The Russellville Democrat., 1876-10-05

C0 iAinCttCAu NOiuiUtICc lIOIl JilC first to an inferior rank upon the high seas; it has cut down the walls of American manufacturers at home and abroad; it has depict ed the returns of American agri- culture, an industry followed by half of our people; it costs the people five times more than 1t produces to the treasury; ob- structs the process of production and wastes the fruits Of labor; it promotes fraud, fosters snug gling, enriches dishonest officials, and brnkrupts honest merchants. We demand that all Custom House taxation shall be only for revenue. Reform is necessary in the scale of public expense-Fed eral, State and Municipal. Our Federal taxation has swollen from $60,000,000 gold in 1860 to $450, 100000 in currency in 1870: our aggregate taxation from $l54,- 100000 gold in 1860 to 30,000,- 000 currency in 1S70-all in ore decade from less than $5 per head to more than SIS per head. Since the peace, the people have paid to their tax-gatherers more than thrice the sum for the Federal Government alone. We demand a rigorous frugality in every de partment and from every officer of the Government.
 Reform is necessary to put a stop to the prohigate waste O. pub lie lands and their diversion from actual settlers by the party in power, which has squandered two hundred millions of acres upon railroads alone, and out of more than thrice that aggregate nas dis posed of less than q sixth directly to the tillers of the soil.
 Reform is necessary to correct the omissions of Republican Congress and the errors of our treaties and our diplomacy, which has stripped our fellow-citizens of foreign birth and kindred race re- erasing the Atlantic from the shield of citizenship, and has ex posed our brethren of the Pacific coast to the incursions of race not sprung from the same great parent stock, and, in fact, now by law denied citizenship through naturalization as being to the tra ditions of q progressive civiliza- tion, one exercised in liberty un- der equal laws; and we denounce the policy which thus discards the liberty loving German and tolerates the revival of the Coolie trade in Mongolian women, inn ported fo. immoral purposes, and Mongolian men held to perform servile labor contract.
 Reform is necessary and never can be effected but by making it the controlling issue of the cleo tion and lifting it above the two false issues with which the office holding classes and the party in power seek to smother it.
 l. The false issue with which this would enkindle sectarian strife Tn respect to the public schools of which the establish ment and support belong exclu- sively to the several States, and which the Democratic party has cherished from their foundation and is resolved to maintain with out partiality or preference for any class, sect or creed. and with out contributions from the treas ury to any.
 ,, The false issue by which they seek to light anew the dying embers of sectional hate between kindred people once unnaturally estranged. but now reunited in one indivisable republic and a common destiny.
 All these abuses, wrongs and crimes, the product of sixteen years ascendeDcy of the Republi- can party, create a necessity for reform, confessed by Republicans themselves; but their reformers are voted down in convention and displaced from the Cabinet. The party's mass of honest voters is powerless to resist the eighty thousand office holders, its lead CTS and its guides. Reform can only be had by a peaceful civic revolution. We demand a change of system, a change of Admins tration, change of party, that we may have change of meas ures and of men.
 Resolved, That this Convention representing the Democratic par ty of the States, do cordially en- dorse the action of the present House of Representatives for re- ducing and curtailing the expen- ses of the Federal Govern ent, in cutting down onerous salaries, ex- travagant appropriations, and in abolishing useless offices and places not required by the public necessities, and we shall trust to the firmness of the Democratic members of the House that no committee oi conference and no misintcrpretation of rules will be allowed to defeat these whole