represent the British Government was Joseph Chamberlain, M.P. The reference to arbitration was made against the wishes of Congress, and of the people whose interests were most immediately concerned, the American fishermen. These facts alone would have been sufficient to endanger the success of the mission; the appointment of such a man as Chamberlain insured its failure. O'Reilly predicted: "When the farce is over, no doubt the Senate will quietly shelve Mr. Bayard's new treaty and that will be the end of the matter until the humiliating experiences of 1886 and 1887 are repeated in the season of 1888. After which the deluge, and a presidential election."
Whatever hope there might have been for the treaty was dispelled by Mr. Chamberlain himself, who, on the eve of his departure for the field of his mission, made a flippant and foolish speech, in which he insulted Irish-Americans and sneered at the people of Canada, whose interests he was supposed to champion. "A foreign commissioner," wrote O'Reilly, "who begins by wantonly offending twenty millions of sensitive, active Americans, may be let alone to work his own cure." To complete the offensiveness of his conduct, the commissioner was escorted by a bodyguard of detectives on landing in the United States, professing to fear personal violence from the Irish-Americans. "Mr. Chamberlain need have no fear for his life," said O'Reilly; "it is only the public or spiritual part of Mr. Chamberlain that excites aversion, and that he is surely killing himself. The bodily part can live on, carrying the suicidal corpse of his reputation as an example and a warning to other 'radical statesmen.' " Mr. Chamberlain was not killed, he was not even insulted. His advent would have been of very little importance, one way or another, save for the fact that it contributed materially to the killing of something infinitely more valuable than himself, a Democratic Administration.
In the heat and fury of the national election, an incident occurred which came very near turning the scales in favor of President Cleveland's re-election. The British
