The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1871-05-04
Address Of the Democratic Members OF Con
gTeESo

gresso
10 Ge People of khe United States:
Our presence and official duties at Washing.
ton have enabled us to become fully acquainted
with the actions and designs Of those who con-
troll the Radical party, and we feel called upon
to utter few words of warning against the
alarming strides they have made towards the
centralization Of power in the hands Of Con-
gress and the Executive. The time and atten-
ton Of the Radical leaders have been almost
wholly directed to devising guch legislation as
will, in their view, best preserve their ascen.
dancy, and no regard for the wise restraints i'm
posed by the Constitution has checked their
reckless and desperate career. The President
of the United States has been formally an
nounced as candidate for reelection. The
declarations of his selfish supporters have been
echoed by subsidized press, and the discipline
of party has already made adhesion to his
personal fortunes the supreme test of political
fealty. The partisan legislation to which We
refer was decreed and shaped in secret caucus,
where the EXTREMIST counsels always domina-
ted, and vas adopted by subservient majority,
if not with the intent certainly with the effect
to place in the hands of the President power to
command his own denomination, and to em-
ploy the army, navy and militia, at his sole dis
cretion, as a means of subscribing his personal
ambition. When the sad experience of the last
two years, 30 disappointing to the hopes and
generous confidence of the country, is eonsid-
cred, in connection with the violent utterances
and rash purposes of those who control the
Presidents policy, it is not surprising that the
gravest apprehensions for the future peace of
the nation should be entertained.
At time when labor is depressed, and every
material interest is palsied by oppressive taxa
ton, the public Offices have been multiplied be-
yond all precedent to serve as instruments in
the perpetuation of power. Partisanship is the
only test applied to the distribution Of this vast
patronage Honesty, fitness and moral worth
are openly discarded in favor of trucking SUBJ
mission and dishonorable compliance; hence
enormous defalcations and widespread corrup-
ton have followed as the natural consequences
of this pernicious system. By the official re-
port of the Secretary of the Treasury, it ap-
pears that after the deduction of all proper
credits, many millions of dollars remain from
ex-collectors of the internal revenue, and that
no proper diligence has ever been used to col
lect them. Reforms in the revenue and fiscal
systems, which all experience demonstrates to
be necessary to frugal administration of the
Government as we'll as measure of relief to
an over-burdened people, have been persistent
now adjourns without having even attempted
to reduce taxation, or to repeal the glaring i'm
positions by which industry is crushed and i'm
poverished. The treasury is overfowing, and
an excess of $780, OO0, 600 of revenue is admitted;
and yet, instead OF. some measure of present re-
lief, barren and delusive resolution is passed
by the Senate to consider the tariff and excise
systems hereafter, as if the history of broken
pledges and pretended remedies furnished any
better assurance for future legislation than ex-
perience has done in the past
Ship building and the carrying trade, once
sources of national pride and prosperity, now
languish under crashing load of taxation,
and nearly every other business interest is
struggling without profit to maintain itself.
Our agricuiturists, while paying heavy taxes
on all they consume, either to the Government
or to monopolists, find the prices for their own
products so reduced that honest labor is denied
its Just reward, and industry is Frustrated by
invidious discrimination. Nearly 200,0O0,0 900
acres of public lands, which should have been
reserved for the benefit of the people, have been
voted away to giant corporations, neglecting
our soldiers and enriehing handful Of greedy
spectators and lobbyists who are thereby en-
abled to exercise most dangerous and coryup-
ting influence over State and Federal legisla-
tion. If the career of these conspirators be
not checked, the downfall Of free government
is inevitable, and with it the elevation Of
military dictator on the ruins Of the republic.
Under pretense of passing laws to enforce
the fourteenth amendment, and for other pur-
poses. Congress has conferred themost despotic
powers upon the Executive, and provided an
official machinery, by which the liberties of
the people are menaced and the sacred right of
local self-government in the States is ignored,
if not tyranically overthrown. Modelled up to
the sedition laws, 80 odious in history, they are
at variance with all the sanctifed theories of
our institutions And the construction given
by these Radical interpreters to the fourteenth
amendment is, to use the language of an emf
nent Senator, Mr.. Truubull, Of Illinios, an
"annihilator Of States" Under the last en-
forcement bill "the Executive may, in his dis
cretion, thrust aside the government Of any
State, suspend the writ of habeas co7pus," ar
rest its Governor, imprison or disperse, the
Legislature, silence its judges, and trample
down its people under the armed heel of his
troops. Nothing is left to the citizen or the
State which can any longer be called right;
all is changed into mere suferance:: Our hopes
for redress are in the calm, good sense, the
"sober second thought" of the American peo-
pie. We call upon them to be true to them
selves ana 10 tnelr PasG, anu isre3aruinS paiCy
names and minor differences, to insist upon a
decent equalization of power, the restriction of
Federal authority within its just and proper
limits, leaving to the States that control over
domestic affairs which is essential to their hap
piness, and tranquility, and government.
Everything that malicious ingenuity could
suggest has been done to irritate the people OF
the Middle and Southern States. Gross and
exaorerated charges of disorder and violence
owe their origin to the mischievous minds Of
potential managers in the Senate and House OF
Representatives, to which the Executive has,
we regret to say, lent his aid, and thus helped
to in1ame the popular feeling. In all this
course of hostile legislation and harsh resent
ment, no word of conciliation, of kind encour-
agement or fratornal feeling has ever been
spoken by the President or Congress to the ,peo'
pie of the Southern States. They have been
addressed only in the language of prescription:
We earnestly entreat our fellow citizens in all