In the term of Congress immediately following the presidential election it was found possible to reduce materially the war taxes which had been levied on the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Arrangements were perfected for the termination of the American military occupation of Cuba and the inauguration of a Cuban Republic as a virtual protectorate of the United States, the American government having arranged with the Cuban constitutional convention for the retention of certain naval stations on the Cuban coast. In the Philippines advanced steps had been taken in the substitution of civil government for military occupation, and a governor-general, Judge William H. Taft, had been appointed and sent to Manila. Prosperity at home was great, and foreign relations were free from complications. The problems which had devolved upon McKinley's administration had been far advanced towards final settlement. He retained without change the cabinet of his first administration. After an arduous and anxious term, the president had reached a period that promised to give him comparative repose and freedom from care. He had secured, through the co-operation of Congress, the permanent reorganization of the army and a very considerable development of the navy. In these circumstances. President McKinley, accompanied by the greater part of his cabinet, set forth in the early summer on a tour to visit the Pacific coast, where he was to witness the launching of the battleship "Ohio" at San Francisco. The route chosen was through the Southern states, where many stops were made, and where the president delivered brief addresses. The heartiness of the welcome accorded him seemed to mark the disappearance of the last vestige of sectional feeling that had survived the Civil War, in which McKinley had participated as a young man. After his return he spent a month in a visit at his old home in Canton, Ohio, and at the end of this visit, by previous arrangement, he visited the city of Buffalo, New York, in order to attend the Pan-American exposition and deliver a public address. This address (Sept. 5, 1901) was a public utterance designed by McKinley to affect American opinion and public policy, and apparently to show that he had modified his views upon the tariff. It declared that henceforth the progress of the nations must be through harmony and co-operation, in view of the fast-changing conditions of communication and trade, and it maintained that the time had come for wide-reaching modifications in the tariff policy of the United States, the method preferred by McKinley being that of commercial reciprocity arrangements with various nations. On the following day, the 6th of September 1901, a great reception was held for President McKinley in one of the public buildings of the exposition, all sorts and conditions of men being welcome. Advantage of this opportunity was taken by a young man of Polish parentage, by name Leon Czolgosz, to shoot at the president with a revolver at close range. One of the two bullets fired penetrated the abdomen. After the world had been assured that the patient was doing well and would recover, he collapsed and died on the 14th. The assassin, who, it was for a time supposed, had been inflamed by the editorials and cartoons of the demagogic opposition press, but who professed to hold the views of that branch of anarchists who believe in the assassination of rulers and persons exercising political authority, was promptly seized, and was convicted and executed in October 1901. McKinley's conduct and utterances in his last days revealed a loftiness of personal character that everywhere elicited admiration and praise. Immediately after his death Vice-President Roosevelt took the oath of office, announcing that it would be his purpose to continue McKinley's policy, while also retaining the cabinet and the principal officers of the government. McKinley's funeral took place at Canton, Ohio, on the 19th of September, the occasion being remarkable for the public manifestations of mourning, not only in the United States, but in Great Britain and other countries; in Canton a memorial tomb has been erected.

Though he had not the personal magnetism of James G. Blaine, whom he succeeded as a leader of the Republican party and whose views of reciprocity he formally adopted in his last public address, McKinley had great personal suavity and dignity, and was thoroughly well liked by his party colleagues. As a politician he was always more the people's representative than their leader, and that he "kept his ear to the ground" was the source of much of his power and at the same time was his greatest weakness: his address at Buffalo the day before his assassination seems to voice his appreciation of the change in popular sentiment regarding the tariff laws of the United States and is the more remarkable as coming from the foremost champion for years of a form of tariff legislation devised to stifle international competition. His apparently inconsistent record on the coinage question becomes consistent if considered in the same way, as the expression of the gradually changing views of his constituency. And it may not be fanciful to suggest that the obvious growth of McKinley in breadth and power during his term as president was due to his being the representative of a larger constituency, less local and less narrow-minded. He was an able but far from brilliant campaign speaker. His greatest administrative gift was a fine intuition in choosing men to serve him. McKinley's private life was irreproachable; and very fine was his devotion to his wife, Ida Saxton (d. 1907), whom he had married in Canton in 1871, who was throughout his political career a confirmed invalid. He was from his early manhood a prominent member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

His Speeches and Addresses were printed in two volumes (New York, 1893 and 1901).

McKINNEY, a city and the county-seat of Collin county, Texas, U.S.A., about 30 m. N. by E. of Dallas. Pop. (1890), 2489; (1900), 4342 (917 negroes); (1910) 4714. It is served by the Missouri, Kansas & Texas and the Houston & Texas Central railways, and by the Dallas & Sherman inter-urban (electric) line, the central power plant of which is immediately north of the city. McKinney is in a fine farming region; there are also manufactures. The municipal water supply is obtained from artesian wells. The first settlement in Collin county was made about 10 m. north of what is now McKinney in 1841. McKinney was named, as was the county, in honour of Collin McKinney, a pioneer in the region and a signer of the Declaration of the Independence of Texas. It was settled in 1844, was laid out and became the county-seat in 1846, and was first chartered as a city in 1874.

MACKINTOSH, SIR JAMES (1765-1832), Scottish publicist, was born at Aldourie, 7 m. from Inverness, on the 24th of October 1765. He came of old Highland families on both sides. He went in 1780 to college at Aberdeen, where he made a friend of Robert Hall, afterwards the famous preacher. In 1784 he proceeded for the study of medicine to Edinburgh, where he participated to the full in the intellectual ferment, but did not quite neglect his medical studies, and took his degree in 1787.

In 1788 Mackintosh removed to London, then agitated by the trial of Warren Hastings and the king's first lapse into insanity. He was much more interested in these and other political events than in his professional prospects; and his attention was specially directed to the events and tendencies which caused or preceded the Revolution in France. In 1789 he married his first wife, Catherine Stuart, whose brother Daniel afterwards became editor of the Morning Post. His wife's prudence was a corrective to his own unpractical temperament, and his efforts in journalism became fairly profitable. Mackintosh was soon absorbed in the question of the time; and in April 1791, after long meditation, he published his Vindiciae Gallicae, a reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. It was the only worthy answer to Burke that appeared. It placed the author in the front rank of European publicists, and won him the friendship of some of the most distinguished men of the time, including Burke himself. The success of the Vindiciae finally decided him to give up the medical for the legal profession. He was called to the bar in 1795, and gained a considerable reputation there as well as a tolerable practice. In 1797 his wife died, and next year he married Catherine Allen, sister-in-law of Josiah and John Wedgwood, through whom he introduced Coleridge to the Morning Post. As a lawyer his greatest public efforts were his lectures (1799) at Lincoln's Inn on the law of nature and nations, of which the introductory discourse was published, and his eloquent defence (1803) of Jean Gabriel Peltier, a French refugee, tried at the instance of the French government for a libel against the first consul. In 1803 he was knighted, and received the post of recorder at Bombay. The spoilt child of London society was not at home in India, and he was glad to return to England, where he arrived in 1812.