conscientious fulfillment of pledges made to the people when President Harrison was elected. On the tariff, silver, pensions, shipping and other great questions of the day the Republican party, through its Representatives at Washington, kept faith with the country. There was no repudiation of pledges on that side. On the Democratic side there has not been a pledge that has been respected and fulfilled. A revision of the tariff was promised, and nothing has been accomplished beyond the firing of a series of pop-gun salutes in honor of "Tariff Reform." Another measure to which the Democratic majority was pledged was a Free Coinage bill. Twice, within a a per period of four months, this pledge was violated out of deference for the timorous representatives of the party from the Eastern States. Retrenchment of the cost of National Administration was another Democratic promise, and it has been redeemed by the increase of appropriations far beyond the level of the so-called "Billion Dollar Congress.” Reciprocity was to be renounced, the sugar bounties were to be cut off, the Ocean Mail bill was to be repealed, and many other characteristic Republican policies were to be overthrown. The Democratic Party was pledged to do all these things, but nothing has been done. Every promise has gone to protest. There has been a little desultory bushwhacking against the Tariff, and there has been a wild revel of Democratic extravagance in appropriations. Of legislation of any kind, destructive or constructive, there has been a bottomless deficiency. Of reckless financial grants there has been an overrunning surplus.

REBEL WAR CLAIMS.

The payment of Confederate war claims is already looming up as one of the ulterior aims of Democratic policy. While the House has only acted on a few of these cases, what it has done is an earnest of what it will do in the future. By releasing the Sibley case from the statute of limitations it has allowed the heirs of an officer who deserted the United States Army in order to join the Confederates to collect a royalty on tents used in the war wherein he was enlisted. There is precedent in that case which shows the trend of Democratic tendency. The Committee on War Claims have reported favorably upon more than $70,000,000 of similar claims for damages by destruction of property in the

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war. In addition to this new budget there are cases already before the Court of Claims aggregating $400,000,000 at the lowest, and $600,000,000 at the highest, estimate. The sympathy shown for these cases by a party which has antagonized the Pension policy of the last Republican Congress has drawn from Ex-Speaker Reed this sententious comment: "If the Democracy have adopted what one of their own men calls a pop-gun system of tariff reform, their Committee on War Claims have started a Gatling-gun system of war claims."

A PARTY OF REPUDIATION.

The record of the Democratic House proves that every one of the leading issues of the party has been either repudiated outright or temporarily abandoned. Every promise made in 1890 has been broken. The revision of the Tariff, the passage of a Free Silver Act, the reduction of the expenditures of the Government, the repudiation of the Reciprocity policy and the repeal of the Bounty and Subsidy acts have been deferred for a more convenient season when a Presidential election is not pending. Never has there been a more discreditable record of violated pledges in American public life. The causes of failure are various such as factional divis. ions in the party, incapacity of leaders to deal with large questions, a lack of civic courage in making a resolute stand for party principles, and the clash of rivalry in the ambitions of leaders who were afraid to trust the people and fancied that they could deceive them with shuffling evasions.

INACTION, BUT NO CHANGE OF HEART.

But while pledges have been repudiated, and the course of legislative activity opened by the courage of the last Republican House has been interrupted, the attitude of the Democratic party towards the great questions of the day has not been changed. Inaction and legislative torpor are not proofs of a change of heart. The McKinley Act has not been repealed, but the Democratic party is arrayed in deadly hostility to the American policy of Protection. Its misshapen, inoperative tariff bills do not indicate abandonment of the English low-tariff theory. The party is merely waiting until it can destroy the protective system by the passage of such a measure as the Mills bill. Evasions of the silver question do not signify conversion to sound views of finance. The opposition to Republican policies of Reciprocity, bounties for sugar producers, and subsidies for ocean mail service, has been temporarily relaxed, but the hostility of the Democratic party to every one of these measures remains implacable and irreconcilable. The Democracy has a fatal facility for getting on the foreign side of every great public question. The policies which it represents are those which Europeans are anxious to have Americans adopt. To these policies it clings with that Bourbon fixedness of purpose which neither learns nor forgets anything.

THE REPUBLICAN RECORD.

The last Republican Congress stood exclusively for American policies and interests. A united party under the inspiring leadership of Speaker Reed and Major McKinley labored with unceasing fidelity and high-minded patriotism to promote the welfare of the nation. When its authority to govern the country was challenged by Democratic obstructionists in the House, it vindicated the American principle of majority rule. Democratic conspirators had proclaimed their deliberate intention of preventing any and all legislation in the line of Republican policies. They had been sent to Washington to transact the business of the country, and sitting silent in their seats when the roll was called they attempted to thwart the will of the majority of the American people and to paralyze legislation. The conspiracy was suppressed with the same courage with which rebellion had been crushed in an earlier generation, but by wholly constitutional means. Speaker Reed by his famous ruling counted them when they were present and restored the functions of the House as a working body. That was the "crime" for which he was denounced on every Democratic platform. It was the enforcement of the supreme principle of majority rule.

WORKING FOR NATIONAL POLICIES.

The sun shone and Republican legislators worked. They had made their pledges to the American people and every one of them was honored. If they failed to establish honest elections throughout the Union, it was through no fault of their own, but solely because the forces of obstruction in the Senate were too well organized to permit the passage of a just and righteous law in a session of extraordinary legislative activity. Their record on the Tariff question disproved the charge of sectionalism, for they had labored with patriotic ardor to promote the in. dustrial prosperity of all the States, South as well as North. Republican policy in the Fifty-first Congress was in the most comprehensive sense national. As a record of legislative activity and broad-minded statesmanship it is unexampled in American history. Opposed to it is the record of the Democratic House of the Fifty-second Congressthe imbecile and scandalous record of a party which could neither reform, nor economize nor legislate, nor even succeed in transacting business with a two-thirds majority without gag-rule and riotous tumult.