The people of New York, like the people of every other State in the Union, are to be congratulated, because during the past year the Nation has carried to a brilliant triumph one of the most righteous wars of modern times. When last spring it became evident that the interests of humanity and of national honor alike demanded that we should drive Spain from the Western Hemisphere and free from her tyranny the subject peoples of the islands of the sea, New York responded with eager zeal to the call for volunteers, and in the Cabinet, in Congress and in camp, her representatives did all they could to insure the success of the American policy. We are not merely New Yorkers. We are Americans; and the interests of all Americans, whether from the North, the South, the East or the great West, are equally dear to the men of the Empire State. As we grow into a mighty nation, which, whether it will or not, must inevitably play a great part for good or for evil in the affairs of the world at large, the people of New York wish it understood that they look at all questions of American foreign policy from the most thoroughly national standpoint. The tropic islands we have taken must neither be allowed to lapse into anarchy nor to return under the sway of tyranny. War is a grim thing at best, but the war through which we have passed has left us not merely memories of glory won on land and sea, but an even more blessed heritage, the knowledge that it was waged from the highest motives, for the good of others as well as for our own national honor. Above all, we are thankful that it brought home to all of us the fact that the country was indeed one when serious danger confronted it. The men from the East and the West, from the North and the South, the sons of those who wore the blue and of those who wore the gray, the men of means and the men who all their lives long had possessed only what day by day they toiled to earn, stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight, met the same dangers, shared the same hardships and won the same ultimate triumph. In our domestic affairs, the State is to be congratulated on the gradual return of prosperity. Though temporarily checked by the war this return has been on the whole steady. The capitalist finds constantly greater business opportunities; the wage-worker, in consequence, is more steadily employed; the farmer has a better market. TAXATION