The issue was squarely made and fought out on the tariff question and the principles it necessarily involves. In Massachusetts, at least, no other question had sufficient weight to affect materially the result. That result was her deliberate conviction in favor of tariff reform upon the lines of making free the raw materials of industries, and cheapening yes, cheapening the cost of the necessaries of life.

I know that Senator Hoar has proclaimed in effect that the result was an accident due to misunderstanding and misrepresentation. If so, it was a misunderstanding of his arguments and misrepresentation that he was unable to refute. His explanations, opinions, and threats are by us taken with a liberal discount, as those of an honest man, no doubt, but one whose head requires a surgical operation to get into it public sentiment on the questions of the day, and out of it prejudices of thirty years ago. To himself and his policy might well be applied the remark of the wanderer in the old graveyard, who, finding on a moss-covered stone the words, "I still live," exclaimed, "Well, be jabbers, if I was dead I'd acknowledge it."

No greater mistake can be made than to suppose the victory in Massachusetts was accidental, or personal to any man. It was her mature judgment upon the tariff after most thorough consideration. For three years the campaign of education had gone on with energy and ever-increasing confidence. It had for its primer and its bible the sound message of a brave President, who made the Nation listen, told it the truth, and marshalled its conscience to assert that justice, equality, and freedom should be with us, as with the fathers, the basis of all law. From 1887 on, through the public Press and public meetings, debates in Congress and our Legislature, in campaigns, and throughout the

year, tariff reform was the one supreme subject of political thought and discussion.

Every opportunity was given the people to become informed of the facts and principles necessary for an intelligent opinion, and of the history, burdens, and benefits of a high tariff. Finally, the fatuity of our opponents gave the people a practical but expensive illustration of the whole system in its full development. Tariff reform with us at once made converts. It convinced the wage-earner that high-tariff taxation was to him a burden without adequate return. It awoke the farmer to the fact that to him such taxation was all outgo and no income; and even the manufacturer began to see that protection could take the life of an industry. With this, too, came a wholesome fear that an aroused public sentiment, unless satisfied and controlled by conservative concessions, might sweep away the whole system to get rid of its injustice and its burdens.

Two great influences controlled the action of Massachusetts on this question: first, her material interests; and, second, her moral sense of right and wrong. She remembered that under a low tariff her great industries were established and her manufacturing towns were founded; that in 1857 she, with the rest of New England, was in favor of the lowest tariff our country has had for generations; she recalled that in those days her agriculture thrived, her industries progressed by leaps and bounds, her commerce carried our flag into every part of the civilized world, and the New England coast rang with the music of anvil and of mallet, building the clipper ships that should win the carrying trade of the world.

Then she lived through thirty years of stringent protection. And sitting down at last to examine her condition after such careful "nursing," she found her

agriculture declining, and new and ill-omened officers, commissioners of abandoned farms, created in some of Her foreign commerce had Great industries, that for

the New England States. been swept from the seas. generations had been her glory and her strength, were folding "their tents, like the Arabs, and silently stealing away." Others were stagnant, others greatly prosperous; and the line of cleavage between stagnation and prosperity seemed to be free raw material. She felt the great and growing competition of the West and the South, with their natural advantages secured to them, while her own were destroyed by a policy which set aside a law of Nature and the will of God. Massachusetts, with her inherited aptitude for skilled industries, will take her chance in any fair competition. She does object to competing with her hands tied; she protests against law holding the knife that would cut the throat of her great industries.

But I love to think that a higher influence than her pocket controlled her action. I know that wrong which touches the pocket pricks the conscience. I also know that Massachusetts, God bless her! against her material interests, has been the fruitful field of many an agitation for human rights, equality, and freedom, meant to be the forerunner of law, and, successful in their purpose. If the spirit of the olden time was still in her, it was inevitable that she, true to her history and her traditions, again should protest against unequal and unjust taxation. I rejoice that to make her protest she must walk in the pleasant paths of Democracy. Never was Democracy truer to its mission than when it made tariff reform the supreme question of the day. If Democracy means the rights of the many against the privileges of the few, the equality of all before the law, the freedom of the individual from unnecessary

burdens and restrictions; if it really stands between the people and oppressive power, and beside the humblest individual to protect him in making the most of himself, then it was bound to fight taxation that was enriching the few at the expense of the many, and under the control of selfish interests was being used for selfish purposes. I believe the victory of November was meant to be something more than the settlement of an economic question. I construe it to be the demand of the people that these principles shall control the policy and laws of the Nation.

So will there be a just and honest settlement of the tariff, not by compromises and log-rolling, not by stirring up antagonism of conflicting interests, but by applying to it sound Democratic principles, which define the proper power of government, and secure the rights of the people. Then, too, will they restore government to the purposes of its founders, and make equality, freedom, and economy its guiding principles, as they are the foundations of free and democratic institutions. This is the real significance and value of the victories in New England. They are not the mere assertion of a local position on an economic question. They are her pledge of loyalty to these principles vital to the welfare and happy union of all our people. Her political conversion, deliberate and well grounded, is not a fickle change of heart from which she may slip back to her old life, but a brave confession of her faith and her determined purpose, as long as Democracy shall keep that faith, to follow in its footsteps. Thus understood, it cannot but have an influence far beyond her borders. It shows that Democracy need have no fear of resolute leadership or of a fight for principle. It is New England's tribute to such leadership in the past; it is her trumpet-call for such leadership in the future.

I

SPEECH

AT THE DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION, WORCESTER, SEPT. 29, 1891, UPON STATE ISSUES.

AM deeply grateful for the honor conferred upon me by this Convention, representing a great political party, in whose principles I firmly believe.

Your renewed confidence in me is the more welcome because it is the indorsement of an administration which to the utmost of my ability and strength has tried to serve the people's interest and to promote the welfare of our beloved Commonwealth. I rejoice that at last the time has come when I am free to go before the public, who have confided to me an honorable and responsible trust, and to give an account to them of my stewardship.

I should have been glad if, in this aggressive campaign, this accounting to the people could have been made face to face with a valiant and responsible opponent. I cannot but believe that the plan of Lincoln and Douglass, of Campbell and McKinley, would have been a braver, fairer, truer contest on the real issues of the campaign than the irresponsible tactics of guerilla warfare.

However much politicians or platforms may seek to divert the public mind from the issues, the commonsense and honesty of our people can always be trusted to consider and determine the real merits of a campaign. There is, too, an intelligence and independence here which can decide each election on its own