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make acknowledgment of his thankfulness according to the rites in which he was brought up,-to "offer the gift that Moses commanded." It is impossible to suppose that our Lord thought of God as requiring any sacrifice-the prophets had risen ages before above any such conception-impossible also to imagine that our Lord thought that in the case of the careless nine, God, like some half-hearted philanthropist, would grieve over a deficit of thanks. When He said, "The Sabbath was made for man," He put all religious observances on to a new plane. It was the men, not God, who registered a loss. It would have been good for them to have been mindful of their benefits, would have lifted their thoughts and made them happier and stronger. He was distressed that they had failed to recognize "the things which belong unto thy peace." One of the severest condemnations in all the parables is spoken against the man who remained unsoftened by the forgiveness of a debt. An act of cruelty cancelled for him the gift of grace. His own shortcomings were counted to him again. Once more he is made to "possess the iniquities of [his] youth." We see that he has injured his own moral nature by his ingratitude. These are, we think, the only direct references to thankfulness contained in the Gospels. In the last prayer of Christas it is recounted by John He speaks of the friends whom God had given to Him, and whom He loved to the end, and implicitly, if not explicitly, gave thanks that he had retained their devotion. "Of them The Spectator.

which thou gavest me have I lost none."

May we not say, then, without unduly straining either incidents or language, that Christ counsels us to give thanks for our daily bread, for our health, the love of our friends, the simplicity of true religion and for the sympathy of God? A nobler rule of thanksgiving could not be imagined. It does not require us to understand the universe, to take any particular view of history-such things are impossible to "babes"-or to share the ecstasy of the early Church. Christ is "the light of the world," not its explanation, a "kindly light amid the encircling gloom." Even Newman could say no more. Christianity takes for granted that there is "something amiss,"some enemy hath sown tares. It takes for granted, also that all will come right in the long last, "but of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son." The thanks required of those who accept the religion Christ taught preclude neither sympathy nor bewilderment. They are such as the vast majority of men can offer during the greater portion of their lives. As to those who cannot we can but conclude that with the sacrifice of thanks, as with the sacrifice of alms, "if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not." Otherwise the yoke of Christian worship would not be easy, but, like the Jewish ceremonial which it supplanted, a burden too grievous to be borne.

THE DOWNFALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

The greatest athletic contest in the annals of electioneering has resulted in the election of Mr. Taft to the Presidency. Mr. Bryan has not improved the position he attained in the presidential voting of 1896 and 1900, and Mr. Taft's "plurality" is almost as large as that of Mr. Roosevelt over Judge Parker in 1904. Though some of the middle Western States have perceptibly weakened their Republican attachment, as, for instance, Ohio and Indiana, which have elected Democratic State governors, the only gains which Mr. Bryan has been able to add to swell the allegiance of his "Solid South" are Nevada, Montana, Colorado and his native State, Nebraska. The keystone States, New York, Indiana, and Ohio, all of which it was virtually essential Mr. Bryan should win to secure a reasonable chance of his return, have gone for Mr. Taft, and the nation stands firm to the cause of the Republican Party.

This result, foretold with confidence by most watchful observers of the currents of public opinion in the United States, must serve to correct some of the impressions of the American situation and the American character prevalent among foreigners. Mr. Bryan appeared to possess many of the qualities of an acceptable candidate. Shallow and uncritical as he was, he had personal magnetism and the gift of emotional oratory, and his platform appearances in the stupendous campaign which has just ended were admittedly more successful than those of Mr. Taft. Again, it was anticipated that the calamitous condition of trade during the last twelve months, directly attributed and not without some reason to the turbulent activities of the Republican administration under the stimulus of Mr. Roosevelt, would have told heav

ily against the Government. The Republican machine, at any rate, it was confidently held, would be crippled for effective electioneering by the withdrawal of the heavy financial support of the rich corporations, which it had hitherto received. Finally, a great parade was made of the entrance of the Federation of Labor, with its two million members, into party politics upon the Democratic side.

It is now evident that all these considerations had very little weight with the body of the American electorate. East or West, or else that any influence they exercised was counteracted by other more potent and less evident forces. There can be no question but that widespread and violent discontent exists among large sections of the people, particularly among the lower grade wage-earners of the industrial centres, who, even before the pinch of poverty in this disastrous year, had felt the crushing force of the Tariff and the Trusts. But why should this discontent find vent in the election of Mr. Bryan and the substitution of the Democratic political machine for the Republican? The Democrats do not even pretend to be Free Traders, or to seek more than to abate the burden of the Tariff, and, though they breathe fury against the Trusts, they have tabled no practical proposals of grappling with them more plausible than those set in operation by Mr. Roosevelt and his law officers. The discontented and the revolutionary elements have come to recognize that neither of the two historic parties has the will or the power to rectify by the federal instrument the heavy inequalities and economic abuses from which they suffer. It looks as if the more detailed record of the voting would give solid testimony to this feeling, either in a large

abstention or in a considerable accession of votes to the Socialist and independent candidates.

If due allowance is made for this factor, the preference of what is known in America as "the better element" and of the solid phalanx of political indifferents for Mr. Taft is intelligible. The sober business American, whose secret influence upon the lower grades of citizens is very great, has returned the strong, safe man. He has felt that what was needed most just now was a restoraion of confidence, and that Mr. Taft was more likely to bring about the restoration than Mr. Bryan. It is true that Mr. Taft is committed to a continuance of the drastic cleaning process which Mr. Roosevelt has applied with so much vigor to the business institutions of his country. But Mr. Taft's record has been bright rather than meteoric, he is less impulsive and more taciturn (to put it mildly) than his godfather, and his policy is likely to be slower and more conciliatory. Now this is what the ordinary "good American," who is neither a friend of trusts nor a Radical reformer, wants. A gradual restoration of profitable business, no sudden violent laying of hands upon the levers of public or private finance, a firm and moderately active foreign policy, and more discreet relations with the Federal Legislature-these are the principal requirements of the American whose influence has elected Mr. Taft. It will be a presidency more likely to mark time than to make history. But it may be none the worse for that, for there has been discernible a certain breathlessness in the efforts even of the more energetic sections of the American people to keep pace with the rushes of their President.

There are two reflections which we would make upon the character and the result of this election. The first has reference to the extraordinary and,

to our interpretation of American institutions, the gravely improper part played by Mr. Roosevelt in using the influence of the White House, first, to procure the nomination of the Republican candidate, and, secondly, to push his candidature by assuming the part of chief organizer of a party campaign. To our mind, this is nothing other than an abuse of a high position of trust which the American Constitution, as interpreted by the uniform conduct of previous occupants of the Presidential chair, designed to be removed from and above the schemes and struggles of party. We are well aware that party as a political instrument stands on a different footing in the United States from here, and at least one important officer whose impartiality might have been expected to remain intact-to wit, the Speaker in the House of Representatives-has come to be little better than a party tool. If it were merely a question of personal dignity, we might agree with Mr. Roosevelt's friends that he has so much dignity he need not stand upon it to preserve it. But for a President, who had already stretched every precedent in encroachment upon those legislative functions which it was the most express design of "the founders" to remove from the executive officials, to end his term of office as a passionate partisan, might seem a license likely to provoke resentment among constitutionalists in America.

Finally, some speculation upon the probable future of the Democratic Party is inevitable. It has long been recognized that the earlier lines of principles and policy which demarcated it from the Republican are almost obliterated. States rights no longer furnish a cleavage. No solution of the graver social problems of America is even conceivable upon State as distinguished from federal lines. There is no strong genuine difference beween the attitude of the two par

ties on Protection, Imperialism, or Foreign Policy, the three largest issues clearly within the federal power. 'Upon control of transport and the curbing of industrial and financial illegalities the promises of the one party do not in principle transcend the performances of the other. The Republican Party upon the whole has displayed more consistency and more stability of purpose. The Democrats have now tried Mr. Bryan as financial revolutionist, Judge Parker as a Conservative,

The Nation.

and Mr. Bryan again as a Liberal, and they have been thoroughly beaten upon each platform. It is difficult to believe that any party, in a live electorate like that of the United States, can survive so hopeless a record. Unless a thoroughly radical reconstruction can take place, it is hardly possible that the Democratic Party can avoid displacement before 1912 by some new, more virile, alignment of the reforming forces of the people.

THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH.

The victory of Mr. Roosevelt's policy and candidate has proved more complete than their most ardent supporters had hoped. The South, with the exception of Maryland, has remained true to its ancient Democratic traditions, and Oklahoma, which has been mainly peopled from States where Populism was strong, has not been diverted from supporting Mr. Bryan by Mr. Hearst's revelations as to the corrupt relations of its Governor with the Standard Oil monopolists. Mr. Bryan has carried his own State of Nebraska; he has come near to carrying a few other Western States of minor importance with silver or Populist traditions, such as Nevada, Montana, and possibly Indiana. But elsewhere his defeat is crushing. The Republicans have regained Maryland, have kept West Virgina and other doubtful States, and, above all, have held the pivotal State of New York. That is a welcome triumph over Tammany, and a victory for the rural districts and smaller cities, which are more or less Puritan in their views, over the more worldly tendencies of the chief city of the Union, with its large foreign, ignorant, and corrupt or corruptible electorate. The American public gen

erally will be all the healthier for the election of Mr. Hughes, and the consequent check to one of the least desirable phases of sport. Elsewhere local conditions have unexpectedly favored the election of isolated Democratic Congressmen and Governors, but this only emphasizes the Republican victory on the Federal issue. There the defeat of the Democrats is definitive and complete. The Republicans carry 30 States out of 46; in the Electoral College, which conducts the formal election, they have 314 votes against 169; and Mr. Taft's majority of the whole electorate is estimated at 1,113,750.

Mr. Taft's election has from the first been regarded as certain, provided that none of the numerous cross-currents set up during the election should sweep away an appreciable number of the apathetic sections of the electorate. The Democratic party was saddled with a candidate who, though personally attractive, gifted with great oratorical powers, and astonishingly energetic, could not possibly combine the Radical and Populist sections of the party in the West and its old Conservative elements in parts of the East and South. Mr. Bryan, though sound

from our point of view on tariff revision, was weighted with other and unsound economic traditions. The "emergency currency" of the Democratic platform suggested silver or illimitable greenbacks rather than a safe expansion of the secured note issue of the national banks: and the wind had been taken out of his sails in advance by Mr. Roosevelt's speeches in the West last year, and by the certainty that something would be attempted by the Republicans towards tariff reduction and towards checking the domination of the Trusts.

From a business point of view, it is impossible not to welcome the result. Mr. Bryan could have done nothing to abate the economic evils which undoubtedly exist in the United States. Labor grievances are a matter for State, not Federal, legislation; really effective control of the unscrupulous capitalists and speculators would require either amendments of the Federal Constitution or a departure by the Supreme Court from the strictly juristic spirit which has made it the chief glory of the United States, and all Mr. Bryan's nominations to that body would have been viewed with profound suspicion in the light of the Democratic project, entertained in 1896, of appointing judges who would reverse the decision which made an incometax impossible. Tariff revision under Democratic auspices would have been welcome, if carried out; but it would not have been practicable, and the attempt would only have repeated the prolonged unsettlement of business set up by the Wilson Bill in 1894. It is true that the business depression of

The Economist.

last year was not due to politics, but popular opinion in America is superficial on these matters, and the charges inade this year against President Roosevelt would have been repeated in an intensified form under President Bryan. What is more, they would have been generally believed, and some of his supporters would have done their best to confirm them. There would have been constant uncertainty, prolonged depression, and a fresh stimulus to the forces making for the quack remedies offered by Populism and Socialism. In foreign affairs, too, the results would have been productive of disappointment. Mr. Bryan's horizon has been considerably widened by study and travel since he first stood for the Presidency twelve years ago, but he is not an experienced administrator; the forces behind him represent the old American traditions tending to ignore foreign policy, and we doubt if he would have realized the mission of his Government in helping the backward States of Spanish America to "straighten out their finances," adjust their differences by arbitration, and develop themselves with the aid of European Immigrants and American capital. Mr. Taft in this matter will fully carry on the Roosevelt tradition, and his diplomatic and administrative skill has been tested in the Philippines and at the War Office. He, at any rate, will be an efficient chief of the Executive. And we may hope that in 1912 the great Democratic party will have found a platform and a candidate that can restore its power to obtain tariff revision and other undoubtedly desirable ends.

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