The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1878-12-07
THE PRESIDENTS MESSAGE.


Our columns today are largely occupied
with President Hayess message to Congress
on Monday. We publish it more IN compi
ance with custom than from any expectation
that it will prove more interesting to our read
ers than much other matter that could have 0c
cupicd its space. In II word, the message is
Just such document AS one would naturally
leXpect from Hayes, for we do not suppose there
is an intelligent man in the country who cX.
pccted from him any utterancc indicating
statesmanship. 1t is no dlsappointmentthe there
fore that he fails to make any important sug-
gestion, or to recognize any of the pressing
questions Of the times On the exciting topics
of revenue currency, and specie resumption
he contents himself with fully endorsing the
views of Secretary Sherman, and so in turn IN
regard to matters of interest IN our foreign If.
fairs, in regard to army or naval matters or
our complicated Indian policy the recommend
atoms of his ministers are simply referred to
and then endorsed wholesale.
On one subject alone of any political inter
est does the President venture an expression
of his own. He affects, in terms almost pa
ihetic, "a grievous disappointment at the result
of his mild policy towards the south, SAID dis
appointment arising from "A total failure of the
policy to build up an administration party in
The south. On the contrary, fewer supporters
of the administration have been returned to
congress from the south than ever and what
is more grievious than all, this fact is mainly
owing to gross election frauds committed nota-
bly, in South Carolina and Louisiana, whereby
the "colorcd republicans" were cheated out of
their votes. The President promises to use all
the power in his hands to expose and punish
these frauds and prevent them in future, and
hopes congress will rigidly scrutinizc the re-
turns of the southern members and exclude all
whose election is tainted with fraud The
President was doubtless forced into these ex-
prcssons by the stalwarts of the republican
party who intend to use the alleged election
frauds in Louisiana and South Carolina AS "a
main instrumentality for reviving the bloody
shirt in the next presidential contest; but his
language upon the subject Is throughout so
feeble and insipid as to give the stalwarts only
disgust, and to justify the democratic rctort
that the Presidents tongue was tied by the con
seriousness that whatever frauds may have been
committed in few isolated districts at the
late elections in South Carolina and Louisi- |
ana, mo frauds being charged in any other
southern States they were the meresl bagatelle
in comparison with the gigantic and shame.
ful frauds in the same states by which his own
election was comprised. Indeed the subject
ought TO be so tender a one with the President
as to justify profound establishment at his au.
dacty in referring to it at all.
Aside from this the whole message is the |
merest school.boy composition, and short as
it is, the President seems to have laborcd pain.
fully to find matter to string 1t out to so mode.
rate length. What other motive than to "fl
out' could he have had for so long an essay on
the yellow fever pcstlcnce, wholly out of place
in suck Il document, or his absurd dissertation
on agriculture, or on education, or the benevo
lent institutions of the District of Columbia =
All this is the sheerest puerility, and in week
will be cast aside as the most worthless rubbish