DEMOCRACY AT ST. LOUIS.

THE people of the United States will not long be interested in the details of the convention at St. Louis. History will hardly linger over the well-wrought phrases of Daniel Dougherty, or the courageous assumptions of Patrick Collins, or even over the bright speech of the brilliant McKenzie, of Kentucky.

The candidates and the platform alone deserve attention. Of Mr. Thurman I do not purpose to speak, for the situation is one of some delicacy.

It would be unkind to the President to say that Mr. Thurman was nominated because it was needful to have somewhere on the ticket a great name not obtained by accident, but earned by years of public service. It would be equally unkind to Mr. Thurman to point out that this rounding up of his career was only another instance of that ingratitude of Republics, which so often delights to abase the worthy in order that the exaltation of the unworthy may become more marked. However, things which are mislaid are not always lost, and it must add a two-fold glory to any barbarian triumph to have a noble Roman, however aged, or however doubtful his Roman citizenship, at the chariot wheels. Of Mr. Cleveland I do not intend to speak words of reproach. On the contrary, the first sentence is one of commendation. The Treasury Department has been carried on, in matters relating strictly to finance, in those respects where comparison can be made, in the same way in which it was carried on by Republican secretaries. None of the wild and foolish things which his party announced have been done. Not a single Democratic oration delivered before election on the floor of the House has been realized. On this the country is to be congratulated. The truth, of course, is, that the principles on which the Republican party had based its Treasury action were so fundamental that nothing

was left to their successors but to continue the building on the same foundations. Whether, however, the loaning of sixty millions of dollars to the national banks without interest when bonds could have been bought and interest saved was wisdom and sound policy, I leave to the Democratic orators in the next campaign, only asking them to use about the transaction the same language they would have employed had John Sherman been Secretary of the Treasury. I think I already feel the refreshing coolness the discourse will throw over Democratic meetings. Mr. Cleveland has done one other thing which, if rightly understood, may be of incalculable advantage to the country. He has recognized the tendencies of his party, and has brought them to the clear light of day. He has revealed the real masters of the organization and shown where the power lies. For years the House of Representatives has been organized so as to show both the dominance and the determination of the governing power, but the country has paid little heed to the fact, because the practical results were prevented. It must now take notice or suffer. Much has been said of Mr. Cleveland's courage on the tariff question, but it requires very little courage to throw yourself into the arms of the vast majority of your own party. Whoever knows anything of the dangers to his political ambition in his own State of New York can have little doubt of the wisdom of a politician who by one message secured to himself the sure votes of the leaders of his party.

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Some of the friends of Reform who thougnt that grapes be gathered from thorns and figs from thistles are disappointed that no recognition of them or their faith was made at St. Louis. They are now engaged in turning with child-like faith from Platform to Candidate. If I were to select the plainest instance in all history where good men have been trifled with, I should select this gentle dalliance with Civil Service Reform. Mr. Cleveland's first manœuvres committed every civil service reformer to his side. They could not say too much. After such loud committal, very shame has made them first apologize and then keep silent. Meantime the end of Mr. Cleveland's term finds him with enough officials in office to run conventions, and enough offices out of which he can yet turn Republicans to make a free raw material which will be very useful in the manufactures of the campaign. If Mr. Cleveland were not already fixed in our minds as an utterly guileless man, the sole object of whose creation was to show how

much better a man could be than his party, somebody would suspect him of being a politician. In fact Mr. Cleveland has been in this, as in his tariff utterance, controlled by his party. No man, however near his head may be to his shoulders, can long resist the people he allies himself with, especially if during his whole career he has thought their thoughts and been bone of their bone. It may be a fine thing to be better than your party. It certainly is a very profitable thing to appear to be so. The world is a very busy world, has no time to examine shops, but will read advertisements if the print be large and the headlines emphatic. Hence, when Mr. Cleveland loudly proclaimed his opposition to silver, the world thought him fixed in the faith, and has never noticed that he has coined more silver than his predecessors. The increase is slight, but worth noticing. By rewarding the postmaster of a great city, whose devotion to Civil Service Reform had been useful in the election, he established so high a reputatation for clemency that he was able to behead all the rest with due regularity and reasonable dispatch. The descent from the high moral elevation which seemed to signalize the appointment of Pearson, to that scene in the Pennsylvania convention where the officeholders of a purified administration dragged down Mr. Randall, the ablest Democrat in public life, may be very great indeed; but the grade was easy, for the road was winding and there were many loops. The French historian, Lanfrey, seems to have been right when he said that a little charlatanism is needful to move masses of men. Mr. Cleveland's administration does not seem to lack the needful motive power. But the effort to make out of Mr. Cleveland a personage apart, distinct from his party friends, pure while they are impure, strong where they are weak, intelligent where they are ignorant, has been brought to the test of real life, and to-day no skillful divider of hairs can tell where Mr. Cleveland leaves off and the old dominant and domineering wing of his party begins. They twain are now visibly one flesh.

The victory in the convention secured by Mr. Watterson over the Maryland senator, whom he dragged afterwards openly behind his triumphal sulky, was not the victory of Mr. Cleveland over the convention, but the record of the fact that the majority of the party as of right had taken possession of both Cleveland and convention. For years this dominant faction has kept itself in

the background pushing forward to the public view their protectionist brethren whose useful feet were shod with swiftness as they sped to New York, to Ohio, to New Jersey and Connecticut, to assure those of like faith that Mr. Cleveland was as good a protectionist Democrat as if all the industries of the United States were localized in his native village.

But this dominant faction is no longer in the rear. Encouraged by the election of 1884, they have taken the front and are now openly in control. This is a situation long expected by observant men. Most party men have hoped for it, but most business men will regret to see committed to the hazards of a political campaign the entire business interests of the country. But those interests can no longer be kept out of politics. They have been forced into the next election and must take heed to themselves, unless they welcome irreparable loss. The danger is not that the people of the United States have failed to understand the causes of that great prosperity which has enabled us to face war and debt and even unwonted extravagance of individual luxury with a national growth unparalleled in the history of the world. The danger is that under deceitful twisting of ambiguous word's men may be tempted to retain their party fealty in forgetfulness of real interests at stake. Party feeling and party fealty I have no quarrel with. They both bind men together and help make the world governable. No man ought to leave the party his judgment upholds except for grave cause; and he will not if he is wise, for it means disruption of friendship and the sundering of ties, the strength of which no man knows until they are broken. Hence men keep with their party on the slightest pretences. But parties cannot remain stationary. Their real majorities may bide their time, but they finally take control. Whoever examines the proceedings and the outcome of the St. Louis convention can have no more doubt that the Free Trade wing has taken the reins in hand in the nation than they can doubt that they have done it in the House of Representatives. When Mr. Randall was deposed from the speakership, which he adorned by his ability and honored by his high personal character, it was not a defeat of person, but of principle. From that moment not a single representative of the protectionist democracy has been allowed a seat on the Committee of Ways and Means. With that reluctance to break from party ties, of which I have already spoken,

and hoping for better days, the protectionist Democrats gave New York and New Jersey and Connecticut to Mr. Cleveland, who, in return, has delivered them bound hand and foot to those who sought their destruction. The same scene is now attempted on a larger stage. The protectionist Democrats of the House of Representatives have been delivered over to their foes without even a recommendation to mercy. Can the same thing be done with the protectionist Democrats of the country? That depends entirely upon whether they have closed their eyes or opened them.

Platforms are usually glittering generalities specific only as to the past and nebulous as to the future. They are ordinarily meant to mask aggressive designs and yet to utilize the timid. Of such a character was the platform of 1884. If you emphasized one branch of the antithesis you sounded for Free Trade; if the other, your voice was for Protection. But this year there is small choice of sounds. The platform must be interpreted by Cleveland's message. The emphasis must be on Free Trade. It is true that worthy message towards the close tried a few clauses on the other side; but when a man knocks you down, even if he says he would not hurt you for the world, the blow is apt to be more impressive than the word. When also the convention, not satisfied with approving a message which stiffened the price of British iron, endorsed and sustained the bill now before the House of Representatives, the world can well understand why Mr. Edward Cooper and perhaps Mr. Hewitt should stand aghast at the Frankenstein monster they had helped to raise. Whatever doubt could remain in the mind of a protectionist Democrat the plain tendencies of the convention ought to remove. That wing of the party which for six years has organized the House of Representatives, which for six years has refused even the lowest place on the committee which shapes the business destinies of the country to any member who sympathized with Mr. Randall or his views, were in full control of the great national assembly of the party. And they were rightly in control, for they were in great majority. The office holding power of the Administration was put to such unsparing use that even Pennsylvania, whose Democrats have never before faltered in the cause they deemed for the interest of their country, was made to do obeisance to the new idol. Can any man with eyes doubt as to what this thing is which he sees?

To make assurance doubly sure let him turn to the proceedings