The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-10-19

tirely outside of and uninfuenoed bv mere
politics. In brief, the right person was to
have control of the Office, and il was TO be
conducted for the benefit of the whole
country without discrimination. How these
professions have been carried out we have all
seen.
Mr.. Delano, as compared with Mr. Rollins,
has more energy, perhaps, and is more of a
dlsoiphnarian than the latter, but is as little
OF lawyer and unquestionably more of a
thoroughbred politician. He brought to the
Office his Congressional experience, which was
OF lncalculable advantage to him, viewed from
the standing-point of personal advancement.
1t was simply farce to appoint such a man
to Office and proclaim his intended conduct of
its affairs above the reach and influence of
politics, and we said so at the time. We
confess, however, that his initiative measures
induced us to look for really better state of
things than has followed. One favorable
sign was his taking our advice and breaking
up the iniquitous clique that had ruled the
Office SO shamefully under his predecessor and
which we took the pains to expose to him
in these columns. Another was his removal
of certain notoriously corrupt officers from
the service in important collection districts
whom Mr.. Rollins either would not or could
not displace. But here the steps towards i'm
prOyement ended. The same general princi-
pies determining Mr.. Rollins transaction of
the Office business seem to have been adopted
throughout by Mr.. Delano; and, as a natural
consequence, we have had the same narrow
minded, illegal, laundering decisions; the
same unjust treatment Of claimants and petty
resort to avoid refund of taxes unlawfully
taken from the taxpayers. The records of
the bureau may not perhaps show quite as
many unsound rulings as occurred within
like period of Mr.. Rollins reign, but they
will show enough of such to stamp Mr.. De-
lano as unfit to be the chief of the revenue
Office.
1t has been triumphantly asserted by Rad
ical papers and politicians that more revenue
has been derived from whisky and tobacco
under Mr.. Delano's rule than under Mr.. Rol-
Inns. MIR. Delano himself has had the bad
taste to tell us this on the stump 1t must
be remembered, however, that while this is
true the credit for it does not belong to Mr..
Delano. The tax on whisky was reduced to
figure that lessened the temptation to fraud,
and the Legislative requirements governing
both that article and tobacco were of such a
character as to bring more of the actual pro-
duction to tax than had hitherto been reached.
All this just as Mr. Delano took his seat.
There would have been the same increase of
revenue under any one else it came of itself
in the natural order of things, and not from
any of Mr. Delano's doings.
So far from the bureau being conducted
without regard to politics, it has been con-
Quoted with special reference to and for the
promotion of them; the head of it having
always carefully kept in view theadvancement
Of radical interests in general, without ne
glecting his own chances for preferment in
particular His zeal for the public good has
not prevented him from looking towards the
Senate chamber and aspiring to seat
therein. He certainly holds peculiar ideas of
right and propriety. Something of these may
be recognized in his leaving his Office to
openly take the stump, for which he is much
better fitted by nature than for the post he
holds. He does not find it inconsistent with
his ideas of public duty and official dignity to
abandon that post, as though the people
had no claim whatever upon his
services and presence there, and assume
a most unseemly personal part in the political
struggles of the hour, in opposition to those
who contribute equally with others to the
too large salary he draws with unfailing regu-
larity from the general treasury; but he does
find it inconsistent with them to make a de-
cision conforming with existing law when
his personal prejudices or interests run coun-
ter to it, or to allow claim which is plainly
as valid as law can make it if he has pur-
pose to gain in rejecting it. While he has
been off electioneering, the business of his
Office, involving millions of dollars, has been
stopped, to the injury of the immense inte-
rests involved; business, too, which should
have been settled months ago, and would
have been had he conscentiously performed
his duties. And this he calls "honest ad-
ministration" in his public harangues. We
have at this moment proofs in our possession
which will show that his administration has
been anything but honest and we purpose
laying them before the public at an early day.
The entire doings of the Office are as corrupt
and unlawful now as they have ever been, and
they need the constant attention which we
shall take it upon ourselves to give them. A
bureau which controls the collection of one
hundred and fifty millions year and dispenses
the patronage of so vast system is of too
much importance to every national interest
for either the people or the press to keep
silence about.