The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-11

or near TO the senate. His name appears IN
the proceedings of the Senate but short
time before the vote was taken, and he must
have left with the full knowledge that the
test vote on the income tax was soon to be
taken. While there was any possible danger
of restoring the tax on gross receipts, to i'm
pair the revenues of his vast railroad and
other corporate interests, he was faith
fully at his post; but when that danger
was over, he retreated from the Senate to
enable minority TO reimpose upon the peo-
pie the most iniquitous and offensive tax ever
inflicted upon any nation 1t is not disguised
that the income tax was re-enacted to enable
corporations to escape the tax on gross re-
ceipts, and the conviction is widespread that
corrupt combinations of interested parties
have made the interests of the people subor-
dinate to private peculation. In this combi-
nation, of whatever character it may have
been, Senator Cameron was certainly chief
manager, and instead of meeting the issue
manfully, he sllulked away, leaving to few
Northern Senators and the carpet-baggers
the distasteful and disgraceful task
The tax upon gross receipts, in which
Senator Cameron and other speculative Sena-
tors and politicians are so deeply interested
does not open wide the doors of fraud Cor
porations cannot we'll make false returns of
their gross earnings, but individuals can
commit the most fragrant frauds upon the
Government in returning incomes. Senator
Cameron, reputed one of the most opulent
men of the State owns under oath, to less
than $500 of revenue subject to income tax,
$4,000 of which is Senatorial salary. We do
not assume that he returned his income
falsely; but if he did not, his in
come must be mainly from divi-
dends and interest on corporation stocks
and bonds, which are directly and greatly
affected by the tax on gross receipts.
Whichever explanation may be the true one,
his Senatorial action, after pretending to op-
pose the income tax, is none the less dis
graceful to himself and humiliating to his
State. By his failure to vote when he had
knowledge that the test was soon to come, the
nation is made to suffer the most grievous of
all the necessitous war measures, and that,
too, when the statement of the Treasury
was just issued, showing over $20,OO0,O0O
of the debt had been paid in single month.
- To the deliberate skulking of Senator Ca
meron, apparently actuated by his great in
terest in releasing other sources of taxation,
are we indebted for the re-enactment of the
only tax that is inquisitorial in its operation,
that endangers individual credit, that invites
every seoundrel to defraud the Government,
and that is odious to nineteen-twentieths of
the loyal people of the country. By Came
rons eowardly refusal to vote on the question,
a horde of greedy official cormorants are con-
tinued to inquire into the private business of
the people and waste their substance.
Almost with one accord the leading Republican
press of the great business and commercial
sections protest against it, and thousands of
earnest Republicans feel that they have been
corruptly betrayed by ring of speculators
and that Senator Cameron is the author of
the wrong. Upon him the responsibility must
rest, and whatever the political consequences
may be will be chargeable to the chief po-
litical trickster who has climbed into the
Senate through political prostitution and de-
bauchery, to shame the noblest and best State
of the Union.