means other than righteous; but a distinct advance will have been made when public opinion is convinced that we need them, and should not exert our utmost ingenuity to dodge them when flung at our head."

Count the Cost.

Quite another view is upheld in Harper's by Mr. Carl Schurz, who administers a cold douche of caution to the enthusiasts of the "Manifest Destiny" school:

The new manifest destiny' precept means, in point of principle, not merely the incorporation in the United States of territory contiguous to our borders, but rather the acquisition of such territory, far and near, as may be useful in enlarging our commercial advantages, and in securing to our navy facilities desirable for the operations of a great naval power."

Remember what the " expansion" of a republic means: "Let us admit, for argument's sake, that there is something dazzling in the conception of a great republic embracing the whole continent and adjacent islands, and that the tropical part of it would open many tempting fields for American enterprise; let us suppose-a violent supposition, to be sure-that we could get all these countries without trouble or cost. But will it not be well to look beyond? If we receive those countries as States of this Union, as we eventually shall have to do in case we annex them, we shall also have to admit the people inhabiting them as our fellow-citizens on a footing of equality.

DEMOCRACY AND THE TROPICS.

"It is a matter of universal experience that democratic institutions have never on a large scale prospered in tropical latitudes. The so-called republics existing under the tropical sun constantly vibrate between anarchy and despotism.

"Only Europeans belonging to the so-called Latin races have ever in large masses become domesticated in tropical America. That Spanish-Indian

mixture is evidently far more apt to flourish there than people of the Germanic stock, and will under climatic influences so congenial to it remain the prevailing element and the assimilating force.

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THE GNAT AND THE CAMEL

Imagine now fifteen or twenty, or even more, States inhabited by a people so utterly different from ours in origin, in customs and habits, in traditions, language, morals, impulses, ways of thinking—in almost everything that constitutes social and political life-and these people remaining under the climatic influences which in a great measure have made them what they are, and render an essential change of their character impossible-imagine a large number of such States to form part of this Union, and through dozen of Senators and scores of Representatives in Congress, and millions of votes in our Presidential elections, to participate in making our laws, in filling the executive places of our government, and in impressing themselves upon the spirit of our political life. The mere statement of the case is sufficient to show

that the incorporation of the American tropics in our national system would essentially transform the constituency of our government, and be fraught with incalculable dangers to the vitality of our democratic institutions. Many of our fellow-citizens are greatly disturbed by the immigration into this country of a few hundred thousand Italians, Slavs and Hungarians. It was a happy intuition which suggested to Mr. Seward that the policy of annexation would transfer the capital of the United States to the city of Mexico, for after the annexation of the American tropics there would certainly be an abundance of Mexican politics in that capital."

Yet these immigrants will soon be Americanized. What, then, of the introduction of a score or more whole States of Spanish-Indians who will never be Americanized?

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AN ENGLISH VIEW OF THE BERING SEA AWARD.

WRITER in Blackwood reviews the history of "The United States in International Law" in a spirit not very friendly to us. He says: 66 'More than any other nation in the world, the United States accepts the law of nations as an integral part of the law of the land. . . In effect the Americans look, or profess to look, on international law as a system of morals, from which the positive laws and prescribed usages of nations must not be separated. . . This being the state of things, it is remarkable that the United States public men should be found through their whole history urging points of view regarding the law of nations which all other nations had rejected, and putting forward claims based on grounds too remote for serious consideration."

An explanation is found in the statement that the conduct of the Senate, with whom lies the control of foreign policy, "is ultimately determined, not by considerations of national honor and international law, but by the consideration of party necessity."

He does not "predict finality for the decision" on the Bering Sea question: "The whole subject of these regulations, the general effect of which is more favorable to the American seal fisheries than any one could have imagined in view of the total failure of every point of international law on which the American case rested, will need and will probably receive consideration. . This award may be finally accepted without protest; but if so, it will be, not because it is quite in accord with the rules of international law, but because of British magnanimity." A compliment to Canadian statesmanship should be noted: The British case, presumably prepared in great part, if not altogether, under the control of or in person by the members of the Canadian Ministry is prepared in a manner calculated to excite a feeling of satisfaction that the public service of the colonies and of the Empire can still command the use of very extraordinary ability for very insignificant rewards."

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litical Economy. Mr. Hoxie asserts that the silver advocates, in contempt of the well-known Gresham law, which most of them admitted to be universally operative, attempted to fortify their position by proof that under free coinage at a ratio of 16 to 1 we could receive no excessive amount of silver. They contended that the production of the mines was barely enough to meet necessities; that no idle silver was hoarded anywhere; that no silver will ever return from the East; that Europe has no desire to part with her silver and that with the mint ratio here at 16 to 1 while that of France is 15% to 1, European governments can send no silver here except at a considerable loss.

ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON.

Senator Sherman's reply to the free coinage men who held that "more dollars meant more comfort to the laborer was : A dollar to the laborer means so much food, clothing and rent. If you cheapen the dollar it will buy less of these. You may say they will get more dollars for their labor, but all experience shows that labor and land are the last to feel change in monetary standards, and the same resistance will be made to an advance of wages on the silver standard as on the gold standard, and when the advance is won it will be found that the purchasing power of the new dollar is less than the old.

Throughout the debate," says Mr. Hoxie, "the advocates of free coinage were doggedly persistent in their efforts to force upon Congress an unequivocal discussion upon this question and the consideration of an unequivocal bill. They assumed a distinctively aggressive attitude, boldly advocating free coinage of silver from the standpoint of the inflationists, the debtor and the silver miner, and vociferously denouncing all (the government officials not excepted), who were not in sympathy with their ideas.

"The attitude of the opponents of free coinage, on the other hand, was in marked contrast. They admitted in general that true bimetallism was possible, that great evils had arisen from the demonetization of silver, and that something must be done at once to relieve the country from distress arising out of currency contraction. The main issue was avoided, and the endeavor made to confine the discussion to compromise measures which should be forced through Congress with as little discussion of the main topic as possible. Thus their attitude in general was conciliatory and concessive.

"Senator Sherman introduced and advocated Section 6 of the Sherman law in order to add immediately to the circulation. The report of the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures on House bill 5,381 contained the following passage:

"The outlawry of silver by Germany, the acts of France and the other governments of the Latin Union, the results of our own legislation, the gradual retirement of the national bank circulation, our rapidly increasing population, the unparalleled

growth of trade and commerce, the important industry of silver production, the depressed condition of agriculture, all demand some immediate and judicious legislation. The requirement is imperative. No people can prosper without a liberal supply of money, and that nation prospers most which has the largest circulation of the best. This, in a great measure, accounts for the character and weakness of the silver debate."

A POLITICAL MEASURE.

To show the political nature of the Sherman bill and the partisan manner in which it was forced through the House, Mr. Hoxie quotes from a speech of Mr. Walker, of Massachusetts, a member of the dominant party: "It is pure politics, gentlemen, that is all there is about it. We Republicans want to come back and we do not want you (to the Democratic side) to come back here in the majority, because, on the whole, you must excuse us for thinking we are better fellows than you are. That is human nature; that is all there is in this silver bill-pure politics. Being a Republican, and voting politically, I am for the bill."

In

Professor Simon Newcomb, in the Journal of Political Economy, concedes that if commodities are taken as the standard of measurement silver has remained during the past twenty years nearly invariable in value, and that gold has appreciated. other words, the quantity of silver in a dollar, or sixty cents, will now buy as much in the wholesale market as a dollar would twenty years ago. If, however, human labor is taken as the standard, if we admit that a day's labor of the average man is really worth to him just the same as it was to his father, then it will be found, he believes, that even the gold dollar has depreciated. From the point of view of equity Professor Newcomb is inclined to think that the view based on human labor as the standard is the sounder. The fall in prices he attributes wholly to improvements in production and transportation, with which the currency has had nothing to do, and therefore holds that this cheapening should not be charged to the currency in any way.

GOLD THE ONLY EQUITABLE STANDARD.

He says: "It seems to me the result for the past thirty years would be in favor of the invariability of the gold rather than of the silver dollar. No housekeeper will, I believe, admit that the cost of living, measured in gold, is less now than it was twenty-five. years ago. It is true that articles are cheaper just in proportion as machinery and manufacture on a large scale has made them so; but when we come to the details of housekeeping we find that these improve

ments have done less toward cheapening it than might at first sight be supposed. It is very curious to notice that there is generally no cheapening in those operations of production which depend on labor alone, and not on machinery. This fact emphasizes the other fact, that more gold dollars have to be paid for labor now than ever before. I am ready to be corrected by statistics of retail prices if I am wrong; but speaking from my own experience it does not appear to me that the retail prices of the necessaries of life are, in the general average, much less than they were twenty-five years ago. Hides may be cheaper, but shoes made to order cost as much as they ever did. Tailor-made clothes cost more than they did. Wheat is cheaper, but I do not find that a loaf of bread is. Butter, milk, and everything that is purchased in the market, costs as much, if not more, than it did forty years ago. I am not aware of any fall in the price of beef or mutton per pound. A bale of cotton costs less, and I believe it to be true that a laundried shirt may be purchased much cheaper now than it formerly could; but this is to be attributed to the fact that, thirty years ago, the production of cotton was cut down by our civil war. woodwork for a house has cheapened, in consequence of being largely produced by machinery; yet so small an item is this in the cost of a building that the total cost of a house has not appreciably diminished. I think, in fact, that the building of a house costs decidedly more than it did thirty years ago. The wages of domestic servants have become much higher, which shows that this useful class earns a gold dollar by much less labor than it used to. The same is true of the physician, the d、ntist, and almost every one on whom we call for professional services. Books which are not copyrighted, and which are produced in large quantities, are much cheaper; but I do not think the price of new copyright books has materially diminished. Striking a general average, I think the public impression that the cost of living has constantly advanced since the times of our fathers is well founded."

The

Professor Newcombe's conclusion, in short, is "that the doctrine so widely and industriously disseminated that our standard gold dollar has increased in value during the past twenty years will not stand examination when test by an equitable standard, and that, as a matter of fact, it has rather depreciated. If so, silver has depreciated in a still higher ratio, so that gold and not silver should be looked upon as the only equitable standard."

Hon. David A. Wells' View.

In the Forum, Hon. David A. Wells, under the title the "Downfall of Certain Financial Fallacies," names as the first of these fallacies the appreciation of gold. He does not question that there has been during the last twenty years a great and universal decline in the . prices of a great variety of commodities. In fact, he says, there has not been anything like it in the world's previous experience. He admits furthermore that this remarkable decline in the price of commodities has

been, to a great extent, contemporaneous with a great decline in the market value of silver. On the other hand, he declares that it cannot be proved that this fall in the price of commodities has not been due to the decreased cost of production and distribution, or to changes in supply and demand occasioned by wholly fortuitous circumstances.

If," he says, "the appreciation of gold has been the cause of the decline of prices under consideration, the inference is irresistible that everything for sale or exchangeable for money ought to have experienced its influence and that something of correspondence, as respects time and degree in resulting price movements would have been recognized, but nothing of the kind has happened. The decline in prices, although extensive, has fallen far short of embracing all commodities and has not been manifested simultaneously. It has been mainly confined to those commodities whose production and distribution have been cheapened by new inventions and discoveries. Dividing such commodities into classes, it has been largest in those like the mining and smelting and working of metals in which new discoveries and inventions have been most numerous and successful. On the other hand, all that class of products which are exclusively or largely the result of handicrafts; which are not capable of rapid multiplication, or do not admit of increased economy in production, have as a rule exhibited no tendency to decline in price, but rather the reverse.

LABOR AS THE STANDARD.

"And then in respect to the one thing that is everywhere purchased and sold for money to a greater extent than any other-namely, labor, there can be no question that its price measured in gold has increased in a marked degree everywhere in the civilized world during the last quarter of a century. Had the purchasing power of gold increased during this period, a given amount would have bought more labor and a fall in wages would have been inevitable. And if wages under such circumstances have risen, the cheapening of commodities could not have been due to a scarcity of gold. Measured by the price of labor, therefore, gold has unquestionably depreciated; and can anybody suggest a better measure for testing the issue?

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There is, furthermore, no foundation for the assertion that there has been anything like a simultaneous decline in prices due to the appreciation of gold; and no one can name any two commodities whose price experiences during the period of decline have harmonized either in respect to time or degree. The prices of some staple commodities fell rapidly after the alleged demonetization of silver in 1873; while the prices of others, although subjected to the same gold-scarcity influence, exhibited for a long time comparatively little or no disturbance; and such results are exactly what might have been expected from, and can be explained by, conditions of supply and demand, which vary constantly with time, place, and circumstance."

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TWO SOUTHERNERS ON LYNCHINGS.

NOTE of pessimism, of fearful warning is dominant in both of the papers printed in the October Forum on the subject of the negro and the recent awful crimes and lynchings in the South. Bishop Atticus G. Haygood, of Georgia, discusses the lynching horrors from the standpoint of a Southern religious leader having all the ante-bellum kindliness for the inferior race. He admits over and over again that lynching is a crime against society, against God and man.

A SOUTHERN CONDEMNATION OF LYNCHING.

"Lynching breaks the law, defies it, despises it, puts it to open shame. Punishment by government, according to law, represents the judgment of God; punishment by lynching is vengeance. Legal punishment educates men into respect for law; lynching educates them into contempt for law. Lynching does more to put down law than any criminal it takes in hand; lynching kills a man; the lyncher kills the law that protects life; lynching is anarchy. If a government is so weak or bad that it cannot, or will not, enforce the law, the remedy is not lynching; it is revolution. If one private citizen has no moral or civil right to put a man to death, a hundred banded together have not the right."

The unspeakable crime for which negroes are tortured, is, Bishop Haygood proves, clearly on an increase. Three hundred fearful instances he thinks a small estimate of their number during the last six months.

But admitting, as every man must, all the direct horror and indirect danger of these lawless arraignments before an avenging mob, he asks us to pause in judging the mob that burnt the negro at Paris, and consider the provocation.

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THE AVENGERS NOT A CRUEL PEOPLE.

Our behavior in the South toward the negro has not been ideally perfect; we might have done better in many things. But I am sure that Southern white people have borne themselves, under trials never known before in history, as well as any people in the world could have borne themselves. In truth, they have done better with and by the negro than any other white people, lacking their training, could have done. It is absolutely certain that in their ordinary dealings with the negro, the Southern white people are kinder to him and more patient than any other people who come into relations with him. Cruelty of disposition does not explain the torture of the demon men burned to death for assaulting helpless women and tender little girls. The Southern people are not cruel and never were. They are kind-hearted people; good to one another and to all men. They are kind to dumb brutes. Whatever may be true or false about them, they were never cruel-hearted people. They were kind to the negroes when they were slaves, they are kind to them now."

MOB INSANITY.

"I was asked to explain the burning of these negroes, not the killing of them. I give frankly my

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opinion the people who burned them were for the time insane. In no other way can the general character of these people and their dealings with these victims of their fierce indignation be accounted for. Take the Paris case. That negro should have been arrested by the sheriff; he should have been duly committed to jail; he should have had a fair trial before a regular court and jury; if convicted, he should have been punished according to law by the officer whose business it is to enforce verdicts and sentences. It was illegal and morally wrong to lynch him by simply hanging or shooting. In organized society, lynching is not only anarchy; it is an anachronism. It is so much of the Dark Ages surviving in modern and civilized life. It was horrible to torture the guilty wretch; the burning was an act of insanity. But had the dismembered form of his victim been the dishonored body of my baby, I might also have gone into an insanity that might have ended never."

Bishop Haygood adds, in summing up the fearful provocation of the whites, the thought that the South has always been peculiarly jealous of its women.

A single word questioning the purity of Southern women has cost many a man his life. Hardly any Southern jury will convict him who slays in defense of any woman whose natural protector he is. If a man is shot dead in the streets for insulting an honorable woman, his slayer will hardly spend a night in prison."

The only remedy, in Bishop Haygood's judgment, for a state of affairs which will allow these awful scenes is a thorough and systematic education of the Southern negroes. He thinks the better educated among them are almost never implicated in these crimes and that this is the one hope for preventing the further increase of enormities.

Are the Negroes too Free?

Mr. Charles H. Smith, in the companion article, agrees with Bishop Haygood as to the momentous issue at hand, calling it the great "national question," "more vital than silver or gold or the tariff," but he takes a different view of the remedy to be employed. He thinks the negro is born with a basal tendency to certain forms of immorality, especially in the matter of petty theft-almost universal and shameless in the colored servants-and he believes that in many cases they have been overeducated in proportion to the place they are going to fill in life.

THE ABSENCE OF ETHICAL TRAINING.

"It was believed by Northern philanthropists and by many Southern statesmen and law-makers that education would change and better the status of the negro and not only make him fit to be a citizen, but elevate him morally and socially. Much money has been expended in this direction, and for a while his progress seemed to be satisfactory so far as his ability to learn the rudiments was concerned, for he certainly has mental capacity beyond what was expected. But education does not assure good ship. Education without moral training

to be a curse instead of a blessing. T

A LITTLE LEARNING FOR ONCE A GOOD THING.

"That a little learning is a dangerous thing' is not true in the common acceptation of its meaning. A little education is all that the negro needs. The excess has proved his ruin. Let him learn the rudiments, to read and to write and to cipher, and be made to mix that knowledge with some useful labor. As it is, negroes are advanced to higher mathematics and composition, and they become the 'dudes' and the vagabonds of the town. They dress finely at somebody else's expense, and both males and females have become lazy and insolent. They have ceased to show proper respect to the white people, and they will not work for them, so long as they can avoid it. The alienation is going on, widening, deepening and intensifying. The white man is losing his sympathy and the negro his feeling of dependence. Too much education and too little work are the prime cause of this growing antipathy. With the whites there are some reasons for a higher education, for the professions and the trades are open to them, but all these are closed to the negro. His only resource is manual labor, and the education that he is receiving unfits him for this."

Mr. Smith gives evidence that the friction between the races is constantly increasing, and is not unapprehensive of race war.

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THE CABINET MINISTER'S VADE MECUM.

RICH piece of political satire is contributed to the Nineteenth Century by Mr. Auberon Herbert, under the title of "A Cabinet Minister's Vade Mecum." While it is aimed especially at the British Parliament it is not difficult to imagine that Mr. Auberon is striking at our own legislative body. What he calls the "thirteen commandments of the new dispensation" are thus enumerated :

"If you wish to pass a great measure that profoundly alters, for good or for evil, the relations of the parts of a great country, first make yourself master of the following necessities:

1. Keep the measure carefully veiled-something after the fashion of a presentation picture or a bust of the Mayor subscribed for by the Corporation—so as to make it impossible, until the actual fight begins, for the nation to understand it, criticise it, test it, detect weak places, or pass an intelligent judgment upon it. This, perhaps, may be expressed in other words: whenever convenient from a strategical point of view, put a hood over the eyes of the nation, treat them as a negligible quantity, and don't for a moment indulge their fancy that they take any real part in passing great measures. That work is exclusively the private business of the professional fighters.

2. When there is a specially difficult and complicated point, (a) call upon either the newspapers, or the House, or your own party in the House, to be good enough to settle the matter for you; (b) leave it

can exactly say what is meant or not meant.

"3. Be ready to alter vital arrangements at twenty-four hours' notice, and to expect all those concerned to alter their profound convictions in the same number of hours. It will be found of the highest importance in modern politics to practice the manœuvre of revolution on your own mentax axis, so that whenever necessary the dogma of yesterday may by instantaneous process be expelled in favor of the dogma of to-day. Celerity of movement in this manœuvre is of the highest importance, as it is not desirable that the public should realize what is taking place.

"4. In order to facilitate No. 3 aim at bringing the discipline of the party to such a high point that they take their official exercise in the official lobby without experiencing any inconvenient desires to exercise other functions except the crural muscles. No Member of Parliament can be of real service to his party if these special muscles are not in good order. Grouse shooting is recommended in the recess by way of useful training.

"5. Always assume official infallibility, and, there fore-except when it may be necessary to avoid a catastrophe as regards the division list—disregard all views of your opponents, and all those varied lights which are thrown from different minds when a subject is frankly and widely discussed apart from political partisanship by an intelligent public.

"6. Be prepared to assert that days and hours are of infinite importance in the life of a nation; that, if discussion is not brought to an end, Ministers will refuse to be responsible for the continued existence of the nation; and therefore it is far safer for the nation to exist in ill arranged fragments than to make rash attempts at the expense of days and hours-to give order and coherence to the parts.

7. If you are aware that some special portions of your work are of defective workmanship, strict silence on the part of your own followers, and free use of the closure on the plea of saving time, are the orthodox and approved as well as the most simple methods of treatment.

"8. It is no use being squeamish in such matters, and if you establish a machinery for stopping discussion, you may as well employ it to preventing voting as well as speaking on amendments.

9. To put it quite plainly, use any kind of gag or guillotine that is most efficient. A political opponent is but a kind of vermin to be got rid of on easiest terms, and the parliamentary machine must be constructed so as to deal effectually with vermin at short notice. A majority has to govern, and there's the end of it.

10. When you are engaged in passing what is perhaps the biggest measure of the century, you must be careful not to let the nation judge it frankly on its own merits. It must be sugared by putting by its side certain dainty morsels that you consider toothsome for various important sections. The way to