Surely it is no exaggeration to say that William McKinley did more than any other man in America to fix and maintain the policy of protection. It can scarcely be too much to say that, without him, the protective policy would have been overthrown. If these are conceded, it must follow that the preparation for the newer era, developed from that in which he labored, may be chiefly credited to him. It was necessary to foster the industries of the United States. Maybe in the following of that policy some selfish persons took a mean and unpatriotic advantage of their countrymen, and claimed a concession they neither needed nor deserved. But in the main the effort was to build up such a wealth as no nation on earth ever before acquired in a similar lapse of time, by peaceful pursuits or the conquests of a victorious war. And if the day came when all that wealth was needed, it may be triumphantly rejoined that the money was here. Over and over again Mr. McKinley had been assailed with the contention that, while protection would infallibly enrich a certain favored class—the manufacturers—it would as certainly impoverish and keep in poverty the people who must buy their goods. But the issue confounded them. Every class in America shared in the stupendous prosperity which protection insured. Never was labor so largely employed, never had it been so munificently rewarded. Never was the farmer so fortunately situated. Wide as were his fields, he added to them. Bountiful as were his harvests, he found markets for them. Never was the mechanic so much in demand. Never was the artisan so much sought after. And—as the flight of time brought the inevitable desire for refinement—never was there such a compensation for the artist, or the writer, the singer or the sculptor. The overflowing coffers of the country enriched all the countrymen who deserved. Then came the pause when a nation, rising to the stature of maturity, looked over the mountain boundary, looked over the ocean wall, and felt the unformed impulse to share in the affairs of the world. It was so natural, as inevitable, as that the youth of health and strength should feel the stirring of desire to mingle with his kind. It is not scorn of home. It is not contempt for the precious past. But it is obedience to a law which Abram heard away there in Ur, of the Chaldees, and obeyed in his western pilgrimage. It is the process of growth which the Creator meant all mankind should feel. At the doors of the continent lay the island of Cuba. From time before the Republic was founded, that island had been the spoil of the Spaniards. There was not a day since Ovando landed that did not see the Cubans cruelly treated by the Don. How they ever throve under a domination so severe is one of the mysteries. The Ruler of all the Earth must have raised up that people and preserved it through awful adversity for a purpose neither its leaders nor their task masters could foresee.