MY DEAR SENATOR —

NEW YORK, Oct. 16, 1890

I cannot deny that I am greatly disappointed at the result of the senatorial election. I had expected to succeed you. I still think that if I had lived on the right side of the mountain the result would have been different. As it was, it was a close thing, though you had a very fair vote in the House. I observe that your majority in the Senate was only 27, which was a very narrow margin. But now that the heat and excitements of the contest are over, candor compels me to admit that the result is for the best. It is much better that you should be Senator than I.

... You will be glad to hear that I now retire from the field, and at the next election shall not run against you. I hope the protracted service has not affected you unfavorably. Believe me, dear Mr. Morrill

Always sincerely yours

Morrill replied in kind:

MY DEAR MR. PHELPS

E. J. PHELPS

STRAFFORD, VT., Oct. 18, 1890

Your esteemed and witty favor of the 16th inst. has been received. Considering the strategy and deep-laid plot for my defeat, the reëlection was a marvel. Some astute Democrats circulated the splendid fiction that the vote would be unanimous and without opposition. I had at no time sought support in any quarter, and my friends, indulging in the dream that no vigilance was necessary, when the name of the best-equipped man in our country came out as a combatant against me, were as suddenly surprised as were the Florentine soldiers bathing in the river Arno by the assault of the enemy. Armorless and sedentary as were my friends, the flank attack from the other side of the mountain looked dangerous, and finally the contest turned in my favor only for the reason that you and I were both absent, so that you derived no benefit from a personal contrast. I am delighted with your promise not to run against me at the next election, and with equal forbearance, though quite ambitious myself of the honor, I shall not appear in the field when you are reappointed Ambassador to the Court of London. Be assured that the era of good feeling has not been disturbed between us, though you must par

don me some additional pride in defeating so formidable a competitor.

When Morrill entered the Senate in March, 1891, to begin his fifth term as Senator, he found the McKinley Tariff, passed in the previous October, the center of fierce attack, and as a loyal protectionist came to its defense. He issued one of the few open letters he ever wrote in reply to the question, "Why am I a Protectionist," and addressed to the American Protective Tariff League. Some of the assertions have a somewhat swollen aspect and sound very like planks from a political platform, but there never was any doubt about Morrill's sincerity in uttering or defending them:

DEAR SIR:

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 21, 1891

In reply to your favor of the 16 inst., asking "Why am I a protectionist," I answer first, it brings together diversified industries which never fail to vastly increase the personal intelligence, industry, and wage-earnings of the people.

2d. It adds prodigiously to the power of increasing by machinery and steam and water power the necessaries of life and advanced civilization and also greatly cheapens the cost of subsistence.

3d. It furnishes an opportunity for every person to find the employment adapted to his or her genius and capacity, that will secure the largest income or the greatest happiness.

4th. It creates a home market, without which the cultivators of land in America would be but little better off than our aborigines.

5th. It is the bulwark of National Independence in peace or

war.

Very truly yours

JUSTIN S. MORRILL

Protection and sound money had been the twin bases of his political faith and he never wavered in his support of them.

The general bent of his mind was conservative and led him to oppose innovations of whatever form or color. His opposition to the Eight-Hour Bill sprang from his memory and experience of long hours and he questioned the wisdom of prescribing shorter hours; he would have resented such restrictions in his youth and he doubted whether workingmen would benefit. His opposition to Woman's Suffrage was largely temperamental and traditional. When the Vermont Legislature passed a suffrage bill, he wrote in protest to the Lieutenant-Governor:

MY DEAR SIR:

STRAFFORD, VT., Nov. 6, 1892

I know how difficult it is for old men to resist the eloquence of the few of the sex who go around to tease Representatives to favor the passage of Female Suffrage bills, but I hardly believe our gallant young men of the Vermont House of Representatives were quite serious in rushing such a bill through the other day. And yet the measure is too serious to be tossed off as a joke. It appears to me that the Legislature might well afford to postpone even its consideration until a majority of the good women ask for it and avow willingness to undertake its duties. Undoubtedly there would appear at our town meetings here and there "a bright particular star" in a bonnet, but they would be overshadowed by a larger class, not of the rare women of whom we are so proud as Vermont mothers, but of a class of whom we might not have so high an appreciation. In other words, I cannot believe that the best women of Vermont could be persuaded to attend our town meetings. A large majority would prefer the very potential influence which they now enjoy while staying at home.

No argument is here intended by me, but I could not refrain from avowing very frankly, and perhaps needlessly, my hope and wish that the Senate might let the House bill sleep, at least for the next two years.

With much respect

Though Morrill and the Old Guard might defend it, as he, with his incurable loyalty to old friends, the old party, and the tenets of his lifelong political creed, was bound to do, the McKinley Tariff was the party's undoing and turned the tide for the Democrats in 1892. The result was to lighten his work in the Senate and leave him a larger measure of leisure which he employed among his books in such light literary labor as revising his "Self-Consciousness of Noted Persons" with a view to a third edition, and in preparing for publication in the "Forum" the collection of letters to which we have already referred.

His comparative freedom from legislative care and labor allowed him to make visits like that to the unveiling of his portrait at the Vermont Historical Society, where he had the pleasure of the company of his old friend Henry O. Houghton, the founder of the famous Boston publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Company. The two friends spoke from the same platform and afterwards rode together through the pleasant stretch of country that lies between Strafford and Burlington, everywhere greeted with signs of affectionate regard. He had become by then the most loved and admired of all Vermonters and Mr. Houghton often recalled the ride. "The visit to Strafford," he wrote, "and the journey to Burlington in the company of yourself and Miss Swan, was in a sense a royal progress."

The Cleveland Administration had not been long in being before it became plain that the real issue, overshadowing even the tariff, was to be the maintenance of a sound currency. On this question Morrill's conservative instincts, his political convictions, and the utmost strength of his patriotism were all enlisted. He felt the approaching peril and faced it with energy. To a friend in Vermont he wrote in July, 1894:

MY DEAR SIR:

...We are on the perilous edge of the silver standard. It may come by design of legislature or by some blunder of the Secretary of the Treasury. But, if it comes, it will come without any of my help. I am for a sound currency, sink or swim, and would not favor the policy of bidding for votes on silver against parties ready to outbid the world as are the Democratic and Populist parties. The cranks who claim that the United States can maintain the parity of gold and silver and open its mints alone to the free coinage of both are mainly knaves and the rest weak brethren, repudiators and political gamblers. I would have our Nation and our money equal to any other. Working-men should be paid in as good money as the banker. The pensioners should not have a nominal pension at a just rate and then suddenly find it reduced one half by a cheaper standard of money.

Foreseeing that the campaign of 1896 would be critical and hard-fought, he exhorted the Republicans of Vermont to put their house in order, practice severe economy, and give no room for criticism. He bent his utmost efforts to convince and persuade the public of the dangers of free silver and the obligation to keep the standards of sound money. His speeches on the floor of the Senate won wide praise for their clearness and vigor. The scathing irony of such speeches as that on "Quack Panaceas" was effective and widely appreciated. It dealt summarily with nine bills which called for the issue of ninety-three and a half billions more paper money:

It is hardly necessary to say that these hungry bills, big, bigger, and biggest, nine of them, asking for nine or ten times more money than there is now in use by the whole world, were unanimously reported adversely by the Committee on Finance. Nothing more, as the committee conceived, could have been expected, saving brief post-mortem obituaries.... With no reasons offered for the introduction of these multitudinous billion-dollar bills, a sufficient reason for the adverse report would appear to have been that they were all death-stricken from an overdose of the legal-tender nostrum at their birth, administered by the ac