From the best information we can gather of the course
of the canvass for the Presidential election in the United States, we should expect Mr. McKinley to be elected by a con- siderable majority in the Electoral College, though of how the popular majority may go, it is not possible to form any clear estimate. In his letter accepting the Republican nomination, Mr. McKinley has a good deal strengthened his declaration against the free coinage of silver, and so obtained a little more cordial support from the adherents of a gold standard He has, however, also strengthened his declaration in favour of returning to a much more stringently protective tariff, and by that means has given great offence to some of the most earnest of the supporters of hard money. Mr. Bryan has become rather more vehemently populist, if not more silverite, than he was at first, and his support of the principle of Free-trade has rather fallen into the background. He talks a good deal of the "toiling masses," rather to the disgust of the American journalists, who think with some justice that not only the masses but the classes in the United States toil,—indeed, that many who have accumulated wealth toil even harder than the poor, in order to add to that wealth. The Presidential election of the present year,—it is tobe decided on November 3rd,—will be known, we suspect, as Hobson's choice. It will either return a President who is in favour of directly confiscating a considerable proportion of American creditors' property, or (more probably) a statesman who will do his best to render the property they have as useless to them as a desperately high tariff can make it.
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