LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS.
[To TIER EDITOR OF 'HZ " SPRCTATOR."]
SIB, —Having spent the past two months in the United States, and made such study of public opinion there as was possible, I can fully confirm your conjecture (in -the article, "The American Elections," in the Spectator -of November 12th) that "this policy [the so - nailed 'Imperial'] is more popular than appears from the vote." The vote would certainly have been very much larger in favour of the Administration but for the shameful extent to which the wellbeing of the troops and the conduct of the -campaign had been sacrificed to the claims and pretensions of partisans hoping to make political capital out of the war. To punish Alger and not disapprove the President was a problem -of great difficulty. It was easy to see by conversing with people of all classes and localities that the idea of a terri- torial conquest has powerfully possessed the popular imagina- tion, and that there will be for a long time no disposition to loose the hold on what they have captured. The articles of the -Spectator are very widely republished and commented on, and have been indeed the great feature of the foreign opinion. The leading article on the administration of the possessions -especially was much commented on.
But the almost universal prevision in the sober part of our public was that the practice of compensating partisans for -service in the elections by appointments to the "colonies" would obtain, as it has in our Consular and diplomatic servicee, and that the result will be a disastrous failure. The fact that in the great State of New York the election was conducted on both sides under the control and sanction, absolutely necessary, of the two "bosses" of the great parties, men -equally corrupt and autocratic in the direction of the elections and electoral politics, shows how far public opinion in its sane and healthy expression is from exercising a dominant influence on our politics and the administration of our affairs. A Civil Service, as it is understood in England, is impossible an America for a long time yet, and one hazards nothing in Predicting that the administrators of the new possessions will be the sons and nephews of the supporters of the President and his partisans. " Boodle " will be the thing most thought of. The advocates of a serious Civil Service have to fight continually to maintain what we have of a rational and businesslike organisation of it against the invasions of the vohticians, and Croker or Platt in New York, or Quay in Pennsylvania, the two great States of the Union, f more powerful in directing the appointments to public °hallos than all the common-sense in the country. It is, therefore, hardly risking anything to predict that the government of our new dependencies will be a disgraceful failure and a breeder of anarchy and revolt. Your apprehensions as to the currency question, expressed in the same article, are in agreement with most sober opinions in the United States,—we are never out of danger of silver monometallism until we have endured the financial catastrophe certain to follow the experiment. But there is one element of danger removed which was very great at the last Presidential election. It was the condition of the mortgages on Western farms. These are in the renewal, now complete, made in express terms redeemable in gold, and this removes the farmers of the West from the category of persons interested in cheap money. It does not remove the danger, but much diminis hes it.—I am, Sir, dm,
W. J. STILLMAN.
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