Napoleon, with his "reasons of State," was Machiavellian. Machiavelli presided at the shooting of D'Engheim. It was one of the last things which showed "what reason of State may come to, in any age, in the hands of a logician with a knife in his grasp." From the influence of Machiavelli upon the Absolutists, Mr. Morley comes down to his influence in the Republican camp. Mazzini, he says "could not curse the dagger" and yet Mazzini was "in some respects the loftiest moral genius of the century." Mr. Morley does not believe that Machiavellism has pervaded party politics in Europe or America. I wonder if this be not a sample of Mr. Morley's Machiavellism--a reason of state at this time. If not Machiavellism, what, in God's name, are our platform straddles, our expediency candidates, our deals and dickers in tariff-bills, our endeavors to catch all kinds of votes from all kinds of "interests." I am not a silverite, but the regular Democrats made and out-and-out platform and did not hedge. I am a Democrat and glad that, though it "split us wide open," we fought out the issue just as we fought out the slavery issue. True Democrats, gold or silver, despise only the Machiavellists who talk of compromise. Machiavelli seems to have seen but one side of life--the worse. He knew but one kind of men--Italians of the sixteenth century. They were not normal. It is true that Nature is not moral, but if Machiavelli be right it were just as well that we should return to the conditions of life in Stanley Waterloo's "Story of Ab." Whether Nature be moral or not, at least men are. We must look at the facts. We have civilized our code of warfare. The greatest living diplomat is Leo XIII, and no one deems that he succeeds by deceit. Bismark says there is no success in lying, in diplomacy. Reasons of State are not, in the common consent of mankind, good reasons per se. "Talleyrand was false to every one but true to France." He was an avatar of Machiavelli, and he is despised, universally.