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that. Secretary Sherman and Peter Cooper are of the same mind here. Supposing then that the money question should be settled in the wisest way, whichever that is, have we not every reason to expect a safe and moderate renewal of business confidence and enterprise even without "a thorough revision of existing tariffs?” If not, will these gentlemen hereafter have the candor, in their Hard Money speeches and articles, to warn the people of the fact? And will they not show equal candor when they next draw up a series of Free Trade resolutions for the Western and Southern market, by inserting an explicitly Hard Money plank, and warning the nation that even Free Trade will not mend matters without a gold basis to our circulation?

As to effecting the "revival" of our manufactures by taking off the duties from imported articles, it is hard to believe that the authors of the resolution attached any definite meaning to the words they use. They have of course a vague idea that Free Trade is good for everything, and therefore it must be good for our manufactures also. We can understand a Free Trader in maintaining that from the start every nation should leave its industrial development to the hazards of competition with all the world; or in asserting that even if a nation has taken the other course, and has called into existence industries which would not otherwise have originated on its soil and which still need its fostering care, it will best serve its largest interests—“the interest of the consumer in retracing its steps and abandoning those producers to their fate. Or we could understand a Free Trader-if such could be foundwho thought that policy a wrong one, but that when once adopted it must be persisted in until those industries become self-sustaining, as that would be choosing the less of two evils. But a proposal to "revive" those industries in a time of temporary prostration by withdrawing from them all the advantages which they have been accorded, and depriving them of the home market which they possess, we do not understand. Is it a corollary of the "axiom" that "it is necessary to buy in order to sell ?" But what are we to buy? Not food or raw materials, certainly; with all the sorts of which we use great quantities, we are already fully supplied. It must be manufactured goods. The demand for these articles must be largely transferred from the home to the foreign producer, and the amount of home sales now possible to the former must be greatly reduced. Will he acquire a new foreign market by the change?

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Let us divide the question: (1) Will our increased importation of European manufactures be repaid by increased shipments of American manufactures to Europe, beyond what we now send with every advantage and facility for export that we can hope for? Or will we go on paying for them, as we have been doing, in United States bonds and those of municipalities and corporations, or, in the last resort, in gold? (2) Will we secure a profitable exchange of manufactured commodities for produce in the countries which do little in manufacturing for themselves, so long as we sit with our hands in our lap and let things take their course? England has secured the trade of Spanish America, of Asia and of Africa by vigorous effort, by government subsidies to steamship lines, and the like. We buy the produce of those countries, with some exceptions, at her wharfs and from her merchants, sometimes after two or three transhipments. We can purchase it from the producers if we do as she does, and not as she says. Her Free Trade policy has saving clauses to cover every sort of outlay of the public money, which will secure commerce and customers for her manufacturers. And if our manufactures are to be revived by the extension of our commerce, it will not be by adopting the Laissez faire principle, but by setting it at defiance, as she has done and still does, whenever it comes into collision with common sense.

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Lastly the resolutions take up the question of commercial treaties, and especially the proposal of reciprocity with Canada. shall have something to say hereafter about the mischiefs of commercial treaties in their practical workings and their wrongness in principle. For the present let us note that a consistent Free Trader will have nothing to do with them. He must say with Ricardo we want commerce, not commercial treaties." Believing that the relations of trade ought to be kept as simple as possible, he must repudiate methods which introduce the utmost complexity and confusion. Believing that each nation profits best by giving up all idea of gaining at the expense of another, he cannot take part in the game of international chicanery and trickery, by which the old lies and dodges of diplomacy are mustered into the service of commerce. The beautiful and millennial theories by which Free Trade fascinates the half-thinkers of our day, are not more antagonistic to a high protective tariff, than to a modern commercial treaty.

As regards reciprocity with Canada, the Saratoga Convention and the National Board of Trade may "just haud their breath to cool their kail." Is is not the Protectionists who will defeat that little plan; it is their own allies in England and their proposed allies in the Mississippi Valley. Manchester and Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham, are not going to throw open the Canadian market to their American competitors if they can help it; nor does the Western farmer mean that the Canadian shall have the preference in the New England wheat and provision market. It was these two influences which decided the question the last time it was raised, and they will decide it again in the same way. Whenever Canada is ready for a Zollverein with the United States, we are ready for it also. But a Zollverein would be the first step to her political absorption, and that would be a misfortune to both countries.

AFTER all the wire-pulling to prevent the election of Mr. Randall to the Speakership of the House, and the attempts to commit him on some issue which would divide his supporters, his election seems to be at last conceded as a foregone conclusion. The New York papers of both parties have displayed in this connection that delicate consideration and that warmth of appreciation which they always manifest when a prominent Philadelphian's good name or success is at stake. They have been especially clear that Mr. Randall was in favor of sowing the South with subsidies; that the Rebel war debt was to be repaid in that form out of the national treasury. Now we hope that Mr. Randall is in favor of generous treatment of the South. We believe that we can better afford to postpone the final payment of the public debt than to see the South a laggard in the march of improvement because of the mischiefs done it by slavery and the war. We want no Ireland of poverty and discontent beyond the Potomac. And if the appropriations are only enough to equalize the distribution of the grants of public money made to the different sections of the country since 1860, they will be nearly, if not quite enough, to bring the South forward and abreast with the Union at large. If President Hayes's Southern policy means anything, it means that the Southern States are to be no step-children, and it ill-becomes those who opposed no grants to their own districts, to begin to talk of economy and the

public burdens as soon as anything is proposed for their neighbors.

These, we hope, are Mr. Randall's views, but neither we nor any. body else have a right to say they are. Every now and then some Northern newspaper has discovered plain and palpable proofs that Mr. Randall is for granting subsidies to the Southern Pacific, and the like; but before the week is out, the same paper betrays signs of hankering after a little clearer and stronger proof of the fact. Oh yes, it knows all about it, and yet it would like to know more. But the more is not forthcoming; and neither is any candidate, and least of all any New York candidate, who can keep Samuel J. Randall out of the Speaker's chair.

Populus vult decipi. As if the exposure of the Katie King humbug were not enough, our city has been treated to another exposure of a series of impositions carried on by persons who call themselves "mediums of spiritual intercourse." And the victims are, many of them, men of keen intelligence and business talents, respected by the community. We might laugh and pass the matter by, were it not that this sort of humbug seems likely to become chronic among us. Society has at all times knaves in plenty, but the direction in which they turn their talents is significant of much. If they have begun to eke out a living by trading in the supernatural, it is because they find that the best market to which to carry their knavery. We are fast becoming a vastly enlightened age-too wise and clever, too well-read in Herbert Spencer and the like, to believe what our grandmothers believed. The old faith in a God who is the home and centre of all spirits, and who by his Spirit discloses himself in the hearts of men, is become altogether incredible to us. But somehow the instinct to believe in some sort of spiritual world, to seek fellowship with those who have vanished from our sight into it, has not been exterminated from men's breasts. And so, as in the old ages of decay and unbelief, men run after "lying wonders." All the trickery of pagan mysteries and mystifications springs up anew, and the deceits so long buried under the dust of ages, are unearthed to become the fashion of the hour. The pet superstitions of the day assume the most vulgar, the most frivolous shapes, and yet men believe in them. The world looks, perhaps, to its cultivated and scientific men, its favorite

teachers at present, to offer a united front in opposing these superstitions, and it finds Crookes and Wallaces themselves succumbing to them. Our skepticism just because it makes nothing certain, makes everything possible. It leaves us in the darkness, which the mind peoples with fantastic and often terrible shapes. "Where the gods

are not," Novalis says, "these spectres bear rule." For the sense of spiritual power, and the yearning for spiritual communication, has not passed away with the loss of the conviction that God has revealed to men the nature of that power, and opened a channel of intercourse between heaven and earth. It has merely put dark seances and hidden trap doors in the place of the four Gospels; and any rogue who has wit enough to cheat us, in place of the Son of man. We can now believe in any spirit but the Holy Spirit, and any revelation except that which has stood the test of centuries and has moulded the lives of all the greatest and most civilized nations of the world. Lucian and Apollonius, Voltaire and Cagliostro, Büchner and Home-the old coincidence of extremes forever peats itself.

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THE ORNAMENTATION OF FABRICS.1

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A FONTAINE has said, "We are not able to surpass cients; they have left us only the glory of following them well." What the great fabulist said of literature, is equally applicable to the art which we shall endeavor to describe, and which we may call the ornamentation or decoration of woven fabrics.

Several thousand years before our era, the artificers of India, of Egypt, of Assyria, and of Phoenicia, already made plain tissues, or woven fabrics, as beautiful and as fine as those which to-day go out from our best factories: they were not less skillful in producing embellished fabrics, which they often ornamented with very ingenious designs. It was by embroidery that this ornamentation be

1 From the French of M. Dupont Auberville, being the general introduction of his work, entitled, "L'Ornament des Tissus." Paris, 1875.

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