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manufactures and other products, every idle man in the country could find work, and every wheel of industry would be placed in motion. The commerce of the United States with the southern South American states includes exports amounting to $16,000,000 and imports amounting to $53,000,000 a year. Nearly $40,000,000 of imports into this country from the southern South American States consist of coffee from Brazil. Nearly all of this vast amount of property, goods and merchandise and products is shipped to and fro through English ports; the freight is paid to English vessels, and the exchanges are made through English banks. It is an interesting question in business how long the political factions in Congress will neglect these vast interests for the sake of the little affairs to which their time and labor are devoted.

A GOODLY LAND TO LIVE IN.

New York Sun (Dem.), August 28.

SENATOR FRYE, of Maine, has come to the conclusion that the United States is a pretty good land to live in. In a speech at Eastport the other day he said: Now, this Republic is the best Government in the world for poor men and women. We want a Republic, a GovernRich men can get along anywhere, but you and I can't. ment that has sympathy for us, that will put out its hand and lift us up. Now, to keep that Government every citizen wants to vote conscientiously and intelligently, and the Republic will be safe enough.

Except for the assumption that the speaker himself was a poor man, and the assertion that our people want a Government "that will put out its hand and lift In this time of general faultus up," these remarks were sound and sensible. finding and undiscriminating criticism it is well to recall the blessings we enjoyblessings so constant that we scarcely realize their presence, so familiar have they become. This Republic is truly the best Government in the world for poor men and women. Nowhere else will honest industry sooner give a man a hundred dollars in the savings bank, or make him the owner of a little house and lot in the city, or a few acres of land and a comfortable home in the country. Nowhere else has the humblest citizen so good a chance of rising to the highest post in the land. But the Maine Senator is mistaken when he thinks the people of the United States All they want is a need a helping hand from their Government to lift them up. chance to lift themselves up, without let or hindrance from the Government. If they are allowed this, they will get up fast enough.

GLADSTONE ON THE IRISH QUESTION.

Boston Post (Dem.), August 30.

MR. GLADSTONE'S pamphlet upon the Irish question is certainly the most weighty and conclusive contribution yet made to the already voluminous literature of the subject, and its political effect can not fail to be immense. Whether or not Mr. Gladstone has entirely freed himself from the charge of inconsistency in his own opinions regarding home rule is, perhaps, an open question; but, at any rate, it is not at this stage of the discussion an important one. That he may have been wrong a score or a dozen of years ago is not of half so much consequence as that he should be right now. In the present pamphlet the Liberal leader is emphatic enough in the expression of his belief. The salient feature of his argument is his abandonment of any land purchase scheme as correlative to a measure of home rule. He deals some heavy blows at the proposed Irish policy of the new government. Of the results of the recent electoral conflict in Great Britain he remarks, with his usual eloquence:

All the currents of the politcal atmosphere as between the two islands have been cleansed and sweetened. For Ireland now knows what she never has known before, 1hat even under her defeat a deep rift of division runs all through the English nation in her favor; that there is not throughout the land a parish or village where there are not hearts beating in unison with her heart, where are not minds earnestly bent on the acknowledgment and permanent establishment of her claims to national existence. Under these happier circumstances, what is there in separation that would tend to make it advantageous to Ireland? As an island with many hundreds of miles of coast, with a weak marine and people far more military than nautical in its habits, of small population, and limited in her present resources, why should she expose herself to the risks of invasion and to the certainty of an enormous cost in the creation and maintenance of a navy for defence, rather than remain under the shield of the greatest maritime power in the world, bound by every consideration of honor and interest to guard her? Why should she be supposed desirous to forego the advantage of absolute community of trade with the greatest of all commercial countries, to become an alien to the market which consumes, say, nine-tenths of her produce, and instead of using the broad and universal paths of enterprise now open to her to carve out for herself new and narrow ways as a a third-rate State?

THE CRISIS IN DENMARK.

New York Herald (Ind.), September 1.

THE GREAT ISSUE.

SEIZING BRITISH VESSELS.

San Francisco Chronicle (Ind.), August 26.

VERY likely England will want to know by what right we seize British vessels in Behring sea. It is an expanse of water extending about a thousand miles in length and breadth, but the Alaska peninsula and the Aleutian islands form a chain dividing it from the Pacific. Russia claimed exclusive control over it and ceded her rights to us within certain lines. Our Government leased the sole privilege of capturing seals within those limits to the Alaska Commercial Company. These British vessels were captured while engaged in seal-catching. The founda-. tion for the claim of the Russian government, from which the United States derives title, is that Behring sea is an enclosed body of water and not a part of the high The claim seems to be quite as good as that of Canada to jurisdiction over the waters adjacent to the coast within lines drawn from one distant headland to another. American fishermen have been recently forbidden the Bay of Chaleur. The entrance is fifteen miles wide and the prohibition can not be based on the three-mile limit. In like manner we draw lines from island to island of the Aleutian group, which are United States territory, and assume control of the water so enclosed. Our position seems to be quite as good as that of the Canadians, and of England, their backer. It is a poor rule that won't work both ways. If it should be decided by diplomacy or international arbitration that our claims are unfounded, Russia will, in equity if not legally, owe us compensation for giving us an unsound

seas.

title.

NOT A CURE.

Salt Lake Tribune (Rep.), August 22.

THE Eastern press is quite too fast in thinking that the execution of the Chicago anarchists will be the extinction of socialism and anarchism in the United States. So long as we permit the refuse of Europe to land unchallenged on our shores, and so long as a few men secure for themselves annually all the earnings of thousands of workers, so long there will be unrest and heart-burnings, and socialism is the child of these parents. Socialism means simply the materialization of the unrest in the human heart. It may be all wrong and altogether wicked, but it is the child which comes of suffering and crime, and the way to stop the evil is to cure the disease. By this, we mean to express no compassion for the murderous miscreants in Chicago, but simply to call attention to the fact that the execution of a few men is not going to make America safe against the assaults of thousands of others of the same stamp. If we would see to it that no child grows up without an honest training and fair education, that no foreigner could land unless he could bring assurances of his worthiness to land, and if taxes could be equally collected from rich and poor alike according to their means, there would be no more socialists or anarchists. But killing a few of the particular miscreants will be doctoring simply a symptom, it will not touch the deep-seated disease.

. THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE INDIANS. New York Mail and Express (Rep.), August 31. WHEN any great moral victory is to be gained, in the field of politics or anywhere else, the sympathy of the women of this country will always be fopathies, listed on the right side, and, especially of late years, not merely their sympathies, but their words and their deeds. It is women who have always been and are now the heart and soul of the temperance movement. Women are the implacable foes of the Mormon iniquity. Women are demanding justice for the Indian, and car rying instruction to him and to the negro. So long as moral abominations exist i politics there will be the Harriet Beecher Stowes, the Helen Hunt Jacksons, the Kate Fields to denounce them before the world, and to build up an irresistible feminine public opinion that will at last overcome obstacles that at first seem insurbut her

life-work still goes on. Other women have taken up the cause she loved, and the Women's National Indian Association is as much one of the recognized institutions of the country as the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The general secretary of this association, Mrs. A. S. Quinton, addressed the assembly at Ocean Grove yesterday. Her facts and figures are interesting, and the policy she advocates is in line with that which has always been urged in these columns. There are, says Mrs. Quinton, between 260,000 and 265,000 Indians in the country, who own 136,000,000 acres of land-over 500 acres apiece on the average. This is more than enough to support an equal number of white men in comfort and plenty. The reason it does not support the Indians is that they do not work it as white men would. Some of them, doubtless, do not work because they will not; but there are others—and, according to the observation of experts, they are in the large majority-who would be glad to work if they were assured of the result of their labor. They want individual farms. They want to be recognized as citizens of the United States, with the common-law rights of citizens. Legislation preparing for this end was passed in the Senate last winter, but, like most other useful legislation, never got to a hearing in the House. * * * Perhaps the next House will be composed of different material.

PRINCE ALEXANDER'S RETURN.

THE success of the counter-revolution in Bulgaria and the return of Prince Alexander have elicited many press comments, of which the appended extracts are fairly representative.

Boston Globe (Dem.).

THE episode of Prince Alexander, and the fate which befell his quasi-alliance with the faithless Russian, is an interesting example of how exceptionally infamous proceedings may provoke popular sympathy, even in despotically-ruled countries, before which stolid diplomatists like Bismarck are constrained to stand back in the rear. While Austria was looking to England for an initial move, and England to Austria, both were scanning the attitude of Germany. While Bismarck bears an ill-suppressed hatred to Russia, he was too wily to provoke the latter by a protest, but stood crouching artfully, in the hope of seeing the other powers drawn into a struggle with Russia, when, doubtless, if the opportunity should ever be offered of finding her in the toils, Germany would seize hold and strangle the life out of her. But the cold and heartless calculation of Bismarck, was soon melted by an outburst of sympathy and enthusiasm in behalf of the kidnapped Alexander such as has been rarely seen in phlegmatic Germany. The air of Berlin resounded with the din of Alexander's health-drinkers in a thousand restaurants and cafes, while the populace shouted "long-life" to the outraged son of the Fatherland. Old songs, bringing back the spirit of '48, were struck up, and it was soon made evident to the man of blood and iron that there is something mightier than cold diplomacy in the world when it gets stirred up. This, popular wave of sympathy seems to have taken up Prince Alexander in its arms and borne him back to Bulgaria, while diplomacy looked on and dared not speak. It may prove a valuable reminder to Bismarck, and possibly break up the triple alliance of the Emperors which has long made Europe the theater of diplomatic cowardice and hypocrisy. The masses think and feel in these days. Acts of diplomatic conspiracy carried out by fraud and kidnapping, after the fashion of feudal days, will not go down in a country as intelligent as Germany, and the episode of Prince Alexander may prove a valuable object lesson in teaching wily court circles that the power behind the throne breathes the air of the nineteenth century, though diplomacy fondly lingers in the shades of the fifteenth.

Brooklyn Union (Ind.).

THE prompt undoing of the work of the Russian agents in Bulgaria is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that the deposition of Alexander must have been matter of previous agreement with Germany and Austria. The hollowness of the alliance between Germany and Russia has been demonstrated by the extraordinary vigor of the manifestations of sympathy with Alexander among all classes in Germany, and the unpopularity in Austria of any step toward Russianizing the Balkan provinces, could have been predicted in advance. It has been made evident that neither power can let Russia have what she wants in European Turkey without provoking a popular protest which might prove more dangerous than the risk of offending the Northern Empire. In so far as this will prove an aid to the formation of a group of independent states out of the wreck of the Sultan's dominions, it is unquestionably a good thing for human progress. The races of the Balkan peninsular can work out their own future much more successfully if left to themselves than if bound to the car of any broader movement, pan-Slavist or otherwise. The Eastern question can be solved without further bloodshed if, with the slipping of every province from Turkish rule, it can be organized as an independent state. A strong and united Balkan federation would be a pledge of European peace stronger than any triple alliance of emperors or international guarantee of the continued existence of what remains of Ottoman rule. And nothing has tended so forcibly to demonstrate the possibility of such a federation as the series of events attending the deposition and restoration of the Prince of Bulgaria.

L'Eco d'Italia (Ind.), New York. [Translated for PUBLIC OPINION.]

What is the meaning of this somersault? Perhaps it signifies quite the oppoposite of that which the words express. In politics this is very often the case. Or is it a true and real retreat? In the latter event it means that the pear is not yet ripe and that Bismarck does not yet feel himself ready to break with Russia. The Bulgarian resolution was to be the triumph of Russian politics and a deadly affront to England. In the course of events the roles are reversed, and that which is seen to-day, even without a magnifying glass, is a colossal fiasco of the Muscovite cabi

net, which had the pretense of effecting a revolution without revolutionists. So the London Economist says, but there is no need of superior authority in order to believe it, the facts speak for themselves. It is only the French, who in their anglophobia continue to proclaim the " 'humiliation of England." The English laugh at it, not a little; and it could almost be wagered that they are not at all displeased at the trap by which they have been caught in Bulgaria. Only if Austria and Germany flatter themselves that they have drawn the chestnut out of the fire with the paw of the cat, hoping that England will have to avenge herself an outrage committed by Russia on a German of distinction, Prince Alexander, these two powers calculate badly, for they calculate without taking English positivism into account, and the Economist does not neglect to warn them against this illusion.

Las Novedades (Ind.), New York.

[Translated for PUBLIC OPINION.]

WITH the return of Prince Alexander to his dominions in the midst of the acclamations of the Bulgarian people has ended, for the moment, one of the most unexpected and ill-devised of revolutions. A handful of men, bought by Russian gold, deposed the sovereign prince and expelled him from a country to which, now on his return, he is welcomed by the almost unanimous voice of his subjects. Nevertheless, it is indubitable that the miscarriage of this tentative move of Russia has been brought about by influences not yet perfectly understood. The revolution is ended, but it can not be said that with it peace is assured in the East. Bulgaria is to day the apple of discord in the oriental region of Europe, and Russian political ambition will continue to pursue the secular policy which Peter the Great inaugurated, and which, beginning with an attack upon the power of Turkey in Europe, and her reduction by a series of wars to her present limits, has gone on acquiring autonomy for the nations of the Balkan, and extending over them a protection whose ultimate object is conquest and annexation to herself. Over Prince Alexander of Bulgaria hangs the personal resentment of the Czar, from the fact that, against the express wishes of the latter, he attempted the annexation of Eastern Roumelia, and this animosity will now be the more intense with the miscarriage of the Zankoff revolution and its very sad augury for the preservation of

peace.

New Yorker Staats-Zeitung (Ina.).

(Translated for PUBLIC OPINION.) ALEXANDER continues his triumphal march through Bulgaria. How long it will last is, however, quite another affair. Russia does not seem inclined to give up the game as lost. The language of her press is energetic, and at the same time of a calmness, ominously determined. A dagger or a pistol shot might bring Alexander's glory to a sudden termination. His adversaries in his own dominions are not yet removed; the head of the Greek Oriental Church, ex-Minister Clement, is said to stand at the head of a widely ramified association in the interior of the country; the fate of the metropolis, Sofia, is not yet settled, and a Russian plenipotentiary is now on his way to save what can be saved. In fact, the situation in Bulgaria must be extraordinarily critical, otherwise Alexander would hardly have determined upon such extraordinary measures. The complete transformation of the Ministry into an attitude of pronounced hostility to Russia, and the pendency of a state of siege over Bulgaria are clear indications of the magnitude of the threatened dangers, and of the inflexible resolution of the Prince not to be frightened from a resort to extreme measures. It is not to be supposed that Russia will decline to take up the gauntlet so courageously thrown down and quietly submit to the situation, and the Prince of Bulgaria, crowned as he now is with renown, perhaps has yet to experience the most difficult part of his enterprise.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Rep.).

WHEN the Earl of Beaconsfield appeared at Berlin on that day in June, eight years ago, when the congress assembled which he was convinced would curb Russia's pretensions in southeastern Europe for a generation at least, a proud moment arrived for that erratic statesman and for England. Here, for the first time since representative institutions were established in Great Britain, had a British premier represented his country in a foreign capital while England's Parliament was in session. A still prouder day for Beaconsfield and Britain was that when, a few weeks later, he grandiloquently announced, on his arrival in London from Berlin: "We have brought to England a peace with honor." He had secured from Turkey the island of Cyprus, to be used for a military and naval station, on condition that England would pay a stipulated sum annually to Turkey in lieu of revenue. Cyprus has long since lost even its strategic value in Great Britain's eyes, and the nation which her loyal sons fondly hoped Disraeli's genius had rendered powerless to again disturb the placidity of British diplomates to-day serenely remodels the map of Europe and Asia without apparently realizing that such a nation exists as England.

New Orleans Times-Democrat (Dem.).

UNDER the circumstances of the continuance of the triple alliance between the Russian, German, and Austrian emperors, this late demonstration is rather an extraordinary affair. But the whole political situation in Europe seems to be badly mixed just now. England does not seem to know exactly, or, at all events, to say whether she is for or against the rights of her ownIrish subjects, opposed or consenting to Russian aggression and aggrandizement. Turkey is undecided about her own policy toward her northern tributary provinces. Russia thinks one week that she had better upset the Bulgarian government, and the next that she had better let it set itself up again, and the other powers are constantly changing their minds on the Eastern question, colonization, and other prominent questions that are now constantly rising to the surface in European politics. There is no wonder that the press agents and the foreign cable companies have gotten so mixed up in the character of the news they gather and send across the ocean; for the vaults and turns of modern European diplomacy are enough to bewilder and tangle even that wonderful institution, the astute American news agent or collector.

MR. BLAINE AND THE PRESIDENCY.

MR. BLAINE's reappearance in politics as an active participant in the Maine campaign has been made the occasion for numerous comments-especially in the Democratic and Independent newpapers- on his assumed candidacy for the Presidential nomination by the Republican party in 1888.

New York Herald (Ind.).

THE most significant feature of the heavy speech with which Mr. Blaine is traveling through the State of Maine is its presentment of himself as a distinctively Eastern candidate for a Republican renomination to the Presidency. It is devoted to only two national topics-the protective tariff and the fishery troubles. We would have said three, by including its approval of prohibitory liquor legislation, but for his declaration to the Rev. Mr. Collins to the effect that such legisla❘ tion is a matter of separate State concern. It cannot escape observation and remark that these two national topics, which Mr. Blaine chooses for debate to the exclusion of all others, are mainly Eastern in their application. The mill owners, whom he would protect against foreign competitors by tariff duties, at the expense of the Western agricultural consumers of the fabrics, are mostly inhabitants of the East. The fisheries, which he claims that President Cleveland's Administration is slack in defending, by threats of war against Great Britain, are almost exclusively carried on from the seaports of New England. On Wednesday, at the very hour at which Mr. Blaine was repeating this ponderous speech at North Berwick, Republican conventions were in session in several Western States, whose resolutions are in striking contrast to his choice of issues for the national Republican party in 1888. Take the platform of the Iowa Republican Convention at Des Moines, for an example. Its main features are demands for withdrawal of public lands from corporate encroachments, for admission of Dakota to the Union, for application of surplus revenue to pay public debt, and for more profuse pensions to soldiers of the civil and Mexican wars. It says not a word about the fishery fuss, and it treats the tariff curtly by calling for its "reform." As to protective legislation, it demands protection of the mill hands, not the mill owners, and specifies the competition of pauper and convict labor at home as a peril from which they need defense no less than from the competition of foreign workingmen. In 1876 and 1880, when he failed, and in 1884, when he succeeded, Mr. Blaine relied on the West for the bulk of his strength in the Republican National Convention. His scheme for 1888, apparently, is to abandon the West to General Logan and rely on the East, with the customary alliance of colored delegates from the South. Perhaps this bold shifting of his plan of operation is .a shrewd one for him, selfishly considered. He probably has satisfied himself that he stands no chance, any longer, in the West with his former colleague on the Republican ticket for his rival there.

New York Times (Ind.).

THESE Silly sophistries are worthy of some of Mr. Blaine's narrow, partisan organs, like the Tribune, which find it rather dry picking in the barren pastures of opposition, but they are unworthy a statesman of his mental elasticity. The Republicans who can be influenced by such pitiful appeals, Mr. Blaine, will be Republicans forever, and wild horses could not drag them to the polls to vote for any other candidate than yourself. You may count them as safe. But there are not enough of this sort of ever-faithful Republicans, Mr. Blaine, to make you President, even with the aid of the dynamiters, whom you will have always with you. You must win recruits, and you can win them only from that, for you, fatally nu merous class of Republicans who distrusted you and voted against you in 1884, and who remain of the opinion that you are an unfit person to be intrusted with the great trust you unsuccessfully sought. One speech in explanation of certain passages in your public history, which should convince these Republicans that you have always been a scrupulously honest and truthful man, would be worth more to you than ten thousand tariff speeches, Mr. Blaine. Until you get rid of that "little smirch" you are but wasting your time and "striving after wind.”

Milwaukee Journal (Dem.).

It is the peculiar notion of Mr. Blaine that while the negroes were slaves dinner to their maximum capacity for work and maintained at the minimum cost they were no competitors of the labor of the North, but that as free men of increasing intelligence, and with greater cost of living, they become a menace to the laborer. As if the ability of one man to earn a living is decreased when the ability of another man to earn a living is enhanced. Or, because the negro can earn his bread in fewer hours than under slavery the white man must work a greater number of hours for his sustenance. If honest Abe Lincoln had entertained such a theory he would never have been so unkind to the North as to strike the shackles from the slaves. But Lincoln was never a candidate for President under circumstances which compelled him to consult with a Jay Gould or a coal syndicate on the one hand and the labor vote on the other. Mr. Lincoln did not receive a call from Jeff Davis before he issued his emancipation proclamation. But it is unkind to the Republican party to recall the methods of Lincoln in speaking of Blaine. New Orleans Times-Democrat (Dem.).

It is a generally accepted fact, by the press, the politicians, and the people, that Mr. James G. Blaine, of Maine, is now, for the fourth time, a candidate for his party's nomination to the Presidency. Beaten by Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, defeated again in 1880, he plucked the luring fruit in 1884 but to find it turned to ashes in the disappointment of a national defeat. With rare wisdom this astute Republican politician has remained out of the official arena of politics for some years but to work his plans the better on the outside. To deny that Mr. Blaine is a skillful tactician and a wily strategist would be to say a foolish thing; and it looks now as if he had already won the lead among party contestants in the race for the nomination in 1888. Understanding this, and regarding him as the probable standard-bearer of his party in the next struggle for the Presidency, people are apt to attach much significance to his utterances, as being indicative of the line of combat he will form in the next national contest.

New York Mail and Express (Rep.).

Of course, Mr. Blaine knows that he is the only American of either party who has an immense personal following, in the sense that Henry Clay had and that Stephen A. Douglas had, the only two men in our political history whose relations with a vast mass of personal supporters resembled those that have existed for many years between Mr. Blaine and his faithful constituency. Though Mr. Blaine should fail to become President, as Mr. Clay and Mr. Douglas failed, it is silly for his personal or political foes to pretend to ignore the peculiar position which Mr. Blaine, out of office and with no official "machine" to help him, holds toward a large proportion of the Republican party. And it is absurb to try to underestimate the sagacity of Mr. Blaine's defense of the Republican doctrines and exposure of Administration blunders and follies, or the inspiring effect thereof on the party that only lost power in 1884 through a chapter of accidents unprecedented and unrepeatable.

From a Washington Special to the New York World (Dem.). CONGRESSMAN GOFF, of West Virginia, who arrived in the city this morning to take hold of the Republican campaign committee work, proclaimed himself in favor of Blaine, and believes Mr. Blaine will be the nominee of the Republican party in 1888. He believes that Mr. Blaine is to-day stronger with the people than he was in 1884 and can secure the nomination with little trouble. He regards him as the only available candidate who can carry the State of New York. He has confidence in his strength with the people of West Virginia, and believes he can carry that State also. He realizes the fact that in 1884 there were some serious mistakes committed by Mr. Blaine and his managers; but these, he says, have all been remedied, and the experience of the past will teach them a good lesson for the future. He says Mr. Blaine will be the next President of the United States.

Washington Sunday Gazette (Ind.).

MR. BLAINE will undoubtedly seek a renomination from the Republican party in '88 if the party appear strong and united, but he will not lead a forlorn hope. Nor should he, if wise, endeavor to win with a harmonious party if Mr. Cleveland should be placed at the head of the opposition, for he would be certain to meet with inglorious defeat. His enemies within his party have been growing stronger, while his friends have been growing less. The latter are just as firm and resolute as ever in his defense, and perhaps a trifle more unscrupulous; but, with all their exertions in his behalf, Mr. Blaine can never win the Presidency of these United States. It is rather soon to predict, but if the great Republican party is wise, it will see in time that disaster irretrievable and prolonged will surely be its doom if James G. Blaine, of Maine, is its Presidential standard-bearer in 1888.

Chicago Herald (Ind.).

THE Sebago speech is more noteworthy for the advanced stand taken by Blaine concerning prohibition than for any other utterance. He declares Maine a quarter of a century ahead of the license States, pronounces the Republican party therein the sole and sufficient champion of the principle of prohibition, and defines separate effort as ungracious and unreasoning aid and comfort to Democracy. The logic of this utterance is that the Republican party everywhere should follow the example of the party in Maine. This ought to place Mr. Blaine in training for the candidacy which Mr. St. John enjoyed two years ago. Whether it will advance his interests for the Republican nomination depends upon the willingness of the other States to be enrolled with Maine, Iowa, and Kansas as enactors of drastic sumptuary legislation.

Richmond State (Dem.).

BLAINE, the tattooed statesman, of Maine, is again out with his characteristic brag and bluster, and is moving with his old-time energy to catch the Presidential nomination. Blaine has been many years in politics. Indeed, his career as a public man has, perhaps, been of greater length than that of any man now in politics, with three or four exceptions. He now talks about being a friend of the laboring man, but in all these years what has he done for that class, or for anybody, except James G. Blaine? He has been the intimate co worker of Jay Gould. He has been an artful jobber in many rings, the Little Rock railroad affair being one of the freshest in the public mind. The man who goes into politics a poor man and comes out a rich man can not pose as the friend of labor.

Chicago News (Ind.).

It would be idle to maintain that the speech of Mr. Blaine had no more than local significance. Mr. Blaine is a citizen of the United States rather than of the State of Maine; his utterances are national, no matter what may furnish the occasion. It is not true that the Sebago lake speech was a bid for nomination in 1888, but it can not well be denied that it was setting the keynote for the Republican party in that campaign. It was expected by both the friends and enemies of the party represented by the orator that the tone and sentiment of this opening speech would be taken as the counsel of a leader to the party in all the States. A care

ful scrutiny of the speech shows that Mr. Blaine himself recognized this expectation and has fulfilled it.

Philadelphia Inquirer (Rep.).

IT used to be said "As goes Maine, so goes the Union." That was said at times when it was an accepted truism, the which it no longer is. Maine has become rather an insignificant factor in the national political sum, and the present campaign in that State for Governor is significant rather because in it are embarked something of the political fortunes of Mr. Blaine, who is more than any other concerned in the result of the election. If, as declared, Mr. Blaine is again an aspirant for the Presidential nomination less than two years hence, it is essential to his prospects of success that he should demonstrate to his party that he is still the controlling mind of his own Commonwealth, and that he can keep it safely inside the Republican lines.

Cleveland Plain Dealer (Dem.).

MR. BLAINE is more than usually scared just now and he has personal reasons

for wanting the prohibition movement stamped out in his own State. Maine will vote in September and Mr. Blaine has made the canvass his own. He expects, as the preliminary movement of the campaign of 1888, to show up a big Republican majority in Maine next month. If he should fail, if, because of this third party movement or any other untoward circumstance, Maine should fail to go Republican, it would be all up with Mr. Blaine. His hopes for 1888 would vanish and he would go into his political sepulcher to stay. It is life or death with Mr. Blaine in the pending Maine contest, and hence his personal efforts to suppress the Prohibitionists.

New York Sun (Dem.).

JUSTICE where and when it is due. Here is our esteemed and straight-going contemporary, the Courier-Journal, speaking for Mr. Blaine in words which would apply to almost any man in the country better than to him:

The greatest breadth of Lake Sebago, where Mr. Blaine made his speech, is from 7 to 8 miles. Is Mr. Blaine dreaming of another Electoral Commission?

It is to Mr. Blaine's eternal honor, and the Courier-Journal ought to know it, that the unconstitutional scheme of robbing Mr. Tilden and the national Democracy of their rights in 1876, through an Electoral Commission, found in him a most unequivocal, ardent, and powerful opponent. That is history.

New Orleans States (Dem.).

It is hardly necessary to say that the Democracy is not at all alarmed at the warlike preparations of Blaine. It has not been idle, but, on the contrary, has silently loaded its campaign guns with certain facts concerning his political career, and when the battle is commenced they will be discharged at him with such force and volume that he will think he has found his way into the vortex of a cyclone of buzz-saws. His tender soul will be jolted in such a painful manner that he will forget he ever heard of a man by the name of Bayard, and his cooperion feat of attempting to shoot the rapids of public opinion in the barrel of aggression will only result in him being twirled, thumped and bounced, and finally lost to sight forever.

Philadelphia Telegraph (Rep.).

A CONSIDERABLE part of the charge of Mr. Blaine's opening gun was in the nature of an argument for his fellow citizens, not of Maine only, but wherever voters in 1888 may be secured, to show that "scattered" votes are bad, bad things, and that the people should steadily adhere to the two prominent, regularly organized parties. Then you know where you are, says the Maine statesman, at least, so approximately that the chances of a tit-up only make the game exciting, but if you once go hunting after strange gods in the shape of outside, irresponsible, fanatical, fly-by-night tickets, you never know where you are, and run a good chance of being lost in the bog to which all will-o'-the-wisps lead.

Louisville Courier-Journal (Dem.).

THERE is soon to be an election in Maine, and the contest seems to imperil the political ambitions of Mr. James G. Blaine. The situation to-day makes Mr. Blaine the inevitable candidate of the Republican party. He has the field to himself. But the loss of Maine at this time, a political revolution which would give the State to the control of the Democratic party, would effectually dispose of the ambitious Mr. Blaine throws himgentleman who was defeated by Mr. Cleveland in 1884. self into the breach. He enters the campaign with something of his old vigor and all of his old blindness, and it is the hope of the Democrats everywhere that in this little campaign Mr. Blaine will succeed.

Kansas City Times (Dem.).

MR. BLAINE will never be President of the United States. The people are afraid of him. Their instincts are nearly always right. They have read him correctly as an arrrant demagogue and will never elect him to the place to which he aspires. The Democratic party does not fear to meet the issues he has raised. There can be no danger to its future in having the Cutting case and fishery question thoroughly ventilated on the hustings. As for the Southern outrage business, that will be trotted out as long as Blaine and a few others of like ilk live. But its day is done. It is moribund and will be quietly buried a few years hence, when the old war statesmen are no more.

Indianapolis News (Ind.).

Cincinnati Evening Post (Ind.).

shall be open and understood. There is this collateral advantage in addition, that his avowed participancy must operate as a check and moderator upon other men with aspirations too big for their small abilities.

Pittsburgh Commercial-Gazette (Rep.).

THE sensible way is to regard Mr. Blaine as an earnest champion of Republican principles, at all times willing to do his full share of party work; and, if need be, ready to make personal sacrifices in behalf of the party to whose interests he has devoted his best energies. If, two years hence, he shall be the choice of a decided majority of his party, his nomination will follow as a matter of course. In the say, and mean time, Republicans should carefully listen to everything he has to when he is done they will be better able to judge whether he has been talking for himself or for his party and his country.

Memphis Avalanche (Dem.).

SINCE it is essential to the successful run of Mr. Blaine's new demagogy that the workingmen shall embrace his tariff views, which lie at the very base of his economic sectionalism, or sectionalism renewed in economic forms, the fact he notes and deplores becomes of grave consequence, and almost gives assurance of the failure of his newest scheme for demagogizing and resectionalizing American politics. It must be confessed, however, that he presents a dangerous issue, and for the effect of it we can only wait, after thus giving expression to a very firm belief that it died a-borning.

Florida Times-Union (Dem.).

WILY demagogue that Blaine is, he knows that there is no question at present about which so much of unreasoning passion and prejudice are clustered as about this labor question; and regardless of the legacy of hates and animosities and suspicions that the raising of such an issue would transmit in the next generationregardless of everything except success in his ambition to reach the Presidential chair-he deliberately addresses himself to the anarchic task of fixing the minds of the toiling millions of the North in jealousy and suspicion upon both employers and workers in the South.

Baltimore Herald (Ind.).

THERE are certain situations in the career of every politician when he is forced to realize the truth of the old adage that " Honesty is the best policy." If Mr. Blaine imagines that the Prohibition party will be content with anything less than a direct pledge and some security to bind it, he has greatly mistaken his men. The cause of prohibition has certainly not been weakened so far as New England is concerned, and it would be better for Mr. Blaine to boldly cast in his lot with the water States or the beer States than to toy with both, with the certainty of being rejected by both.

Rochester Herald (Rep.).

MR. BLAINE'S speech at Sebago struck the keynote for the next national campaign, and shows that the Republican party proposes to make the tariff question as much of an issue two years hence as it was two and six years ago. And the Democrats must be prepared to meet it with more effectiveness then they ever have met it, in the last quarter of a century. The Republican party has been outspoken, aggressive and practically united on this question, while the Democrats have been divided, hesitating and cowardly, so much so that Mr. Blaine's ridicule of them was not out of place.

Indianapolis Sentinel (Dem.).

THE Sebago speech altogether is about the weakest thing in its way that ever came from the mouth of a man who pretended to statesmanship. It abounds in references to the time "when I was in Congress" and "when I was Secretary of State." It is fortunate for the country that he was not able to say, "when I was There is a perfunctory tone throughout, as if he had but little heart in the work of resuscitating his own political ambitions—as if, indeed, he assumed leadership only because the party had nobody else for the role. Mr. Blaine is evidently very tired.

President."

Brooklyn Times (Rep.).

THE few mercantile interests which were led to oppose Mr. Blaine by listening to the persistent assertions that his foreign policy would be one of military aggres sion, have already repented in sackcloth and ashes of their course in 1884. From the tone of the Sebago speech they can see clearly how they have thrown away the chance of securing new South American markets for American manufactured goods by putting in the White House a Grover Cleveland instead of a James G. Blaine. They will be on the right side when the next opportunity presents itself. Salt Lake Tribune (Rep.).

THE enemies of James G. Blaine will admit with his friends that in point of ability he is one of the hardest hitters in the Union. He never talks that he does not strike out directly from the shoulder and if there is any vulnerable point in the armor of an adversary he is sure to hit and pierce it. He takes up in this gen. eration the place made vacant by the death of Henry Clay. He may never be President but if not it will be said of him as it has been said of the biggest men of the last generation, that many a smaller man succeeded where he failed.

Pittsburgh Dispatch (Ind.).

Ir does not require any very remarkable degree of political accumen for the man who reads Mr. Blaine's speech at Sebago Lake to discover that he is in the field for the Presidency and is now trying his best to draw the lines for a commanding strategic position in 1888. It is quite doubtful whether any man in the Repub lican party has the ability to choose a better position than Mr. Blaine has done in this speech; but it is also doubtful whether such an attitude is one that will bring new strength to a man with the prestige of defeat upon his back.

Cincinnati Enquirer (Dem.),

IN Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan Prohibition "third parties" promise this year to control the balance of power, and to determine the