Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1875-10-22
The Issues.

The Issues.
The Independent, speaking of the outlook,
says, 'Things political are getting very much
mixed, and then undertakes to show that the
difference between the Democratic and Repub-
lican parties exists only in name, and that after
all administrative reform is what all the people
want and therefore they will vote for those
candidates who are most apt to administer their
public trusts honestly. To much of this we
agree and from much of it we dissent.
There is class of men in this community
as elsewhere, who believe that
"a merciful Providence fashioned us hollow
On purpose that we our principles might swal-
low
These men protested to start off on an s'inde-
pendent movement" and have found themselves
in the Republican ranks, voting with them
for the nominees of their conventions, and it is
not surprising that such people should now
think that ''things political are getting very
much mixed" We agree with our neighbor
in this, only he should have said things are
very much mixed. And we fear that they are
so very much mixed, in this county and State
in the present canvass, as to require Sam
Weller's microscopes to distinguish between
the Republicans and the so-called Independents
who vote for the nominees of the former party
1t may suit such as these to say that things are
getting mixed, but we do not believe any dis
interested man, of average intelligence, will be
misled by such twaddie from those nondescript
organs which choose to call themselves ''inde-
pendent" To listen to the foolish gush of
these papers one would be led to believe that
the "independent voter was thing unknown
to the. politics of the country until discovered
by the ''Independent press" and that it is ne
cessary for the latter to act as wet nurse to the
founding. The sooner these hermaphrodite
papers cease singing such nursery nonsense the
sooner there will be room in their columns for
matters of some interest. The truly indepen-
dent voter is no invention of the calow journa-
ism of yesterday. He has always existed, and
made himself felt in emergencies He pins his
faith to no organ and votes according to the
dictates of his own Judgment. In word, she
paddles his own canoe" He is man of sense
and knows that he cannot always have every
thing just as he likes it, and therefore takes the
next best he can get. He exerts his influence
within party and does not frittsr it away on
the outskirts of both parties. This is your real
honest, intelligent independent voter and it
is such men as these we expect will vote with
the Democratic party in favor of administrative
REFORM and against the Republican party,
which has been such mass of corruption from
the President down that it stnks in the nostrils
of the people. But when these papers under
take to say that there are no differences in
principles between the Democratic and Repub-
lican parties, then they cease to write gush and
slush, and are practising to deceive their
readers.
For upwards of forty years before the advent
of the Republican party to power the Democrats
had administered the government of the Nation
and of most of the States. During this long
period prosperity most unexampled had been
attained but attained only after long and
fierce contest for the supremacy of the great
principles of Free Trade, Hard Money and
States Rights. These had finally been acqui
esced in as the great fundamental rules by
which our government should be guided, when
the questions growing out of the slavery agita-
ton gave birth and rapid growth to the Repub-
lican party and finally placed it in power. The
war followed-and it may be said that all other
parties were absorbed in the great Union party.
After the war new issues growing out of it a.
gain drew the line between Democrats and Re-
publicans: and that line has been becoming
L. ,-I IaSp nod
until now the Democratic party presents itself
before the people in direct antagonism to the
Republican party and as the advocate of Free
Trade, Hard Money, Home Rule, and Admins
trative Reform. These are not dead issues, as
the truly independent voters discovered last
fall, in spite of such papers as the Independent
But they are things of the present, addressing
themselves to the men of the day, and steadily
winning such men as Bigelow of n. Y. to their
support. These issues not the offspring of
passion, which lasts but an hour, but the result
of thoughtful study of the country's needs
end a patriotic effort to supply them. They are
issues which no jargon about the independent
voter or a political millennium can put down
and cover over. They are the same which
guided the party in the days of Jefferson, Jack
son and Polk, and have now been endorsed and
approved by the Democracy of fifteen States,
which comprise more than one half OF the
whole population of the United States They
are needs which will grow and become more
imperious until our business is put in the hands
of honest men, till our tariff is levied for revenue
only, and our currency is coin or its equivalent
and until the right Of the people Of the States
to regulate their own affairs, without the inter-
vention of Federal bayonets, is fully recognized.
Robbery in all branches of the government
has characterized the administration of the Re
publicans, commencing during the war and
coming down through the second ruin of the
conquered half of the Nation, and eliminating
in the Custom House, Credit Mobilier, Whiskey
Ring, Indian Ring, Washington Ring and other
infamies at the National Capitol and in the
Northern States ''too numerous to mention"
The protective tariff which has been enforced
under the rule of Republicanism, which, whilst
levying duties on $500 different articles, fails
to pay as much into the Treasury as Great
Britain derives from duties on but fourteen ar
ticles. For every dollar this tariff has paid