the objection that neither this nor the Treaties which preceded it secure a fair reciprocity in this matter of intercourse. The Chinese traveller may go anywhere throughout our country, but the American, be he trader, traveller, or missionary, is confined to the treaty ports, and takes his life in his hand when he attempts to penetrate the interior of the country. The Chinese government has never pledged itself to give him protection if he should leave the limited area of those ports. Again, we doubt if the Treaty does not convey a promise which exceeds the constitutional powers of the national government, when it assures the Imperial government of the protection of Chinese residents in America. A government which cannot protect its own citizens in the exercise of the political duties it requires at their hands, should be sparing of the promises it makes for the citizens of other countries resident on its soil.

The Treaty of Commerce is not of such immense importance as some of the newspapers seem to think. Our commerce with the Chinese is small and declining. Even where they are purchasing more largely of our fabrics, such as cotton, their purchases are generally made through other countries, and not directly. The treaty is notable chiefly in throwing open what commerce we have to the treest competition of Chinese ships and sailors. While we claim the right to regulate their immigration, for the benefit of workingmen on land, we renounce the American sailor to the merciless competition of a race that can live and save money on five cents a day. As a consequence, we shall soon see our trans-Pacific commerce entirely in the hands of the almond-eyed Celestials, and their mercantile marine driving ours from that great ocean, except its scanty coasting trade. There is, besides, a want of fairness as regards the proposed regulation of the opium traffic. No American ship is to take it to China, while English ships are allowed to do so. If China will make up her mind to abolish the opium trade, root and branch, she will have the united support of the civilized world in so doing. But if she means to let it go on, she has no right to require of us that it shall be confined to British. bottoms. If that restriction be the first step to the abolition of the traffic, it is all right. If less than that, it is all wrong. We believe that the Chinese do honestly desire to see the end of the traffic,

although nearly all Englishmen and a few Americans profess to doubt their sincerity. We fail to see what evidence they could give of their sincerity which they have not given. And we believe that only courage and tact is needed to put a stop to it. They complicated their case in 1838 with side issues, which gave the English their opportunity. But if the main issue were put fairly before the people of England and the world, it would be impossible for the English Government to repeat the infamy of 1838, whatever it might cost their East India revenue.

THE mining camp called the State of Nevada, after selling a United States Senatorship to a millionaire, has taken a vote on the Chinese question, and by a great majority has declared that "the Chinese must go." The only thing remarkable in the matter is that the aforesaid mining camp should think its opinion worth quoting in this connection. There is no community in the United States whose opinion has less moral weight, and there is no sin in the record of the Republican party greater than the erection into a State of this barren wilderness, with a population of moneyhunters, stationary in numbers, though constantly shifting in composition, and with a soil poisoned beyond any hope of redemption short of the Day of Judgment. Only the general credence given to the gross lies told by the promoters of the first Pacific railway, can account for the popular delusion that such a country and such a people were fit for admission into the American Union as a State.

In California the approval of the new treaties has been made a party question in the Legislature, the Republican majority giving them its support. The minority, and those they represent, are dissatisfied, of course, because no provision is made for the expulsion of the Chinese already in our country. We think the whole people of the country, with a few exceptions, would regard their expulsion as an act of the grossest cruelty to a large body of poor creatures, most of whom have risked their whole substance and the best years of their lives in pushing their fortunes in America. On the other hand, the Chinese colony in America contains but few families, and gains little by natural increase. Its members come with no intention of staying permanently in this country, and by the moderate exercise of the power secured in the treaty, their numbers will be so reduced that their competition will be much

less formidable to the white laborer than it has been. Exactly what use will be made of those powers, is a matter which will cause some discussion among our own people, and we may look to see an energetic division of opinion between the Pacific coast and the rest of the country. But the chief value of the treaty is that it will enable us to get rid of the sectional alienation which has been rising between that and the other parts of the country, and which forms one of the serious dangers of the national situation.

THE Senatorial elections of the month have been the most important events in its politics. Mr. Hale of Maine, Mr. Dawes of Massachusetts, Mr. Thos. L. Platt of New York, Mr. Sewell of New Jersey, Mr. Bayard of Delaware, Mr. Conger of Michigan, Mr. Cockrell of Missouri, Mr. Philetus Sawyer of Wisconsin, Mr. Sherman of Ohio, Mr. Harrison of Indiana, Mr. Fair of Nevada, and Mr. John F. Miller of California, have all been elected or reelected to the United States Senate. In most cases their election was decided before a vote had been reached even in the nominating caucus, the less prominent candidates having withdrawn their names for the sake of harmony.

In New York the struggle for the Republican nomination was a three-cornered one, the Conkling wing of the party having divided upon two candidates, and the Reformers having taken up Mr. Chauncey Depew, the attorney of Mr. Vanderbilt's railroads,—a singular choice for such high-toned politicians as the New York Independents. The struggle was between the following of Mr. Arthur and that of Mr. Cornell in the Conkling ranks, and for at time Mr. Conkling seems to have avoided any expression of his preference, possibly through fear of causing an alienation of a large number of his own friends. At length his much-invoked aid was. extended to Mr. Cornell's candidate, and Mr. Platt was nominated. The affair is significant as promising a division in the Conkling ranks. Mr. Arthur's friends assured us, during the recent campaign, that there could be no greater mistake than to class the Vice-President as "Mr. Conkling's man." They claimed for him. an independence and decision of character quite inconsistent with that designation. That they were right seems to be established. both by the smallness of the comfort Mr. Conkling derived from Mr. Arthur's nomination, and from the character of the recent

struggle, in which Mr. Arthur supported the claims of Mr. Crowley, a young Roman Catholic lawyer from the western part of the State. We may therefore look for a new era in the Republican politics of New York, with Mr. Arthur in an independent and influential position as the head of a body of Republicans who are not willing to wear the Conkling collar.

BOTH in the New York and in the Pennsylvania canvass for the Senatorship, it was secretly whispered and openly boasted that Mr. Garfield was about to place the federal patronage of those States at the service of the Senators already in power, and that those who did not accept their leadership might expect to be treated as Mr. Grant had treated them during his administration. In our own State it was alleged, on what must be regarded as high authority, that Mr. Cameron had been offered a seat in the new Cabinet, and that if he declined, it would be left to him to nominate the Secretary of War, or possibly of the Treasury. These stories were made up to influence doubtful votes, and were simply lies. That Mr. Garfield had made no compacts and would make none with the Senatorial Ring, was well known to those who cared to know, long before the November election. Of course, he is not going to follow Mr. Hayes's weak policy of proscription of "the stalwarts," as they are pleased to call themselves. But he is not capable of the baseness of conferring exclusive favors upon the men who, for the sake of getting the offices for their own faction, risked at Chicago the success of the party by their persistence in support of one he knew to be an impossible candidate, and who took his own nomination in a manner which was personally insulting, to say nothing of the danger to which it exposed the whole party. Mr. Garfield owed neither his nomination nor, in any eminent sense, his election to the "stalwarts," and he is under no bonds either of gratitude or contract to do their bidding.

IN New Jersey the candidates actually before the caucus were none of them worthy of the position, and the caucus magnanimously elected the worst. General Sewell is an employé of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and his election by the Republican Legislature, in view of what that Railroad did last November to effect the defeat of the Republican candidate for Governor, might be

taken by a stranger as an evidence of the forgiving spirit which reigns in our political councils. The truth seems to be that Mr. Sewell's election was secured by just the same underhand and dis honorable influences as effected Mr. Potts's defeat, and that he goes to the United States Senate as the representative not of the Commonwealth, but of the corporations which have so long ridden. roughshod over its interests. As the time is approaching when the State will have the right to take possession of the Camden and Amboy Railroad at an appraised value not exceeding the cost of construction, there seems to be a determination on the part of the companies to secure the control of the State by every means; and Mr. Sewell, it may be, was selected as the agent who can best use the federal patronage to that end.

IN Pennsylvania the opposition to Mr. Grow's candidacy was not publicly concentrated on any one man, until the Legislature was about to meet. It then appeared that the Machine had been busy in the dark, and that Mr. Oliver, a Pittsburg manufacturer, was to be put forward for an office for which he possessed no fitness except his wealth and a certain amount of local influence. For a time it was in doubt how Mr. McManes would direct the large vote he controls in the Philadelphia delegation, but it seems that bargains formed at the time of Mr. Kemble's pardon, and growing out of that unsavory transaction, obliged him to vote with the Machine under the direction of Mr. Matthew S. Quay, the chief engineer in that transaction, as in Mr. Oliver's candidacy. It was evident from the first that Mr. Oliver was the Kemble candidate for the Senatorship; that he was also the Cameron candidate soon appeared. The Grow men, relying upon the instructions given to representatives by their constituencies, were confident that Mr. Oliver could not obtain a majority in the caucus. But they were reckoning without their host, for they soon discovered that, by methods not new in Harrisburg, eight of their men had been carried over to Mr. Oliver's support, and that in spite of their own vote for Mr. Grow and the scattering vote for other candidates, Mr. Oliver would have a majority of two. In these circumstances they determined very properly not to enter the caucus. Up to the morning of its meeting, the Oliver men were assured of an easy success, but were suddenly confronted by a public pledge, similar