damning features of the
business was a very compromising letter of his own which ended with the
fatal words: "Please burn this letter." As a result of its publication,
crowds of Democratic voters paraded the streets of several great
American cities chanting monotonously--

"Burn, burn, burn this letter!
James G. Blaine.
Please, please! Burn this letter!
James G. Blaine.
Oh! Do! Burn this letter!
James G. Blaine."

The result was the complete success of the clean government ticket, and
the triumphant return of Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat to take
the oath since the Civil War, and perhaps the strongest and best
President since Lincoln.

Meanwhile, the Republic had found itself threatened with another racial
problem, which became acute at about the time when excitement on both
sides regarding the Negro was subsiding. Scarcely had the expansion of
the United States touched the Pacific, when its territories encountered
a wave of immigration from the thickly populated countries on the other
side of that ocean. The population which now poured into California and
Oregon was as alien in race and ideals as the Negro, and it was,
perhaps, the more dangerous because, while the Negro, so far as he had
not absorbed European culture, was a mere barbarian, these people had a
very old and elaborate civilization of their own, a civilization
picturesque and full of attraction when seen afar off, but exhibiting,
at nearer view, many characteristics odious to the traditions, instincts
and morals of Europe and white America. There was also the economic
evil--really, of course, only an aspect of the conflict of types of
civilization--arising from the fact that these immigrants, being used to
a lower standard of life, undercut and cheapened the labour of the white
man.

Various Acts were passed by Congress from time to time for the
restriction and exclusion of Chinese and other Oriental immigrants, and
the trouble, though not even yet completely disposed of, was got under a
measure of control. Sumner lived long enough to oppose the earlier of
these very sensible laws, and, needless to say, trotted out the
Declaration of Independence, though in this case the application was
even more absurd than in that of the Negro. The Negro, at any rate, was
already resident in America, and had been brought there in the first
instance without his own consent; and this fact, though it did not make
him a citi