sent crisis of Democratic fate has once been passed. Enrolled among the supporters of these men are every Democrat in the country who would be deemed of Cabinet rank, and the men who, for many years, in one canvass after another, have managed the affairs of the party.

On the other hand, the Republican party was never better organised, better led, or more thoroughly disciplined than it is now, in the States where these elements are a necessity. It stands for sound money and financial stability, the only real issues before the people. It has for candidate a man of high character, honest in belief and in life, with the courage of his opinions, whatever they may be, without personal enmities, and with many attractive qualities. He has risen to the situation, showing himself manly, dignified, and patriotic. He has remained in the quiet of his home, instead of running about the country to speak wherever two or three could be gathered together to listen.

The Independent voter, who has elected every President since 1876, must be reckoned with. This is the man, always of property, education, and position in his community, who, disliking the policy of his party or distrusting its candidate, votes for the man more nearly in accord with his opinions or his interests, not only proclaiming his intentions boldly, but seeking to influence his neighbour, and to mould public sentiment by means of organisation. Allied in purpose, but different in method, are a great number of voters of all professions and employments, who, refusing to proclaim their intentions from the housetops or in the newspapers, go to the polls, and, with a secret ballot, do their work so effectively that the demagogue or the objectionable machine is unable to deal with them. These classes are widely distributed, uniformly attached to good government, or to things which have commended themselves by experience at home or observation abroad, opposed to agitators, demagogues, disorganisers, and disagreeable people generally, and opposed to free silver almost to a man.

In all the agitations through which the United States have passed, no foreign-born element, as such, has given encouragement to questionable financial schemes. The Germans, or the Irish, or the Swedes and Norwegians, have at various times had a controlling vote, and in every case it has been cast for sound money. The Germans especially have arrayed themselves in opposition to such doctrines everywhere, and have turned the scale against inflation or free silver in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

In no society, however new or old, is there so much machinery, so many wheels within wheels, so many checks and balances, to preserve popular institutions from harm by the people themselves. One House of Congress is dependent upon another, equal in power as well as in name, and both together are co-ordinate with the President, who, in the veto, holds a power which can rarely be overcome.

Co-ordinate, in theory, with the legislative and the executive, the judicial power passes both in a review that is absolutely final. The same checks exist in every State, in addition to those exercised by the Federal Constitution and the powers at work under it. At every turn local government in county, township, and municipality is subject to limitations from the Federal Government, in some of its many ramifications, as well as to the intervention and authority of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of the State. When to all of these is added that curious system of choosing a President by electors and not by popular vote-under which it becomes difficult to carry on agitations against a settled system which commends. itself in general-the rooted conservatism of the American people is emphasised.

In movements which affect business interests, all these constitutional and legal bars are as nothing compared with the universal distribution of property, the fruit of industry, thrift, and law. Of the 14,000,000 heads of families, half are landowners-three-fourths of them free from debt. The investments in banking, manufactures, and commerce are widely distributed, in small amounts, and every owner is interested in preserving the value of his holding. The 5,000,000 depositors in savings banks-not institutions for investors, but really used for the purpose implied in the name-with an average saving of 400 dollars each and a total of 2,000,000,000 dollars, are not likely to encourage any scheme which threatens values. The result of this universal distribution of property and material comfort —in spite of the talk about the rich growing richer, and the poor becoming poorer-is that only 5 per cent. of all the wealth of the United States is held by persons worth more than 1,000,000 dollars each, and only 25 per cent. of it by persons with fortunes between 100,000 dollars and 1,000,000 dollars. On the other hand, 27 per cent. is owned by those worth from 10,000 dollars to 100,000 dollars, 37 per cent. by those worth from 1,000 dollars to 10,000 dollars, and only 6 per cent. by those worth less than 1,000 dollars.

In this crusade, of which free silver coinage is only an incident, it is continually represented that it is for the relief of a class-the farmers. Yet of the 5,000,000 farm families, two-thirds own their own holdings, worth on the average 3,400 dollars, half of them free from encumbrance. From these farms come probably one-half of the students in all the colleges, three-fourths of the men in the professions, and a large proportion of those who own and manage the railroads, banks, mines, and manufactories. From them are drawn the majority of the men who hold offices, Federal, State, or local. Nowhere does the soil and its owners bear so close a relation to all the influences which combine to make a wholesome society. Agriculture has its own difficulties and drawbacks everywhere; but in the United

States the men who follow it are dominant in all that makes for independence and greatness. They are partakers in the enterprise which impels them to adopt improvements, in the energy with which a people must surmount difficulties, and in all the movements of a varied national life. Every attempt to push to success the demand for a depreciated currency has been made in States distinctly agricultural. Each one has failed most disastrously, and must fail again. In spite of all appeals, the man with the town lot, who lives in his own home; the man with the unencumbered farm, honest in his own business, and anxious to live under an honest government; the man with the pass-book, which records his savings; the pensioner, who, as a faithful soldier, has become the recipient of a popular bounty freely and liberally bestowed; the holder of a life insurance policy, who, whatever he may do, is still unlikely to vote to cheat his heirs; and the man whose name is borne upon a wages roll, may be relied upon together and of themselves to settle the fate of a set of men who have robbed a party and have avowed it to be their purpose to pass laws impairing the obligations of contracts."'

The pending canvass is a bitter one. Nothing since the war period has aroused so many passions. It is viewed not simply as an effort to change a fiscal system and so to unsettle values, but as an attack upon property, a threat to industry. Old party distinctions will disappear for the time, and every effort will be made to assert the national honour and to preserve public and private credit.

The American people have a way of carrying on a Presidential contest with as much energy when they feel sure of the result as when they must win every point. From this time forward they will take no chances; the new forces of disorder will have no rest. Anarchy, it may be assumed, is not to get its full meal among the intelligent, self-governing people of the United States.

GEORGE F. PARKER.

ON THE ETHICS OF SUPPRESSION

IN BIOGRAPHY

IN his Historical Sketches, Cardinal Newman wrote as follows in reference to omissions in great histories:

Here another great subject opens upon us, when I ought to be bringing these remarks to an end; I mean the endemic perennial fidget which possesses us about giving scandal; facts are omitted in great histories, or glosses are put on memorable acts, because they are thought not edifying, whereas of all scandals such omissions, such glosses are the greatest.

But I am getting far more argumentative than I thought to be when I began, so I lay my pen down and retire into myself. (Vol. ii. p. 231.)

Cardinal Newman in his own person had a painful experience of the effects produced by the endemic perennial fidget' which he so aptly describes. They, who in his day managed Catholic affairs in England and at Rome for a long period of years, were possessed by this endemic fidget in regard to John Henry Newman himself. It broke out by fits and starts. Now, it was feared lest the illustrious Oratorian, by making admissions imposed upon him by a sense of justice and love of truth, or by accepting documents which, though impugned, he knew to be authentic, or by refusing to put the required glosses on historical facts, might give scandal to Protestants. Now, lest scandal to Protestants might be given by independence of judgment in criticising, on occasions, the policy pursued by ecclesiastical authorities; or in objecting to the unreasoning prohibitions imposed, at times, on legitimate freedom of action on the part of the laity. The mere mention of the name of Newman, or of his writings, or of advice given to his friends and disciples sent a shiver, as it were, through the letters which, for ten years or more, passed between Archbishop Manning and Monsignor Talbot of the Vatican. This endemic fidget in regard to Cardinal Newman endured to the end.

On the first appearance of the Life of Cardinal Manning the endemic perennial fidget of giving scandal to Protestants fell on the sudden, like a shiver penetrating marrow and bones, upon some effeminate or mistrustful Catholics among us. Many for a time lost their heads or their tempers, or both.

Fear of giving scandal to Protestants in matters which seem, however remotely or relatively, to touch the Catholic Faith, amounts

in men of over-sensitive temperament or of limited capacity almost, in its acutest form at any rate, to mania. In their fear and fidget such men are incapable of discerning the distinction between the human agencies, which play their subordinate part and which in their nature are fallible and open to criticism, and the divine elements which sustain the Church in its infallible teaching-authority, and in its spiritual life.

Fear of giving scandal to Protestants was the cardinal element in the outcry which was raised against the publication of Cardinal Manning's letters, diaries, and journals. To take one instance only as an illustration: Fear accounted for the almost insane desire for the suppression of the now famous correspondence between Archbishop Manning and Monsignor Talbot. What wringing of hands, what gnashing of teeth, what lamentations were not uttered by good but timid Catholics lest scandal should be given! These pious people, happily but few in number, are mistrustful of their Protestant fellowcountrymen; mistrustful of the effect of simple historic truth; know not, or have forgotten, that in all ages the Church at times has had to bewail or reprove or condemn the human agents to whose hands the divine work had to be entrusted. The pure springs were, alas! but too often defiled. In the divine constitution of the Church such risk of evil was not excluded.

Even if in the diplomatic correspondence between Archbishop Manning and Monsignor Talbot at the Vatican, human motives may have obtruded themselves, or human weaknesses be at times detected, the guiding motive of Archbishop Manning's action was not, according to the evidence recorded, personal antipathies or a desire for selfadvancement, but a 'deep-rooted determination to safeguard in a critical transition period, and at all costs, no matter who suffered in the conflict, the interests of the Catholic Church in England. Even if Manning's action had been a corrupt intrigue; even if the Pope, by Monsignor Talbot's secret and underhand influence, in 'making,' as he himself declared, 'every other candidate impossible,' had been cajoled into an unrighteous nomination what then? Are corrupt intrigues at the Vatican to be suppressed lest scandal be given to Protestants, or is the truth to be told?

That is the vital question raised in the controversy of the last few months. It concerns not Catholics only, but non-Catholics. It concerns the British reading public, which loves truth and hates suppression of facts and documents, no matter what the motive, as almost a lie. The question touches nearly the honour and honesty of the literary world, and not of England only. The question has been taken up on both sides of the Atlantic: Is it a virtue to suppress historic truth or no? The broad issues once raised cannot now be evaded. The advocates of the art of suppression, in great histories or biographies, of historical facts, or of documents on which such