Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1870-01-21
The Vice Presidents Estimate Of the
Presidents Administration.

Year, with ten months of the administra
ton of President Grant before the country
and the world, it is a fitting time to con
slider the present condition 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.
Econonay every branch of the pub,
lie service his orders initiated retrench-
ments, which have been and are being
carried out with zeal and fidelity. Use,
less offices have been discontinued; the
clerical force in the departments has been
largely decreased; the army was prompt
ly reduced; very many of the surplus
military officers, resulting from the reor-
ganization of the regiments, have been or
dered into service as Indian agents, thus
saving the salaries of an equal number OF
civilians; and unnecessary appropriations
have not been used.
Honest Collections taxation di-
minished from last year, the revenue has
steadily increased, abating the discomfort
which always exists when the honest tax
payer is compelled to bear his own bur-
den, and the burden that should fall on the
dishonest taxpayer besides.
Rinqs With this increased efficiency
and vigilance on the part of the revenue
officers, the whisky ring, once SO wide
spreading and powerful, no longer exists
in an organized capacity anywhere in our
cities or throughout the land. And the
gold ring, which caused such wild excite
ment few months ago, felt the power OF
at timely moment, so that it has not
OF oo oh csnpc of 1ifo or oofson
The Debt-Month by month the people
have witnessed with intense satisfaction
the steady reduction of the national debt
The monthly bulletins of the Treasury
Department have been successive cam
paign documents in favor of the Admins
tration; and when the year expires over
one-twentieth of the bonded debt will
have been paid.
Gold.-Steadily, with the single excep.
ton already alluded to, the premium on
gold has declined; not by any extraordi.
nary attempt ofthe Administration to force
or to hasten the resumption. of specie pay
ments, but by the improved credit of the
nation reacting uponit 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 funded at a
much lower rate of Interest," enabling the
country, in connection with other savings,
to dispense with millions of dollars of tax
alton
Pardons.-Instead of the daily release of
convicted offenders against the laws, the
exercise of Executive clemency has been
confined within proper and healthy re-
strictions, alike just to the criminal and
the country he has wronged.
Public O6icers.-Whatever discontents
there may have been as to this or that
appointment, no fair man can deny that, as
a whole, the nation has never had any
better array Of officers. If the President
could possibly have been guided by uner-
ring inspiration, all would not have been
satisfied with his choice; for, even if a
dozen applicants were thoroughly quail
fed, but one could be selected, and eleven
with all their friends dissatisfied. And,
as there is no Congressman who will
deny that he has made mistakes in selec-
tons in his own district, where he knows
personally so many of his constituents,
how could any President be infallible
when he must depend for knowledge as
to very large proportion of applicants
on the recommendations of others?
Reconstruction.--By the prompt and jul
dicious action of the President, under the
large authority given to him last April, in
the closing hours of the first session of the
Forty-First Congress, the work of recon-
struction 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 Presidents
firm but humane policy, there have been
fewer outrages and outbreaks between the
Mississippi and the Sierras than during
any year since 1868. Peace to the from
tier settlements is boon whose blessings
and joy few here can adequately realize
CGste.-In nothing has the Administra-
ton been more positive and outspokeh
than in the advocacy of the Fifteenth
Amendment, from the day that it was
recommended in the inaugural till the
present hour, when its final ratification
seems so near at hand. And, before its
formal adoption, the President has illus
trated his beliefin its justice by appointing
to office, of both higher and lower degree,
many whose race and color, irrespective
of their intellectual qualifications, had
previously placed them under the ban OF
official ostracism. The following terse
and emphatic remark of the President I'd
Attorney General Hoar, and quoted by
the latter at the recent New England din.
ner in New York, is worthy to be printed
in letters of golds ,,ag~rr,v
81 hope to see the time when every
man in this country may have power tc
express his own opinion, to follow whom
he pleases, to vote as he likes, and to have
his vote counted, without molestation, OF
hindrance, or insult If we can only unite
in maintaining public faith and credit, oul
political differences will not be Of much
account" Gt5 M
The Alabama Uaims.-The brief bu
pointed illusions in the Presidents annua
message to "the only grave question which
the United States have with any fcrsigt
nation" must be fresh In the fdeihory O
all. And alse his emphatic sentence
"A sensitive people, conscious of theil
power, are more at ease under a grea
wrong wholly unatoncd than under the
restraint of a settlement which Statistic,
neither their ideas of justice nor theil
grave sense of the grievance"
If any amplifcation of the ground or
which the nation stands on this question
was needed, the mastery and unanswer
able argument of Secretary Fish, recently
published, investing as it does with new
interest a theme so deliberately argued
heretofore, shows how faithfully the AID
ministration is indicating "the rights
dignity and honor" of the United States
Cuba-The Presidents sympathies with
all people struggling for liberty and self
government" are frankly stated in hi.
message. But, while thus openly ex
pressing them, he..as frankly declares thai