you may apply too late. Fortune knocks once at every man's door-this may be your knock.... Want men for a cavalry regiment, stationed at Washington, Chicago and New York. What better stations do you want? Also want some 'excellent' colored men for both cavalry and infantry. Would like a number of colored men over six feet in height for infantry service in a very desirable part of the country. There is absolutely nothing in this whole country half so desirable for a colored man as the regular army. Only four regiments-come early. Apply at the Lexington recruiting office, or at the substation at Ashland or Somerset, Ky."

Ask the volunteers who have been there what they think of this. It is the shrieking bribe of a distracted and perishing imbecile. Three thousand men dying in Philippine hospitals and this gay outing promises that "at the end you are returned to your own home." The work is not one fourth so hard as the country boy's, yet the soldiers have to work night and day guarding against guerilla Krags, and when they sleep they know not if they will wake up in this world. This dying groan of the McKinley Cur-Kennel, for such it will turn out to be, tolls the death of the last lingering ember of virtue in that filthy breed of politicians now hunting America to ruin. For its like we must go back as far as the debauched reign of Charles II in our grandmother country. Macauley's dash at that period will fit our day gracefully and damningly.* "The whole breed of our statesmen seems to have degenerated; and their moral and intellectual littleness strikes us with the more disgust, because we see it placed in immediate contrast with the high and majestic qualities of the race which they succeeded. . The rage of faction succeeded the love of liberty. Loyalty died away into servility. . . . The government wanted a ruffian to carry on the most atrocious system *In Essay on Hallam's Constitutional History.

of misgovernment with which any nation was ever cursed, to extirpate Presbyterianism by fire and sword, by the drowning of women, by the frightful torture of the boot. And they found him among the chiefs of the rebellion and the subscribers of the Covenant." The opposition was just as infamous. "But vicissitudes so extraordinary as those which marked the reign of Charles the Second can only be explained by supposing an utter want of principle in the political world."

CHAPTER XVII.

The King at Large.

1. His Motive.

Having shown that McKinley harbors a motive which he does not confess, and that unless he is a lunatic he could not behave as he does without such a surreptitious purpose, because if his mind were honest and free he would come forward and tell the people all and willingly let them make up their own minds, and would then abide by their will, what is this secret gadfly resolve which is goading the pompous despot's mind?

The secret is that the millionaire syndicates have determined to extend their predatory pastures by force of American guns. Our army and navy are to be for these universe-looters as their dynamite and jimmy to crack the safe of the world and get its treasure; McKinley is their despised caitiff in this deed. How did they get the fellow so under their heels? He was an incompetent business man of feeble caliber and caoutchouc will. He failed as a banker in the village of Canton, Ohio, and was picked up by Mark Hanna, a syndicateur of iron purpose wholly devoid of public virtues and conscience, an unblushing briber, the quintessence in every particular of the modern unbridled industrial adventurer-despot. This thug saw his chance and (with Kohlsaat of the Chicago Times-Herald we believe) pulled McKinley out of the melting-pot of his fortunes. Thenceforth and forevermore the bankrupt broker was Hanna's minion. The king-maker knew he could not be king himself, for there

is popular detestation of his ilk, but he knew that through his bondslave Mc he could rule more absolutely than if king. The late campaign followed in which at Hanna's beck the millionaires poured out their millions. lavishly to make themselves despots of this hemisphere. Their success far exceeded their own twilight dream, for unexpectedly the question of expansion and imperialism arose while their willow king possessed the throne. At first they did not fully realize the possibilities which this opened, which accounts for the president's initial opposition to the Spanish quarrel. All they realized at the first instant was that a war would disturb trade currents and might delay their vast operations for welding all productive property of the States in a firm monopoly. But this was only momentary and their ideas electrically shot out to the horizon of world-monopoly. Their operations, half unconsciously to themselves, had brought them to the point where war was the next and inevitable step toward culminating their monopolist evolution, these operations had created the war conditions, and it was but a moment's act for the millionaires to become conscious of it and swell to their new world-role.

By magic McKinley was transformed into a 'loyal' and enthusiastic war president, and with subtle cunning at the war's close the colonial policy was engrafted on us. This was not done at the instance of the people, it was never placed before the people in a form which permitted them to act on it, the popular will on the subject was never ascertained and never sought; the executive took affairs into his own hands, shaped a program in his closet at the command of his masters, and has been prosecuting that program for months, not only without giving the sovereign people a chance to authorize or disapprove it, but without so much as deigning to make a statement of the contents of the program to them.

So he has in the few months thus occupied wrought a revolution in American government. The people have been the highest tribunal, and have uniformly asserted their sovereignty; this president has succeeded in subjugating the people to such a depth that even without the formal courtesy of admitting them to his counsels he fastens on them a new system of government, as well as a fundamentally new national policy. The change is not less far-reaching than Julius Ceasar's alteration of the Roman commonwealth, which cost floods of human blood and finally the subverter's life. Everybody then saw what was happening and the best men fought rather than submit to it, and fell on their own swords when hope died; this .equal revolution and greater subversion of democracy has transpired under so great a cloud of disguises, so gradually, with such pious persuasions of warimposed necessity and God-imposed duty, that men were dazed and the masses have aimlessly followed events rustically agape. The barbarian instinct of the party clan has been strenuously employed to knout and garrote thought.

2. Congress Slapped.

Obedient to the orders of the star-chamber millionaires the president inaugurated the plan of imperialism, unsanctioned by Congress or people; step by step he has delevoped that policy, entirely of himself, never consulting Congress or people. The Anglo-Saxon race fought many centuries to establish chambers of representation without consulting which monarchs could not act. On that rock all Anglo-Saxon polity thus far wrought stands or falls. McKinley the Omnipotent brushes that rock from his invading path as though it were a fretting pebble. He consults nothing but his sweet Gaveston, the millionaires. "Come Gaveston, and share the kingdom with thy dearest friend"; "He that I list