controversies on subjects which the decencies of public life should have preserved as secrets. Fortunately, there is no need here to review the remarkable campaign of the ex-President, for party feeling is running so high that opinions are hopelessly divided on even such vital points as the validity of Mr Taft's re-nomination and the supposed reluctance of Mr Roosevelt to come forward as a candidate. A few salient facts, however, cannot be challenged. It is Mr Roosevelt who has first succeeded in compelling a President of the United States to desert the business of the nation and pursue him from State to State in order to reply to a torrent of invective. It is Mr Roosevelt who is seeking to break the convention against the granting to any man a third term in the White House, and is explaining away an absolutely definite pledge by an argument that would be laughable if it were not so pitiful. It is Mr Roosevelt who has appealed to forces that he may not be able to curb, and has raised questions affecting the fundamental institutions of the country which there is nothing in his record to show that he possesses sufficient economic knowledge to solve.

Fortunately for the country, it is not with Mr Roosevelt but with Governor Wilson that its direction for the next four years is likely to lie. Written, as this article must be, two months before the election, there is time for much to happen to upset its forecast; but, if anything can be called certain in politics, it is the success of the Democratic candidate. Mr Taft, with the aid of the 'interests' and the great strength of American party ties, may make a respectable showing, and Mr Roosevelt will by his wonderful popularity and exuberant vitality poll a goodly number of votes; but the Progressive party is likely to draw far more heavily on the Republican than the Democratic ranks, and Mr Roosevelt will find it difficult to convince a Democrat why in a Democratic year he should not vote with his party. The first contests have been on the whole favourable to the Democrats. The States of Vermont and Maine elected their Governors last month; and an analysis of their votes in the light of their political history has made it plain that the strength of the Progressive party is considerable, but that it is not likely in November to do more than capture a few offices and make the defeat of the regular Republicans more

certain and more bitter. Thus everything seems favourable to Governor Wilson; and his record proves that he will take advantage of every chance. Both as President of Princeton University and as Governor of New Jersey he has proved himself a fighting man; and to his recog nised ability as a thinker and administrator he has lately added a facility not to be despised in an orator and a politician.

Whatever may be the result when the polls are closed at five o'clock in the afternoon of November 5, the campaig now drawing to its end will leave indelible marks on the American people. Never before have the 'bosses' been made the target at a general election; and never before has there been such a truly national effort to purify the political system. Never before, moreover, have the 'interests' attracted so much attention in Congress and among politicians everywhere; never has there been 80 direct an attack on those who wield the power of money without accepting its responsibility. Long ago it was recognised that one of the chief services of Mr Roosevel to the nation was his insistence on the Ten Commandments and common honesty ; and, whatever may now be thought of his motives or his methods in the present contest, he has by his marvellous energy and picturesque personality once again set the people thinking. Even though Congress can do little to relieve the growing stringency of life in the United States, notice has been served on those who control the capital of the country that it would be well for them to do nothing to add still more to the wrath of the people. Semi-socialistic as are many of the aims of the Progressive party, they hav raised issues that cannot be neglected permanently, and have shown above all that the voters will no longer submit to the invisible domination of capital in politics affairs. It will be well for the Republic if Governe Wilson's observation proves correct, and if the financier and manufacturers themselves realise that they canne live to themselves alone, and that they can have no rea prosperity if the community of which they are but a par is not prospering also.

Art. 13. THE ULSTER COVENANT.

ULSTER Day has come and gone, and the Ulster Covenant has been signed by a very large number of men. If it is a number which falls short of some estimates made by journalists strangely ignorant of the number of persons in Ulster who could by any possibility have signed, it is at all events a sufficient body of support, especially when we have regard to its representative character and to the positions occupied and the means commanded by many of the signatories. Fifty thousand resolute men, backed by the resources of a great industrial community, and dwelling, not amidst a hostile population, but within a circumscribed area which they can control, are sufficient to defy any forces of coercion which are likely to be brought against them. Resolute' men, we have saidit all depends upon that; but there is no reason to doubt their resolution. Ulstermen have a great history behind them; the evidences of their courage and determination are written large in the annals of the past; and in the energy and prosperity of their chief city there is no sign of deterioration. It is mere affectation-a pretence to conceal disquiet-to assert, with the Nationalist and Radical papers, that the movement is mere 'bluff,' that its supporters will melt away when the crisis comes, and that, a year or two hence, Sir Edward Carson will be the most ridiculous figure within the four seas. The recent campaign' was preceded, it is true, by some regrettable outbreaks of violence; while the campaign itself was not without some accompaniments-the military salutes, the wooden cannon, and so forth-which savoured of opera bouffe and detracted from the otherwise dignified character of the proceedings. But such incidents will not weaken, in the mind of the unprejudiced observer, the conviction that the movement is a serious one, led and supported by determined men, and likely, so far as it is possible to judge, to be carried out to the bitter end. Let us place on record, at the outset, the documents which embody the spirit of the movement and define its objects. These are (1) the Resolution unanimously adopted, on September 23, by nearly five hundred members and delegates of the Ulster Unionist Council; and (2) the solemn

Covenant signed on September 28 and following days. The Resolution runs as follows:

'Inasmuch as we, the duly elected delegates and members of the Ulster Unionist Council, representing all parts of Ulster. are firmly persuaded that by no law can the right to gover those whom we represent be bartered away without their consent; that, although the present Government, the source and generations of our race having been forgotten, may drive us forth from a Constitution which we have ever loyally upheld, they may not deliver us bound into the hands of ou enemies; and that it is incompetent for any authority, party. or people to appoint as our rulers a Government dominated by men disloyal to the Empire and to whom our faith and traditions are hateful; and inasmuch as we reverently believe that, as in times past it was given to our fathers to save themselves from a like calamity, so now it may be ordered that our deliverance shall be by our own hands; to which end it is needful that we be knit together as one man, each strengthening the other, and none holding back or counting the cost-therefore we, loyalists of Ulster, ratify and confirm the steps so far taken by the Special Commission this day submitted and explained to us, and we reappoint the Commission to carry on its work on our behalf as in the past.

'We enter into the Solemn Covenant appended hereto, and, knowing the greatness of the issues depending on our faithfulness, we promise each to the others that, to the uttermost of the strength and means given us, and not regarding any selfish or private interest, our substance or our lives, we will make good the said Solemn Covenant; and we now bind ourselves in the steadfast determination that, whatever may befall, no such domination shall be thrust upon us, and in the hope that, by the blessing of God, our union with Great Britain, upon which are fixed our affections and trust, may yet be maintained, and that for ourselves and for our children, for this Province and for the whole of Ireland, peace, prosperity, and civil and religious liberty may be secured under the Parliament of the United Kingdom and of the King whose faithful subjects we are, and will continue all our days.'

The Covenant itself is worded thus:

'Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men

of Ulster, loyal subjects of his Gracious Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the God Whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, hereby pledge ourselves in Solemn Covenant throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland; and, in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognize its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right, we hereto subscribe our names.'

The Covenant recalls, not only in its name but also in its terms and spirit, those famous bonds which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had so great an influence upon the course of Scottish history. The first of these, the Covenant of 1557, bound its signatories to defend the Protestant religion and its ministers and 'the whole Congregation of Christ and every member thereof.' This bond was signed by a comparatively small number of leaders and men of substance, with John Knox at their head. But the result was nothing short of a revolution-the expulsion of the Regent and her French company, and the establishment of Protestantism, in the Presbyterian form, as the religion of the land. Revived in 1581, in the form of a Confession of Faith, with the addition of a declaration of loyalty to the King, the Covenant was signed by James VI, and confirmed the triumph of Presbytery at a moment of apparent reaction. When James VI of Scotland became James I of England, and still more when his son had assumed the double crown, this reaction became more violent; and the Covenant of 1638 was the result. In that document the signatories, among whom many living Ulstermen may find their ancestors,

'promise and swear by the great name of the Lord our God to continue in the profession and obedience of the said religion; and that we shall defend the same... to the utmost of that power which God hath put in our hands, all the days of our life. . . . We promise and swear that we shall to the utmost of our power, with our means and lives, stand to the defence of our dread sovereign the King's Majesty, his person