The surprising overturn of affairs in the distinctly Republican State of Illinois is accounted for by Senator Cullom by distinctive issues other than the McKinley and Force Bills: “Our losses in this State are mainly due to the school question, but in the nation at large they are due, in my judgment, to the passage of the McKinley law, and the impression in the minds of the masses in regard to it. When it was passed, the people expected us to revise the tariff, and revise it in the direction of reducing duties, and, while we did make reductions, they were dissatisfied because so many increases were made. When the bill came to the Senate from the House, we cut many of these in pieces, but, when it went back to the House and got into the Conference Committee, enough of them were restored to put us on the defensive and at a great disadvantage. Yes, I think our defeat can fairly be attributed to the McKinley Bill,” and Senator Cullom represents the State of Abraham Lincoln. The prairies that gave breath to the typical champion of the people, produced this statesman, who, representing the State of a man who stands first in the minds of the people as their representative, sees only the indications of the mercenary spirit of the people. How Abraham Lincoln would have gauged correctly, instinctively, the heart-throbs of the people whom he assumed to represent in the councils of the nation! Senator Cullom, in his opinion, mirrors only the reflection, cast upon the surface of his mind, by the aristocratic and multi-millionaired Senate of the Union, in which he occupies a seat. He sees only the cold, hard dollars and cents at issue. He does not appreciate, as Abraham Lincoln would have done, the feeling of the people whom he pretends to represent. In every prairie home of Illinois there was an insulted wife or mother by the assumed distinctions made by the would-be aristocrats of the Republican party. Stevenson’s speeches awakened no echo in their hearts, except that it gave an opportunity for the exhibition of the old, old story, written by the swords of the Anglo-Saxon people, “Caste is a crime.” That the State of all States, Illinois, which gave to the Federal Union Abraham Lincoln, should be presented in the sedate Senate of the Union, by a man whose views are so narrowed by the horizon of his own thoughts as to express a sentiment like the foregoing; namely, that the people were governed in their selection of their representative, the Chief Magistrate, by the power of the pocketbook; to be so unresponsive to the throbbing hearts of his constituency, is most disappointing.