is, he was willing to give the Republicans the protection they themselves had devised before the war and which they had increased with a distinct understanding that as soon as the war was over the old rates should be restored. Even in putting salt and coal on the free list, Mr. Morrison followed a not very old Republican precedent, Mr. Hale backed by Mr. Blaine having introduced bills to that effect into the House in 1871. From the day of the introduction of Mr. Morrison’s bill into the House, it was certain that Mr. Randall would oppose it. Randall indeed was working day and night to rally a strong Democratic opposition. His success was apparent when, after three weeks of general debate, Mr. Converse, an Ohio Democrat, suddenly moved that the enacting clause of the bill be struck out and the motion was carried by a vote of 159 to 155. That is, in a House having a majority of 80 Democrats a bill which was a moderate expression of a policy to which the party had always been committed could not be passed. Forty-one Democrats voted against the bill; twelve of them from Pennsylvania, ten from Ohio, six from New York, four from California, three from New Jersey, and four from the South. It was a powerful vote, for when boiled down it represented iron and steel, wool and sugar, and the hold they had on the Democrats. The defeat of the Morrison Bill only aggravated the feeling between the two factions and made it certain that there would be a great fight over the tariff plank of the platform in Chicago in July, when the National Convention met to nominate a presidential candidate, and there was—one of the most stubborn and prolonged in the history of conventions. Henry Watterson was first on the ground with the plank “tariff-for-revenue only,” which he had placed in the platforms of 1876 and of 1880, and which he was determined should go in again. Ben Butler, a candidate for the presidency, followed him with a compromise plank, and after him came Abram S. Hewitt and Manton Marble, also with compromise expressions. Mr. Randall’s friends talked free whiskey and free tobacco for the plank. When the Committee on Resolutions finally was formed it included all these gentlemen. The session began with a deadlock over the chairman—18 being for Morrison, 18 for Converse of Ohio, Randall’s man. From that time until the end nothing but rumors of dead-locks came behind the closed door. The sub-committee to which the framing of the tariff plank was finally confided sat for _fifty-one_ consecutive hours, and the session ended in what the disgusted Mr. Watterson called a “straddle,”—a plank calling for revision in “a spirit of fairness to all interests”—one which would “injure no domestic industry and would not deprive American labor of the ability to compete successfully with foreign labor.” It was an expression carefully arranged to back all shades of opinion between Mr. Carlisle and Mr. Randall—a platform which