SENATOR: And yet pale and glimmering present prosperity is the boast of our retained Burkes. What do you think our eighty millions are?

PRESIDENT: As Carlyle said of the English-mostly fools. Prosperity distributes its dews upon the unjust Power-holding Class while the people, without a perception of the human rascality of their legislation, bear the burden. SENATOR: If the working of American autonomy and its distributory system is based upon the equality of man, it must be wholly dissociated from and independent of the Old World polity resting upon the inequality of man. How can our prosperity depend upon conditions abroad?

PRESIDENT: As well prate of the temporary adversity or prosperity of the oceanic or solar system under the supposed temporary prosperity of the principle of gravitation. If by prosperity we intend the equitable distribution of wealth and taxes, we know that, barring the act of God, failure of crops, famine, war, or pestilence abroad, our general prosperity depends upon our institutions. equitably regulating the division of our wealth and taxes.

SENATOR: You concede, then, that in view of the corelations of international commerce, foreign institutions might affect American export trade?

PRESIDENT: If they affected foreign consumption. Failure of crops in Europe (the act of God) was the primal cause of our present much-vaunted prosperity. Our Power-Holding Class by the unsparing ruthlessness of their Indirect and Direct Taxation, of Funded Debt, National Bank, High Tariff, and Gold Standard, have placed our declaration of the equality of man and the people underneath and themselves on top.

SENATOR: Some of us have fantastic notions of our own consequence, but the public has a profound conviction that a true and national autocracy-the leadership of the

competent-is to endure in the industrial world as elsewhere for an indefinite time.

PRESIDENT: There are no finer pages in the Nebraskan's literature than those conveying his defense of the plain people. He has an extremely keen pair of eyes. His pure, beautiful character, his genial humor, his perfect truthfulness alike of heart and head, his distinguished position, quickly endear him to all Americans. To great powers of argument and illustration and delightful transparency of diction and style he adds a higher quality still -and a very rare quality it is-an evident and intense honesty of purpose, an absorbing desire to arrive at the exact truth and to state it with perfect fairness and with the just limitations.

SENATOR: The night is far spent, Mr. President. Let us prorogue our parliament. A general Sanhedrim of all the cats and dogs meet at Philadelphia to-morrow and I must be in attendance.

PRESIDENT: The proceedings of a Republican convention should resemble those of the House of Lords. Such an assemblage should be the Corinthian capitol of the polished Society of the Power-holding Class. Omnes boni nobilitati semper foremus. We should devote one part of our next meeting to the consideration briefly of the Gold Standard and Trusts. Dine with me the evening after the adjournment of our House of Lords. Good-night.

ACT III.

Scene 3. White House. President's private library. (Enter PRESIDENT, leaning on the arm of SENATOR HANNA.)

PRESIDENT: What insuperable obstacles were there to an Anti-Gold Standard plank?

SENATOR: That was an achievement beyond my ability. PRESIDENT: We did not keep our word with Trust. They will not think us angels of light. Your platform impales Trust. Why not Gold?

SENATOR: Trust is on a stable foundation. As I have explained, we had to hook um snivey. We must have the honey blob—the put-up for the campaign expenses. And this plank puts Trust on the P. P. P.

PRESIDENT: What's all this blubber?

SENATOR: Trust must pay promptly. (Sarcastic air.) It would have been an admirable ascendency of reason and wisdom to have inserted a bimetallic plank when we had just passed the Currency Bill!

PRESIDENT: The people have forgotten that long ago. SENATOR: Dissimulation delights in sublime speculations. Not intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.

PRESIDENT: We trespassed quite enough upon public credulity in affecting to threaten Trusts.

SENATOR: Our platform substitutes an Elegy for a Eulogy. The high-bred Republicans of the power-holding sort already are thorough-paced courtiers and easily managed, but the hungry, fierce, eager politicians of the baser

sort are bent upon adapting their schemes to the world in which they live. They are seeking how to divide the taxation they have fleeced from the poor drudges of industry and have become a law unto themselves.

PRESIDENT: The politicians of the privileged order think they have also the right to make the silent sorrow of Industry fruitful.

SENATOR: Yes. The chief industry of this standing army of strenuously organized idleness is a scuffle for places.

PRESIDENT: To return to our subject, Trust is an Alpine peak. Its true location ought to be presented so that all may attempt to scale it. Our adversaries will discover its promontories to the Public. It requires a very solid and discriminating judgment, great modesty and caution, and much sobriety of the mind in the handling.

SENATOR: The Gold Standard has been examined exhaustively, certainly; it has no connection with the interest of the people. They regard it as the sun around which, with vivifying energy, revolve those malignant satellites Funded Debt, National Bank, High Tariff, and Trust, and last, but not least, the Monetary Bill, which the people consider a sort of conjunct iniquity.

PRESIDENT: Dissimulation can no longer dissipate the difficulties of the Gold Standard.

SENATOR: The people associate the Gold Standard with the Cleveland, Morgan, Rothschild's deal, by which $62,000,000 of their bonds, worth 117 and later 120, were sold to the syndicate at about 104.

PRESIDENT: Gold Democracy was Mr. Cleveland's nomenclature. Under the semblance and language of moderation the consummate arrogance of the "Gold Democracy" exhibits itself in furious efforts to be grand, to be patriotic and profound, to be imperial and oracular.

As an intellectual achievement it is puerile. A ProtestantCatholic, a Union-Secessionist, an Irish-Englishman, a Pink-Yellow, a Methodist-Pope, a White-African, a Christian-Infidel, or a Land-Whale are not more grandiose antonyms than a Gold Democrat.

SENATOR: I often feared the artifices artificiarum of Mr. Cleveland's Gold Democracy would cost us the election in 1896. Their holdings were the crumbs which had fallen from the Republicans' table. English syndicates had feathered most of their trust nests, and they feared lest their gold bonds might be thrown upon the market if Mr. Bryan was elected. Their scientific concept of Bimetallism was the market value of their bonds. Mr. Cleveland was the economic wet-nurse of Gold Democracy. His acquirements in the broad field of political economy were extremely modest. The ex-President's first lesson was in the political science and pathology of hanging. The Mayor's office and Albany as universities of learning are not favorable to the pathognomy of erudite abstract sciences.

PRESIDENT: You are at times tainted with a malignity truly diabolical.

SENATOR: No economist of repute but knows whatever may be the literary skill of the accoucheur of his productions, upon subjects of speculative sociology, Mr. Cleveland is a childish talker.

PRESIDENT: I have observed he either breaks off in medio of his "innocuous desuetudes" or wanders to a measureless distance from their main purpose.

SENATOR: As Carlyle says, tending no whither.

PRESIDENT: In their efforts to efface from Bimetallism the stains affixed by ignorant or disingenuous adversaries, our friends the enemy in 1896 were diverted from the real issue-viz., Direct Taxation in the distribution of wealth