“Sir:—I am in receipt of your letter of the 4th inst., and beg to say that I fully appreciate the difficulty in which you find yourself in casting your vote. You are probably aware that any political party which openly favored the mother country at the present moment would lose popularity, and that the party in power is fully aware of the fact. The party, however, is, I believe, still desirous of maintaining friendly relations with Great Britain and still desirous of settling questions with Canada which have been, unfortunately, reopened since the retraction of the treaty by the Republican majority in the Senate and by the President’s message to which you allude. All allowances must therefore be made for the political situation as regards the Presidential election thus created. It is, however, impossible to predict the course which President Cleveland may pursue in the matter of retaliation should he be elected; but there is every reason to believe that, while upholding the position he has taken, he will manifest a spirit of conciliation in dealing with the question involved in his message. I enclose an article from the New York ‘Times’ of August 22d, and remain, yours faithfully, “L. S. SACKVILLE-WEST.”
This correspondence, published on October 24th, took instant and universal effect. The President at first inclined to ignore the incident, but soon yielded to the urgency of his managers, and, to keep “the Irish vote” from slipping away, asked for the minister’s recall. Great Britain refusing this, the minister’s passports were delivered him. The act was vain and worse. Without availing to parry the enemy’s thrust, it incurred not only the resentment of the English Government, but the disapproval of the Administration’s soberest friends at home.
Influences with which practical politicians were familiar had their bearing upon the outcome. In New York State, where occurred the worst tug of war, Governor Hill and his friends, while boasting their democracy, were widely believed to connive at the trading of Democratic votes for Harrison in return for Republican votes for Hill. At any rate, New York State was carried for both.
It is unfortunately necessary to add that the 1888 election was most corrupt. The campaign was estimated to have cost the two parties $6,000,000. Assessments on office-holders, as well as other subsidies, replenished the Democrats’ campaign treasury; while the manufacturers of the country, who had been pretty close four years before, now regarding their interest and even their honor as assailed, generously contributed often as the Republican hat went around.
In Indiana, Mr. Harrison’s home State, no resource was left untried. The National Republican Committee wrote the party managers in that State: “Divide the floaters into blocks of five, and put a trusted man with necessary funds in charge of these five, and make him responsible that none get away, and that all vote our ticket.” This mandate the workers faithfully obeyed.
So far as argument had weight the election turned mainly upon the tariff issue. The Republicans held that protection was on trial for its life. Many Democrats cherished the very same view, only they denounced the prisoner at the bar as a culprit, not a martyr. They inveighed against protection as pure robbery. They accused the tariff of causing Trusts, against which several bills had recently been introduced in Congress. Democratic extremists proclaimed that Republicans slavishly served the rich and fiendishly ground the faces of the poor. Even moderate Democrats, who simply urged that protective rates should be reduced, more often than otherwise supported their proposals with out and out free trade arguments. As to President Cleveland himself no one could tell whether or not he was a free trader, but his discussions of the tariff read like Cobden Club tracts. The Mills bill, which passed the House in the Fiftieth Congress, would have been more a tariff for revenue than in any sense protective. Republican orators and organs therefore pictured “British free trade” as the dire, certain sequel of the Cleveland policy if carried out, and, whether convinced by the argument or startled by the ado of Harrison’s supporters, people, to be on the safe side, voted to uphold the “American System.”
Joseph B. Foraker.
More than eleven million ballots were cast at the election, yet so closely balanced were the parties that a change of 10,000 votes in Indiana and New York, both of which went for Harrison would have reelected Cleveland. As it was, his popular vote of 5,540,000 exceeded by 140,000 that of Harrison, which numbered 5,400,000. Besides bolding the Senate the Republicans won a face majority of ten in the House, subsequently increased by unseating and seating. They were thus in control of all branches of the general government.