Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1870-01-19
COLFAX on GRANT.
The Vice Presidents Estimate of the
Presidents Administration.

Z
Standing on the threshold of the
new year, with ten months of the ad-
ministration of President Grant before
the country and the world, it is a fit
| ting time TO consider the present con-
| dition of affairs, and to contrast it
with March last, when he took the
solemn oath that invested him with
| the power conferred on him by the
! popular vote.
EconOmy.-In every branch of the
public service his orders initiated re-
! trenchments, which have been and
are being carried out with zeal and
! fidelity. Useless offices have been dis
continued; the clerical force in the
departments has been largely decreas-
ed; the army was promptly reduced
very many of the surplus military
! officers, resulting from the reorgani-
zation of the regiments, have been
/ ordered into service as Indian agents,
| thus saving the salaries of an equal
number of civilians; and unnecessary
appropriations have not been used.
| Honest Collections.-With taxation
diminished from last year, the reve-
nue. has already increased, abating
the discomfort which always exists
when the honest taxpayer is COM
PEELED to bear his own burden, and
I the burden that should fall on the dis
honest taxpayer besides.
/ Rings.-With this increased eff
cheney and vigilance on the part of
| the revenue officers, the whisky ring,
once so wide-spreading and powerful,
no longer exists in an organized ca
pacity anywhere in our cities or
/ throughout the land. And the gold
ring, (which caused such wild excite
ment a few months ago, felt the pow
er of the President and his Financial
| Secretary at timely moment, so that
i it has not since shown signs of life or
action.
The Debt.-Month by month the
people have witnessed with intense
satisfaction the steady reduction of
I the National Debt. The monthly
bulletins of the Treasury Department
/ have been successive campaign dOcu-
ments in favor of the Administration;
and, when the year expires, over one
| twentieth of the bonded debt will
have been paid.
Gold.- Steadily, with the exception
already alluded to, the premium on
gold has declined, not by any extra
| ordinary attempt by the Administra-
| ton to force or hasten the resumption
of specie payments, but by the i'm
proved credit of the nation reacting
upon it. Already the very narrow
margin between the premium on gold
and the selling price of our bonds,
points Enthusiastically to the nearness
| of the time when the debt can be
/ founded at a much lower rate of inter-
est, enabling the country, in connec-
/ ton with other sayings, to dispense
with scores of millions of dollars of
/ taxation.
PardOns.-Instead of the daily re-
lease of convicted offenders against
/ the laws, the exercise of Executive
/ clemency has been confined within
/ proper and healthy restrictions, alike
! just to the criminal and the country
he has wronged.
Public Officers.-Whateve discon
/ tents there may have been as to this
or that appointment, no fair man can
deny that, as a whole, the nation has
/ ever had any better array of officers.
/ If the President could possibly have
been guided by unerTing inspiration
all would not have been satisfied with
/ his choice; for, even if q dozen appli-
cants were thoroughly qualified, but
one could be selected, and eleven with
all their friends dissatisfied. And, as
I there is no Congressman who will
/ deny that he has sometimes made
mistakes in selections in his own dis
I trict, where he knows personally so
many of his constituents, how could
any President be infallible when he
must depend for knowledge as to a
very large proportion of applicants on
the recommendation of others?
Reconstruction the prompt
and judicious action of the President,
under the large authority gwen to
him last April, in the closing hours of
/ the first session of the Forty-first Con-
/ gress, the work of reconstruction
draws rapidly to its close, and, before
the resurrection of spring gladdens
our hearts, we may hope to see every
State in the Union fully represented
in the National Councils.
The Indians.-Under the Presi-
dents firm but humape policy, there
have been fewer Indian outrages and
outbreaks between the Mississippi
and the SieTras than during any year
since 1868. Peace to the frontier set
Elements is a boon whose blessings
and Joy few here can adequately real
ize.
Caste.-In nothing has the Admin
istratiOn been more positive and out
| spoken than in the advocacy of the
Fifteenth Amendment, from the day
that it was recommended in the in
augural to the present hour, when its
final ratification seems so near at
hand. And, before its formal adop-
I ton, the President has illustrated his
belief in its justice by appointing to
office, of both higher and lower de-
gree, many whose race and color, ire
spective of their intellectual qualifica-
tions, had previously y placed them un-
der the ban of official Ostracism. The
following terse and emphatic remark
of the President to Attorney General
Hoar, and quoted by the latter of the
recent New England dinner in New
York, is worthy to be printed in let
ters of gold:
''I hope to see the time when every
man in this country may have the power
to express his own opinion, to follow
whom he pleases, to vote as he likes, and
to have his vote counted, without moles-
tation, or hindrance, or insult. If we
can only unite in maintaining public
faith and credit, our political differences
will not be of much account"
The Alabama Claims.-The brief
but pointed allusions in the Presidents
annual message to "the only grave
question which the United States
have with any foreign nation" must
be fresh in the memory of all. And
also his emphatic sentence:
"a sensitive people, conscious of their
power, are more at ease under a great
/ wrong, wholly unatoned, than under the
restraint of a settlement which satisfies
neither their ideas of justice nor their
grave sense of the grievance"
If any amplification of the ground
on which the nation stands ON this
question was needed, the mastery and
unanswerable argument of Secretary
Fish, recently published, investing as
it does with new interest a theme so
elaborately argued heretofore, shows
how faithfully the Administration is
vindicating 1.-THE rights, dignity, and
honor" of the United States.
Cuba.-The Presidents sympathies
with 'all people struggling for liberty
and self-gOvernment"a are frankly sta
ted in his message. But, while thus
openly expressing them, he as frankly
declares that, "no matter how un-
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