tive point. The McKinley Act, passed October 1, 1890, made sugar,
a lucrative revenue article, free, and gave a bounty to sugar producers
in this country, together with a discriminating duty of one-tenth of a
cent per pound on sugar imported hither from countries which paid an
export bounty thereon.

The "Blaine" reciprocity feature of this act proved its most popular
grace. In 1891 we entered into reciprocity agreements with Brazil, with
the Dominican Republic, and with Spain for Cuba and Porto Rico. In 1892
we covenanted similarly with the United Kingdom on behalf of the British
West Indies and British Guiana, and with Nicaragua, Salvador, Honduras,
Guatemala and Austria-Hungary. How far our trade was thus benefited is
matter of controversy. Imports from these countries were certainly much
enlarged. Our exportation of flour to these lands increased a result
commonly ascribed to reciprocity, though the simultaneous increase in
the amounts of flour we sent to other countries was a third more rapid.

The international copyright law, meeting favor with the literary, was
among the most conspicuous enactments of the Fifty-first Congress. An
international copyright treaty had been entered into in 1886, but it did
not include the United States. Two years later a bill to the same end
failed in Congress. At last, on March 3, 1891, President Harrison signed
an act which provided for United States copyright for any foreign
author, designer, artist, or dramatist, albeit the two copies of a book,
photograph, chromo, or lithograph required to be deposited with the
Librarian of Congress must be printed from type set within the limits of
the United States or from plates made therefrom, or from negatives or
drawings on stone made within the limits of the United States or from
transfers therefrom. Foreign authors, like native or naturalized, could
renew their United States copyrights, and penalties were prescribed to
protect these rights from infringement.

[1891]

Mr. Blaine, the most eminent Republican statesman surviving, was now
less conspicuous than McKinley, Lodge, and Reed, with whom, by his
opposition to extreme protection and to the Force Bill, he stood at
sharp variance. As Secretary of State, however, to which post President
Harrison had perforce assigned him, he still drew public attention,
having to deal with several awkward international complications.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
David C. Hennessy.

The city of N