We, therefore, denounce the abuses of the existing tariff, and, subject to the preceding limitations, we demand that Federal taxation shall be exclusively for public purposes, and shall not exceed the needs of the Government, economically administered.

The system of direct taxation known as " internal revenue" is a war tax, and so long as the law continues the money derived therefrom should be sacredly devoted to the relief of the people from the remaining burdens of the war and be made a fund to defray the expenses of the care and comfort of worthy soldiers disabled in the line of duty in the wars of the republic, and for the payment of such pensions as Congress may from time to time grant to such soldiers, a like fund for the sailors having been already provided, and any surplus should be paid into the treasury.

We favor an American continental policy based upon more intimate commercial and political relations with the fifteen sister republics of North, Central and South America, but entangling alliances with none.

We believe in honest money, the gold and silver coinage of the Constitution, and a circulating medium convertible into such money without loss.

Asserting the equality of all men before the law, we hold that it is the duty of the government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all citizens of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion-religious or political.

We believe in a free ballot and a fair count, and we recall to the memory of the people the noble struggle of the Democrats in the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses, by which a reluctant Republican opposition was compelled to assent to legislation making everywhere illegal the presence of troops at the polls, as a con· clusive proof that a Democratic administration will preserve liberty with order.

The selection of Federal officers for the territory should be restricted to citizens previously resident therein.

We oppose sumptuary laws which vex the citizen and interfere with individual liberty; we favor honest civil service reform, and the compensation of all United States officers by fixed salaries; the separation of church and state, and the diffusion of free education by common schools, so that every child in the land may be taught the rights and duties of citizenship.

While we favor all legislation that will tend to the equitable distribution of property, to the prevention of monopoly, and to the strict enforcement of individual rights against corporal abuses, we hold that the welfare of society depends upon a scrupulous regard for the rights of property as defined by law.

We believe that labor is best rewarded where it is freest and most enlightened.. It should therefore be fostered and cherished. We favor the repeal of all laws restricting the free action of labor, and the enactment of laws by which labor organizations may be incorporated, and of all such legislation as will tend to enlighten the people as to the true relations of capital and labor.

We believe that the public lands ought, as far as possible, to be kept as homesteads for actual settlers; that all unearned lands heretofore improvidently granted to railroad corporations by the action of the Republican party should be restored to the public domain; and that no more grants of land shall be made to corporations or be allowed to fall into the ownership of alien absentees.

We are opposed to all propositions which, upon any pretext, would convert the General Government into a machine for collecting taxes to be distributed among the States or the citizens thereof.

In reaffirming the declaration of the Democratic platform of 1856, that "the liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and sanctioned by the Constitution, which make ours the land of liberty and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the Democratic faith," we nevertheless do not sanction the importation of foreign labor, or the ad. mission of servile races, unfitted by habits, training, religion, or kindred for absorption into the great body of our people, or for the citizenship which our laws confer. American civilization demands that against the immigration or importation of Mongolians to these shores, our gates be closed.

The Democratic party insists that it is the duty of this government to protect, with equal fidelity and vigilance, the rights of its citizens, native and naturalized, at home and abroad, and to the end that this protection may be assured, United States papers of naturalization, issued by courts of competent jurisdiction, must be respected by the executive and legislative departments of our own government and by all foreign powers.

It is an imperative duty of this government to efficiently protect all the rights of persons and property of every American citizen in foreign lands, and demand and enforce full reparation for any invasion thereof.

An American citizen is only responsible to his own government for any act done in his own country, or under her flag, and can only be tried therefor on her own soil and according to her laws; and no power exists in this government to expatriate an American citizen to be tried in any foreign land for any such act.

This country has never had a well-defined and executed foreign policy save under Democratic administration; that policy has ever been, in regard to foreign nations, so long as they do no act detrimental to the interests of the country or hurtful to our citizens, to let them alone; that as the result of this policy we recall the acquisition of Louisiana, Florida, California, and of the adjacent Mexican territory by purchase alone, and contrast these grand acquisitions of Democratic statesmanship with the purchase of Alaska, the sole fruit of a Republican administration of nearly a quarter of a century.

The Federal government should care for and improve the Mississippi river and other great waterways of the republic, so as to secure for the interior States easy and cheap transportation to tide-water.

Under a long period of Democratic rule and policy our merchant marine was fast overtaking, and on the point of outstripping that of Great Britain.

Under twenty years of Republican rule and policy our commerce has been left to British bottoms, and almost has the American flag been swept off the high seas Instead of the Republican party's British policy we demand for the people of the United States an American policy.

Under Democratic rule and policy our merchants and sailors, flying the stars and stripes in every port, successfully searched out a market for the varied products of American industry.

Under a quarter of a century of Republican rule and policy, despite our manifest advantage over all other nations in high paid labor, favorable climates and teeming soils; despite freedom of trade among all these United States; despite their population by the foremost races of men, and an annual immigration of the young, thrifty and adventurous of all nations; despite our freedom here from the inherited burdens of life and industry in old world monarchies-their costly war

navies, their vast tax-consuming, non-producing standing armies; despite their twenty years of peace-that Republican rule and policy have managed to surrender to Great Britain, along with our commerce, the control of the markets of the world. Instead of the Republican party's British policy, we demand, in behalf of the American Democracy, an American policy.

Instead of the Republican party's discredited scheme and false pretense of friendship for American labor, expressed by imposing taxes, we demand, in behalf of the Democracy, freedom for American labor by reducing taxes, to the end that these United States may compete with unhindered powers for the primacy among nations in all the arts of peace and fruits of liberty.

With this statement of the hopes, principles and purposes of the Democratic party, the great issue of reform and change in administration is submitted to the people in calm confidence that the popular voice will pronounce in favor of new men, and new and more favorable conditions for the growth of industry, the extension of trade, the employment and due reward of labor and of capital, and the general welfare of the whole country.

CHAPTER II.

THE ST. LOUIS CONVENTION.

OUTLINE OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONVENTION WHICH NOMINATED CLEVELAND AND THURMAN.

On February 22, 1888, the National Democratic Committee met in Washing. ton to issue the call for the convention. There was a sharp rivalry between the representatives of New York, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco and Cincinnati for the convention, which was settled in favor of St. Louis, and the time for holding the convention fixed for Tuesday, June 5.

The State Conventions were held from February until within a fortnight of the assembling of the National Convention at St. Louis. In every one, without a word of dissent or an opposing vote, the rcnomination of Grover Cleveland was demanded and his administration indorsed.

The National Committee met in St. Louis on Monday, June 5th, and chose Stephen M. White, Lieutenant Governor of California, as Temporary Chairman, and Frederick O. Prince, of Massachusetts, as Secretary, and these selections were ratified by the vote of the convention. Prayer was offered by Bishop John G. Granberry, of Missouri.

During the first day's session the various committees were chosen, consisting of one member from each State upon Resolutions, Credentials, Permanent Organization, the National Committee, the committee to notify the candidates of their nomination, and a chairman and secretary for each delegation. Adjournment was then had until the following day, to enable these committees to do their work.

The second day's session was opened with prayer by Rev. J. P. Green, of St. Louis. The Committee on Permanent Organization reported the name of General Patrick A. Collins, Representative in Congress from Massachusetts, as President. Mr. Collins was escorted to the chair by William H. Barnum, of Connecticut, Roswell P. Flower, of New York, and John O'Day, of Missouri, and made the following address:

GENERAL COLLINS'S SPEECH.

We represent in this convention more than 30,000,000 of the American people; we bear the commission to act for them, and their injunction to act with all the wisdom that God has given us, to protect and safeguard the institutions of the Republic as the fathers founded them.

In a time when the world was king-ridden and pauperized by the privileged few, when men scarcely dared to breathe the word "Liberty," even if they understood its meaning, the people scattered along our eastern coast, with a sublime heroism never equaled, broke from all traditions, rejected all known systems, and established to the amazement of the world the political wonder of the ages, the American Republic-the child of revolution nursed by philosophy. The hand that framed the immortal Declaration of Independence is the hand that guided the emancipated country to progress and glory. It is the hand that guides us still in our onward march as a free and progressive people. The principles

upon which our government can securely rest, upon which the peace, prosperity and liberties of the people depend, are the principles of the founder of our party, the apostle of Democracy, Thomas Jefferson.

Our young men under thirty have heard more in their time of the clash of arms and the echoes of war than of the principles of government. It has been a period of passion, force, impulse, and emotional politics. So that we need not wonder that now and then we hear the question asked and scarcely answered, "What difference is there between the two parties?" Every Democrat knows the difference. The Democratic creed was not penned by Jefferson for a section or a class of the people, but for all time. These principles conserved and expanded the Republic in all its better days. A strict adherence to them will preserve it to the end, so the Democracy of to-day as in the past believe with Jefferson in (1) equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; (2) peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; (3) support of the State Governments in all their rights as the most competent administrators of our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-Republican tendencies; (4) the preservation of the general Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace and safety abroad; (5) a jealous care of the right of election by the people, a mild and safe corrective of abuses, which are lopped off by the sword of revolution where peaceable means are unprovided; (6) absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; (7) a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments in war; (8) the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; (9) economy in the public expensesthat labor may be lightly burdened; (10) the honest payment of our debts and the preserva, tion of our public faith; (11) encouragement of agriculture and of commerce as its handmaid; (12) the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason; (13) freedom of religion; (14) freedom of the press; (15) freedom of the person under the protection of the habeas corpus; (16) trial by juries impartially selected. Add to these the golden economic rule that no more taxes should be levied upon the people in any way than are necessary to meet the honest expenses of government, and you have a body of principles to sin against which has been political death to every party hitherto, to sin against which in the future will be political suicide.

WHAT THE PARTY HAS DONE UNDER THESE.

True to these principles the Democratic party fought successfully our foreign wars, protected our citizens in every clime, compelled the respect of all nations for our flag, added imperial domain to our territory, and insured peace, prosperity and happiness to all our people. False to these principles the great Federal, Whig and Know-Nothing parties went down, never to rise, and we are here to-day, representatives of the party that has survived all others, the united, triumphant, invincible Democracy, prepared to strike down forever the last surviving foe in November.

Our standard must be the rallying point now and in the future for all good citizens who love and cherish republican institutions, who love liberty regulated by the Constitution and law, who believe in a Government not for a class or for a few, but a Government of all the people, by all the people, and for all the people. This has been the asylum for all good men from over the earth who flee from want and oppression, and mean to become Americans. But we invite and welcome only "friends to this ground and liegemen" to the Republic. Our institutions cannot change to meet hostile wishes, nor be so much as sensibly modified save by the peaceful and deliberate action of the mass of our people in accordance with the Constitution and the laws of the land. Whatever problems the present has or the future may present, so far as political action can effect them, will be dealt with by the American people within the law. And in the future, as in the past, the people will find security for their liberty and property, encouragement and protection for their industries, peace and prosperity in following the party of the American masses, which will ever shield them against the aggressions of power and monoply on the one side, and on the other the surging of chaos. While almost all the rest of the civilized world is darkened by armies, crushed by kings, or night-mared by conspiracies, we alone enjoy a healthy peace, a rational liberty, a progressive prosperity. We owe it to our political institutions, to dem