government were only the dreams of philosophers. Magna Charta was sufficient for its time.

PRESIDENT: Imperialism is a portentous event. The Public regard it as leprosy of the most desecrable pollution. It is not in human nor Trust nature to surrender power without a desperate struggle. Your heart is not touched with remorse as mine is. It is easier to lose than to win back. From the conquest by the Normans to the confirmation of the charters by King Richard I. and the enactment of the statute de tallagio, two hundred and thirty years of wrong, oppression, usurpation, rebellion, civil discord, and intestine war were suffered; and nearly four hundred years of contest and vicissitude had yet to pass before the rights so long acknowledged and so clearly understood were to be quietly enjoyed-a lesson which the freemen of all nations should not fail to bear in mind when they are tempted, on whatever grounds, to sacrifice their liberties to a supposed necessity.

SENATOR: Monsieur Remorse, Sir Simon the Righteous, Champion of Liberty and Equal Rights, let me say to you that if there be a Cipher in the American state it is the Constitution. I'll Shakespeare you:

Why, worthy Thane,

You do unbend your noble strength to think

Was the hope drunk

So brainsickly of things.

Wherein you dress'd yourself.

Hath it slept since?

And wakes it now, to look so green and pale at

what it did so freely?

PRESIDENT: The expedition of my violent love for the

Constitution outran the pauser reason.

For the good of

the Republican party all causes shall give way. Like Macbeth, I am in blood steeped so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as going over. At times I feel it were better to be with the dead than to sleep in the affliction of terrible dreams that nightly shake me.

The Republican party has tied me to a stake. I cannot fly, but, bear-like, I must fight to the course. Come what may, time and the roughest hour run through the roughest day. Only your invisible hand, Mark Hanna, can tear to pieces that great bond-the Constitutionwhich keeps me pale.

SENATOR: The Republican party is on the peaceable side of the Rubicon-not quite ready to cross. In the meantime the Constitution, Popular Sovereignty, the Stars and Stripes, the Sovereign States, are pro forma. Henceforth Imperialism, Glory and Gold are America's celestial portents. In hoc signo vinces.

PRESIDENT: Imperialism, Glory, and Gold are the type and faithful image of the entire feudal Society. The unlimited autocracy of Trusts has bred vipers which are gnawing at the breast of the Constitution.

SENATOR: The hand of history writes unpalatable truths; we cannot close our eyes to the portentous lessons and refuse to read the Book of Destiny. I have read somewhere that the perfection of law consists in its adaptation to the needs of the society to which it is addressed. If that society be progressive and self-developing, its law must be elastic, expanding to meet new conditions, or it will cease to be the handmaid of commerce and civilization. The truth is that the merchant is the real lawmaker; from the merchant in the councils and at the dinner-table of the Earl of Mansfield came the English law of commercial paper. Rome, Macedon, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, and in

the next century America-all are gone. Immobility in national institutions is not possible. A Constitution adapted to three millions is certainly unsuitable to 125,000 magnates possessed of thirty-three thousand millions of Gold. The Constitution may prescribe one course, but you must perceive this Imperial golden treasury of these Republicans demands another.

PRESIDENT: The first and most important condition for the prosperity of a great nation is stability in its constitution. Stability must be distinguished from immobility. We live under different conditions from the patriots of "76 and '61, and public necessities may vary, but anarchy arises as soon as the Constitution prescribes one course and the Republican party another. Republican or democratic, our people believe there is a plasticity in their Constitution that can adapt itself to varying circumstances and stand the shock of time. Americans believe in the steady dominion of constitutional law. Americans have not been crushed by the relentless tread of centuries. Not until there is blood degeneration can there be thought degeneration. If wealth be distributed under equitable laws, we shall never have a condition of universal depravity, nor can our social fabric ever degenerate into a festering mass of Imperialism. Why may not a great homogeneous people having strength and security in its constitution look forward to a career of unending glory? What can be, is. The Public want not a change of government, but of gov

ernors.

SENATOR: There is an eternal sea of being, on the surface of which play oscillatory and variable ripples. God deals with the general laws of the universe, not with parties. He recognizes the ocean and its waves. America is no more under special providence than Armenia. You cannot crush forever the eternal antagonism of artificial aris

tocracy against the rights and happiness of the people. Practical politics knows nothing, cares less, for the socalled Science of Sociology. What have sermons and wildspun theories to do with the business of holding the United States Government in the leading strings of the Republican party? Neither statesmanship nor force can avail to argue Americans out of Imperialism. The insidious agencies for the destruction of the Constitution are those that modify men themselves. The Constitution already is a giant without bones. The poet anticipated the laws of earthly evolution. He says:

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which inherit shall dissolve,

And like this unsubstantial pageant [the Constitution] Leave not a rack behind.”

PRESIDENT: What a fine scholar!

SENATOR: Classical quotation, Mr. President, is the parole of literary men all over the world.

PRESIDENT: In your scheme to shove the Republic into the Glory-and-Gold pawnshop may you not have reckoned without your host? May not fourteen millions of voters wash away all our formidable combinations with the Trusts? Insidious agencies worked in Tilden's case. Yet Senator Gorman, single-handed, crushed the iron web of the Force Bill and the criminal cunning to outcount Cleveland. Our commonwealth, transformed into a forest of beasts, affords the latest illustration of the Glory-and-Gold Harpy-craving Carrion. Though his minions spattered the pavement of Frankfort with the blood-guiltiness of assassination, yet the knight of the hidden visor did noț cut his murderous way through Kentucky.

SENATOR: That blow sounded like the ring of a Roman sword upon the helmet of a barbarian. It was a bold but doubtful experiment; yet it showed the elasticity and freedom of the Republican mind, while Bourbon Democracy limps like a wrestler writhing in his decrepitude. O Glory and Gold, root of all evil, what crimes, what injustice, what cupidity, what tears, what political mendacity, what prostitution of the principles and people of a great republic have you to answer for!

PRESIDENT: Your vivid and volatile imagination, Senator, is obtaining a mastery over my heart. What I dread is that the lonely grave in Kentucky will not be forgotten in November. The Public Voice precedes the chariot of the Almighty and is heard on the judgment seat; at least so says our minister.

SENATOR: Let us reinstate things for words. As great scoundrels as ever lived have governed the world in perpetuity. Politics is a cunning business; it requires a hand to touch and tune the instrument to harmony.

PRESIDENT: Politicians are like those imperfect putrid creatures that receive a crawling life from two of the most unlike procreants, the sun and mud. In Washington they resemble huge boas moving inertly through the grass.

SENATOR: If you will be quiet and reasonable I will marshal you the way the Republican party is going. The Trusts are our clients; they do not own us; they owe us billions upon billions. Our Republican Trust is the greatest moneyed aristocracy the world ever saw. We no longer need a petty contingent of satellites, sycophants, and toad-eaters picked up from the pavements. We are no longer commoners of the Lincoln stamp; not lesser luminaries, but peers even in the English Social Constellation. We do not all twinkle in the same style, but that new species of gentlemen-the nouveaux riches-in various de