Political business in the United States, as at home, has
gone to sleep for the autumn, and interest in politics is only kept up by General Butler's energetic contest for the Governorship of Mas- sachusetts. The Republican party seems as yet to be undecided whether it ought boldly to adopt Mr. Butler, or to repudiate him with vehemence, but in the meantime the candidate is working steadily on the ingrained prejudices and the dominant interests of the electoral body. In Massachusetts the farmers are very strong, and just now the farmers are at deadly feud with the railways ; so one of the planks of General Butler's platform is the " destruction of the railway monopoly," and the vindication of the " right of the toiling many," which are now trespassed upon by "the dividend-receiving few." Mr. Butler's remedy, when examined, does not appear to come to anything else than an extraordinary proposition that as the railways ought to be used for the public advantage, and yet cannot be worked by the State, " every man should be at liberty to switch on his own car" to the trains, —an arrangement which would startle even an American public accustomed to sensational accidents. Mr. Butler has also attempted to conciliate the teetotallers by accusing the present Governor of the State of perjury, because he does not put the Liquor-law into force, yet he admits the practical impossibility of total prohibition. Of the larger issues of the con- test we have spoken more fully elsewhere; its result will be a turning-point in American politics.
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