The effect of the message was immediate. Men began at once to take sides as if everybody had been waiting for a leader to speak his mind; and the parties adopted the definite principles to which they adhered for many years afterwards. The Democrats very generally rallied to the support of their champion; gaps in the ranks were closed up; and doubtless the usual pressure was applied to obstinate members who were disinclined to follow the leader. The Republican attitude was well expressed in the phrase of one of the politicians: "It is free-trade, and we have 'em!" The most prominent Republican, James G. Blaine, was in Paris, but true to his instinctive recognition of a good political opportunity he gave an interview which was immediately cabled to America. In it Blaine maintained that tariff reduction would harm the entire country, and especially the South and the farmers, and urged the reduction of the surplus by the abolition of the tax on tobacco, which he termed the poor man's luxury. The "Paris Message" was generally looked upon as the Republican answer to Cleveland, and as pointing to Blaine as the inevitable candidate for the ensuing campaign. On one point, most men of both parties were agreed--that the President had displayed great courage. "The presidential chair," declared James Russell Lowell, "has a MAN in it, and this means that every word he _says_ is weighted with what he _is_." The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives, Roger Q. Mills, promptly presented a bill which conformed to the principles for which the President had argued. The discussion of the Mills bill was long known as the "Great Tariff Debate of 1888." The House seethed with it for more than a month. Mills and Carlisle on one side and William McKinley and Thomas B. Reed on the other typified the new leadership and the new positions which the parties were taking. Senator Morrill's idea that the war tariff was a temporary one, President Arthur's advice that the tariff be revised, the recommendations of the Tariff Commission of 1882 that reductions were necessary,--all these were no longer heard. Instead, the Republicans upheld the protective system as the cause of the unexampled prosperity of the nation. It is not to be supposed that protectionist or reductionist converts were made by the endless discussion, but the initial prejudices of each side were undoubtedly deepened. Each telling blow on either side was applauded by the partisans of each particular speaker, so that "applause" fairly dots the dull pages of the Congressional Record. McKinley enlivened his colleagues by pulling from his desk and exhibiting a suit of clothes which he had purchased for $10.00, a figure, he asserted, which proved that the tariff did not raise prices beyond the reach of the laboring man. Mills tracked down the cost of the suit and the tariff on the materials composing it, and further entertained the House by an exhibit showing that it cost $4.98