lican party. Harrison's first Congress had passed a series of laws
that provoked opposition and criticism. The Interstate Commerce Law was
still new when he took office. In quick succession in 1890 came the new
States, and Oklahoma Territory, the Dependent Pensions Bill, the Sherman
Anti-Trust Bill, the Silver Purchase Bill, and the McKinley Tariff. The
dominant majority had used arbitrary methods to enforce its will and had
given to its enemies more than one text. After 1891 the Democratic
majority in the House reduced the Administration to the political
incompetence that had prevailed from 1883 to 1889.

Benjamin Harrison gained little prestige as the result of the
Administration. He had been nominated for his availability, and the
campaign songs had said as much of his illustrious grandfather, the hero
of Tippecanoe, as of himself. His appointments had pleased neither the
politicians nor the reformers, while there was much laughter at the
presence in the offices of numerous personal friends and relatives. The
most notable of his appointments was the most embarrassing.

James G. Blaine, as Secretary of State, found no topic in foreign
relations as interesting as the canal had been in his earlier term. The
wranglings with Great Britain and Germany over their treatment of
naturalized Americans had subsided. The fisheries of the North Atlantic
had been temporarily settled by President Cleveland. The regulation of
the seal fisheries of Bering Sea brought no new glory to Blaine.

There was no doubt that the seal herd of the Pacific was being rapidly
destroyed by careless and wasteful hunters from most of the countries
bordering on that ocean. On the American islands the herds could be
protected, and here they gathered every summer to mate and breed. But
the men who hunted with guns at sea, instead of with clubs on land,
could not be controlled unless the world would consent to an American
police beyond the three-mile limit. In an arbitration with Great
Britain, at Paris, Blaine tried to prove that the seals were American,
and entitled to protection on the high seas, and that the waters of the
northern Pacific were _mare clausum_. The arbitration went against him
on every material point.

The only episode that threatened war occurred in Chile. Here Harrison
had sent as Minister Patrick Egan, a newly naturalized Irishman and
follower of Blaine. In a revolution of 1891 Egan sided with the
conservative party that lost. His