When the campaign opens, the ethics of the platform assume a more violent and reprehensible shape. Not only are its hypocrisies and falsehoods repeated with endless iteration, but they are multiplied like the sands of the beach. Very few, if any, editors or orators pretend to discuss questions or candidates with perfect candor and honesty. Indeed, very few of them are competent to discuss them. Hence sophistry and vilification take the place of knowledge and reason. Were one party to adopt the Decalogue for a platform, the other would find nothing in it to praise; it would be an embodiment of socialism, or anarchism, or some other form of diabolism. If one party were to nominate a saint, the other would paint him in colors that Satan himself would hardly recognize. Not even such men as Washington and Lincoln are immune to the assaults of political hatred and mendacity. As the campaign draws to a close, we have a rapidly increasing manifestation of all the worst traits of human nature. In times of quiet, a confessed knave would scarcely be guilty of them. False or garbled quotations from foreign newspapers are issued. The old Cobden Club, just ready to give up the ghost, is galvanized into the most vigorous life, and made to do valiant service as a rich and powerful organization devoted to the subversion of American institutions. Stories like Clay's sale of the presidency are invented, and letters, like the Morey letter, are forged, and, despite the most specific denials of their truth, they are given the widest currency. Other forms of trickery, like the Murchison letter, written by the British minister during Mr. Cleveland's second campaign, are devised with devilish ingenuity, and made to contribute to the pressing and patriotic work of rescuing the country from its enemies.