guards 'ill be taken; but I wish me father wasn't in it. I'll thry and keep him in'.'

She got up and dressed quietly, so as not to disturb the others, and stole noiselessly into the kitchen to set the fire and fill the kettle. She put some bog-wood on the fire, and its cheery blaze soon lit up the little kitchen, and gave her light to go about. She went over to the corner for the big iron pot to put it on to Iboil the stirabout. As she stooped to lift it up she started back with horror.

What did she see? Only the two blackthorn sticks which always stood in that corner-but on the sticks were stains like blood. She seized one of them to examine it more closely.

Good God!

there was blood on it-blood and hair! -brown hair and silver hair! O God! what could it mean? She must know, and out into the wild morning, with the first faint streaks of dawn beginning to show in the stormy sky, Mary rushed.

Straight to Thady's cottage she ran. The door was shut but not fastened inside, so it opened easily at her touch, and Mary went into the kitchen. All was silent and dark, the daylight had not yet penetrated through the narrow smokegrimed window. Mary paused on the threshold-something, she knew not what, filled her with a vague undefinable fear. Then she moved a step forward, and her foot touched-what?

She staggered and started back, and opened the door wider.

The light came in, the first beams of the now risen sun. Oh, shut the door,

66

*

*

Years have elapsed since that dreadful morning. The Fitzgeralds have shut up the old house and gone to live in England -as Edward said, shaking the very dust of that accursed country from their feet." Mary Reilly is with them, but no longer the same Mary. Something seems lost, something gone. She seldom speaks, and never smiles, and though she can do the easy household tasks allotted to her, still it is evident that, as they say in her country, she is not "all there."

Strange to say, she has never mentioned Thady Connor's name, and no one dares to break through the mysterious seal set on her lips. They hope the dreadful past is buried in forgetfulness, but they know not. She often seems to listen intently, and watch for some one; then resumes her work with a sigh, but still says nothing and asks no question. But it is quite evident that, as she said to Thady once, "If it were to be for twenty years, she will never look at another boy."-Blackwood's Magazine.

THE days of Protectionism in the United States, I begin to think, are now numbered. The McKinley Bill is the darkness which precedes the dawn. I would rather say that a streak of dawn is already in the sky. Economical truth has been preached in vain. It was preached in vain even by Mr. David Wells, much more by the Cobden Club, to whose tracts the ready answer has always been, that they were put forth in the British interest, though in point of fact

Great Britain probably gains more by the handicapping through a suicidal system of her most dangerous rival in the markets of the world than she loses by partial exclusion from the market of the United States. But that which no preachings, however convincing, could effect is now likely to be brought about by the force of circumstances, and especially by the growth of surplus revenue. To those who looked on from a distance the last Presidential election, in which Harrison and

Protection triumphed over Cleveland and a Revenue Tariff, might seem a decisive verdict of the nation in favor of the Protective system. To observers on the spot it seemed nothing of the kind. In the In the first place the election was bought. There is no question about the fact that the manufacturers subscribed a great sum to carry the doubtful States-New York, Indiana, and Connecticut. In the second place, the farmers' vote which, contrary to expectation and to reason, went for the Republican and Protectionist candidate, was given not on the fiscal issue but on the party ground. Words can hardly paint the stolid allegiance of the farmer, both in the United States and Canada, to his party shibboleth, which in many cases is hereditary. More truly significant on the other side was the increased vote of mechanics in favor of Free Trade. The mechanic has been all along enthralled by the belief, sedulously drummed into him, that Protection keeps up wages. As soon as he sees through that fallacy the end must come, and the last election showed that his eyes were beginning to be opened. After all Mr. Cleveland would probably have won had he been content to stand on the general principle which he first put forth, that the Government had no right to take from the people more than it needed for its expenses. That proposition unquestionably commended itself to the good sense of the people. The mistake was the Mills Bill, which specifically threatened a number of protected interests and scared them into making desperate efforts and subscribing large sums to carry the elections. Republicans were also enabled to appeal to their party, perhaps with some show of reason, on the ground that the Bill was a Southern Bill. The farmer has paid the cost of the Protective system while he has himself been left to compete unprotected not only with the "pauper" labor of Europe, but with the more than "pauper" labor of the Hindco. This even his dull eyes had begun to see; and it was evident that unless an interest, or an apparent interest, could be given him in the system, the mere party tie, tough as it was, would not hold him forever. To give him an apparent interest, and thereby to secure his vote for the autumn elections to Congress, seems to have been the main object of the McKinley Bill.

I was at Washington when the Bill came before the House of Representatives. To me it seemed evident that on the economical or fiscal merits of the question hardly a thought was bestowed. The only question was how the claims of different local interests could be satisfied and reconciled. The duty was put on hides and taken off again, again put on and again taken off, not because the minds of the legislators were undergoing changes about the fiscal merits of the tax, but because there was an evenly balanced struggle between the Eastern and the Western vote. The perplexity of the framers of the Bill, thus called upon to satisfy and reconcile jarring interests, was extreme. It boded the catastrophe of the whole system. Protectionist legislators who undertook to mete out a fair measure of Protection to every interest in a country so vast and embracing interests so diverse as the United States have a tangled web to weave. The wider the area becomes and the greater grows the diversity of the interests, the more tangled becomes the web. It has long appeared to me that the extension of the field and the multiplication of the objects would in the end prove fatal to the system. A New England Protectionist may talk about native industries and patriotism, but what he wants is the immunity from competition which will enable him to make twenty instead of ten per cent. It matters not really to him whether his competitor is an Englishman, a Canadian, or a man in Illinois or Georgia. It would not greatly surprise me to see New England some day step out of the ranks of Protection and declare for free importation of raw materials and Free Trade

Between the protected manufacturer and the protected producer of the raw materials of manufactures there is, happily for the ultimate deliverance of the consumer from both their monopolies, an antagonism which nothing can stifle. The Power of Commercial Darkness cannot reconcile the interest of that part of his family which makes cloth or shoes with the interest of the part which breeds sheep for wool or cattle for hides. Nor can the Protectionist politician afford to let any interest drop. If he did, the ring would break, and the jilted interest would at once become the fiercest enemy of the system.

Before leaving the House of Representatives for the Senate the McKinley Bill received a heavy blow. Mr. Butterworth, the Republican Member for Cincinnati, is a very able man and an excellent speaker, but in character not well qualified for a party politician The Machinists say of him that he is "too high-tipped in his notions, too precarious, and too particular for his political good or for the welfare of his party." He saw, as a man of his intellect and largeness of view could not fail to see, the folly and iniquity of the McKinley Bill. Party discipline, which in America is adamantine, constrained him to vote with his party for the Bill, but he was too high-tipped and particular" to give a silent vote. He delivered himself of a criticism from a friendly point of view which evoked loud echoes of sympathy on all sides, and made the regular politicians gnash their teeth.

66

It is not unlikely that the reception of Mr. Butterworth's speech encouraged Mr. Blaine to load the bomb which he soon afterward threw in the shape of a letter addressed by him to the President, and transmitted by the President to the Sen

ate.

Mr. Blaine's aim is to signalize his administration by bringing about reciprocal freedom of trade between the United States and all the "nations of the American hemisphere," that is to say, with all the South American republics, Canada as a dependency not being included among the "nations." Probably he intends that the closer commercial connection shall bring with it a political approximation. Perhaps at the end of the vista he sees something like the Protectorate over all the American republics which Sir Charles Dilke regards as the destiny of the United States. He had just been holding, in furtherance of his policy, his Pan-American Congress, though the fruits of that august assemblage appear to have been meagre, not only in the way of closer commercial connection, but even in that of increased amity. The removal, proposed in the McKinley Bill, of the duty on sugar withdrew from Mr. Blaine's hand the lever by which he hoped to move the South Americans to the acceptance of reciprocity. This was the immediate cause of his wrath, and of the launching of his letter. But Mr. Blaine is also a sagacious man, possibly more sagacious than he appears when, as the

leader of the Republican party, he defends Protectionism on the stump or in the symposium. He can hardly fail to see that the Protectionist horse is being ridden to death, that the bow is bent to the point of breaking, that the credulity of the people, even that of the farmer, must be nearly exhausted, and that there are signs all round the horizon which show that the day of national awakening is at hand. He must know, too, that if the Republican party falls in obstinately upholding the war-tariff, it will fall never to rise again.

In truth the American people must be in their dotage if they let things go on as they are much longer. Not only are they bearing war-taxation in time of peace, not only are they paying in some cases more than cent per cent on articles which they consume to bloat the incomes of monopolists, but they are being made to squander this year a hundred, and nine millions of dollars in pensions in order to get rid of the surplus revenue and avert a reduction of the tariff. The great scandal of monarchical finance is the cost of Versailles. Everybody knows what an effect Mirabeau produced on the National Assembly by his fabulous story about the destruction of the accounts by a horrified Finance Minister. The accounts being now before us, it appears that the total cost did not nearly equal that of the American pension-list for a single year. Yet a Protectionist Senator the other day proposed an enormous addition to the list. Of the soldiers on whom the pensions are bestowed, a great many served merely for the pay, and had been abundantly remunerated by bounties, especially if they enlisted toward the close of the war. Many thousands were Canadians, and if the statement which I see in the newspapers is correct, a Lodge of the Grand Army has been formed at Ottawa. Much of the money, moreover, goes not to the pensioners, but to the pension-agents, whose sinister trade has been called into existence by the fund. If you venture on the subject with an American politician, he talks to you in a moving strain about national gratitude. You listen with deference, but you feel inclined to ask how it came to pass that national gratitude awoke in such intensity just when the surplus accrued, and when it became evident that unless expenditure could be increased

66

5

190

55 per cent..... 50 per cent...

88 per cent. 90 per cent.

101010

24

47 per cent....

100 per cent.

5

24

55 per cent....

90 per cent.

24

45 per cent...

555555 さささ

24

24

70 per cent.

50% and 44 cts. per lb. 60% and 50 cts. per lb. 28 cts. sq. yd. and 30% 40 cts. sq. yd, and 30% 40 cts. sq. yd. and 30% 20 cts. sq. yd. and 30% Average, probably 90%

214 per cent.

24

24

175 per cent.

135 per cent.

120 per cent.

Average, 37 per cent.. 50 per cent.

24

79 per cent..

24

62 per cent....

24

54 per cent...

15

24

35 per cent...

7+

24

35 per cent..

71

24

35 per cent..

74

exhibits-showing how it has been ful. filled by our infant Woollens." The table exhibits the progress made by the infant from its cradle to maturity-from the tariff of 1789 and 1791, vaunted as the first protected tariffs and the foundation-stones of American prosperity, to 1864, when the war was at its most costly period, and so on to the McKinley Bill.

It will be seen that the rates proposed

* A tract entitled Our Infant Woollens, which comes to me endorsed with the signature of one of the highest commercial authorities in Massachustts.

110 per cent.

76 per cent.

64 per cent.

Schedule, reports to stockholders of the Arlington Mills: "I have been your Treasurer for a consecutive period of twenty years; during this period the average earnings have been 20 per centum on the capital. . . . The earnings last year were nearly three and a half times those of the year previous, and there is every indication that the current year will be the most profitable one in the Company's history." Poor infant, how great is its need of parental protection!

That the wealth of the United States has been growing rapidly all this time is

true. But what have been the sources of its growth; monopoly and high taxation The sources have been the opening of immense tracts of fertile lands, of prodigious stores of minerals, of great water-powers, with a vast immigration recruited from the most active spirits of Europe. These have been the motive forces of a prosperity which even Protectionism has been unable to repress. The one point which Mr. Blaine made in his tournament with Mr. Gladstone was that Mr. Gladstone had not taken notice of the variations among the circumstances of different countries. But that point was good for no more than this, that Protection had not so much harm when applied to a whole continent with an ever-spreading area of production and new resources daily coming to light, as it has when applied to a nation with a comparatively small territory and near the limit of its development.

In the extract before us the President of the Arlington Woollen Company makes no reference to wages. We cannot tell therefore whether he has shown that the workmen of his mills have profited by monopoly to anything like the same magnificent extent as the shareholders. If he were on the stump at the Presidential Election, he would strenuously maintain that they had. This, as I have already said, is the hinge upon which, in the political contest which is coming, the question will practically turn.

I had the pleasure the other day of hearing one of the strongest Protectionists and Anglo-phobes (the two things always go together) on his own subject. He was an excellent speaker, vigorous and effective in delivery, as well as fresh and forcible in expression. His main argument was the contrast, the existence of which he undertook to show, between the condition of the working class under the blessed reign of Protection and its condition under the accursed reign of Free Trade. He had hardly got through ten sentences when he gave his whole case away. To be quite fair, he said, he would take his examples from England, "which was the best wage-paying country in Europe." It did not occur to him that if England was the best wage-paying country in Europe, she being the only great Free-Trade country in Europe, the cause of Free Trade by his own showing was won. After tendering the census of

British cities as specimens of the industrial life of England, he proceeded to Germany and gave some harrowing instances of the suffering among the poor of that country, forgetting that Germany had a Protection tariff. So he went round demolishing his own fallacy with facts of his own selection, and cutting his own legs with every sweep of his logical scythe. In one part of his discourse he vaunted the high prices received for articles under Protection as a proof that the artisans who made those articles must be receiving high wages; in another part he vaunted the cheapness of protected goods as a proof that Protection did not harm but good to the consumer. He did not tell the audience which was swallowing his fallacies, that if there was a greater pressure on the means of subsistence and consequently more suffering in England than in America, it was not because England was unblessed with monopoly, but because population there was more than twenty times denser than it was in the United States. Of course he did not compare the state of the workingclasses in England before Free Trade with their state since; he did not tell his audience that before Free Trade tens of thousands of artisans were out of work, hunger was stalking through English cities, wedding rings were being pawned by the hundred, and people were even digging up carrion for food.

The orator had not the hardihood to talk about infant industries. But he had the hardihood to assert that Protection by forcing industries into existence diversified the national character, and to pretend that this was one of the motives of the Monopolists. I thought of the glowing passage in De Tocqueville about the American mariner who fearlessly putting to sea in all weathers asserted his ascendancy in the carrying trade of the world. Where now was that glorious element of the national character ? In the pocket of my Protectionist friend. The British Member of Parliament who has terrible visions of an American war-navy may dismiss his fears. America has no commerce for her warships to protect and no seamen to man them.

What has caused this fresh growth of Protectionist delusions, a hundred and twenty years after Adam Smith, which is so disappointing to those who forty years ago looked forward so confidently to the