The Russellville Democrat., 1876-08-31

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 walls of American manufacturers at home and abroad it has depict l ed the returns of American agti culture, an industry followed by
 half of our people, it costs the people five times more than it produces to the treasury; oh
 structs the process of production 1 and wastes the fruits ot labor; it 1 promotes fraud, fosters snug
 gling, enrichcs 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, 100000 gold in 1860 to $450, ,000,000 in currency ill 1870:
 our aggregate taxation from $l 54, 600, GOO gold in 1860 to $730,000, GOO currency in IS70-all in ore l 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 1 Government alone. We demand
 a rigorous frugality in every dc partment and from every officer of 1 the Government.
 Reform is necessary to put
 stop to the proiligate waste O. pub
 lie lands and their diversion from
 actual settlers by the party in power, which has sqnandered two hundred millions of acres upon
 railroads alone, and out of more than thrice that aggregate mas dis posed of less than a sixth directly
 to the tiilers of the soil.
 Reform is necessary to correct l the omissions of Republican Congress and the errors of ouI
 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 OK 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 10 the tra ditions of a 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, i'm ported for immoral purposes, and Mongolian men held to perform servile labor contract.
 Reform is necessary aud never caa be effected hut by making it the controlling issue of the cleo tion and lifting 1t above the two false issues with which the office holding classes and the party in power seek to smother it.
 1. The false issue with which i this would enkindle sectarian strife Ill respect to the pablie i schools of which the establish snent and support belong exclu- sively to the several States, anti 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.
 2, 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 ascendency of the Republi can party, create necessity for reform, confessed by Republicans themselves; but their reformcrs are voted down ill convention and displaced from the Cabinet. The party's mass of honest voters is. powerless to resist the eighty thousand office holders, it's lead ers and it's guides. Reform can only be had by peaceful civic revolution. We demand change of system, a change of Admins tration, change of party, that we may have q change of meas ures and of men,
 Resolved, That this Convention representing the Democratic par ty of the States, do cordially en- dorse the acton 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- trayagant appropriations, and in aholishing useless offices and places not required by the public necessities, and We shall trust to the tirmness of the Democratic | members of the House that no l committee of conference and no misinterpretation of rules will be | allowed to defeat these whole some measures of economy de | manded by the country.