ncited extravagance, and its reduction had been demanded on
this ground, the tariff appearing to afford the best method of
reduction. When the Democratic party gained control of the House, in
1883, it proceeded at once to discuss revision, and promptly uncovered a
difference of opinion among its members. The last Democratic Speaker of
the House had been Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who
had been trained in the philosophy of Henry Clay and in the interests of
a great manufacturing State. He was by conviction and association a
protectionist, and was a candidate for his party's nomination as Speaker
in the Forty-eighth Congress, which met in December, 1883. From this
date he ceased to lead his party in the House and became the leader of
an internal faction. John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, supplanted him, was
elected Speaker, and organized the House in the interest of a tariff for
revenue only. For the next six years the Democratic organization of the
House was pledged to revision, but operated in the face of a growing
Republican opposition, and with Randall and the protectionist Democrats
attacking from the rear.

The election of Cleveland gave the Democrats control of two branches of
the Government, but left the Senate in the hands of the Republicans. It
was vain to talk of serious revision or any other party measure in a
divided administration, yet the President chafed under his inability to
fulfill party pledges. The surplus continued to accumulate, to permit
extravagance in Congress, and to arouse the cupidity of citizens. In his
message to his second Congress, in 1887, Cleveland startled the country
by devoting his undivided attention to this single topic. He set his
party a text which could not be evaded, although there was even yet no
reason to believe that a tariff bill could pass both houses. He had
taken Carlisle into his confidence before sending the message; the
latter entrusted the leadership in revision to Roger Q. Mills, of Texas,
a free-trader, whom he appointed as chairman of the Committee on Ways
and Means.

With the opening of the debate on the Mills Bill, in April, 1888, there
began "the first serious attempt since the war to reduce toward a peace
basis the customs duties imposed during that conflict almost solely for
purposes of revenue." Mills and William L. Wilson, who had been a
college president in West Virginia, bore the burden of advocacy of a
reduction of the revenue to the exte