The Portland daily press., 1880-08-23
Democratic Aspirations and Re-
publican Performances.

publican Performances.
The forthcoming number of the Inter-
national Review will contain paper on the
Presidential Election by Mr.. John Jay-a
paper of which advance sheets have been
struck off. The article will command wide
attention and provoke angry controversy:
for it defines, sharply and clearly, the ques-
tions upon which the great political parties
of this country, the Republican and the
Democratic, have joined issue. Mr.. Jay dis
cusses with fairness and noticeable courtesy,
the history, the present attitude, and the
tendencies of the two party organizations
that confront each other in the pres
ent contest, and arrives at conclu-
sions that men in full sympathy with the
Democratic organization will dispute though
they cannot overthrow.
He begins with the Dememocratic declar-
ton made at Chicago in 1864 that the war
was failure and unjust, and shows by cita-
tion that the opinion then advanced is still
held by the men who applauded its first
avowal. The major part of the Dem
for the preservation of the Union was
unnecessary and evil, and brought about by
the Vaccinations of the Republicans; that
its supporters are to be DETAINED and
its results to be deplored. Their wish
and aim to day are to nullify the statutes
and to use the language of one of their
most trusted and most admired leaders, to
sweep the last vestige of war legislation
from the statute.book. To effect these
purposes they resort to means less bloody and
brutal, but if possible more iniquitous and
certainly more base than they made use of
in 1861. They turn from arms to artful
ness, from shooting voters to stealing votes,
from murder to theft. What they lost by
fighting they purpose to regain by fraud.
Wherever they do the counting, in Mssiss-
'ppi, in Alabama. in Maine, they falsify the
the ballot and seek to accomplish by fraud
what they failed to achieve by force.
That is the record they have made, record
which Mr.. Jay sets forth fully and candidly
but with due emphasis and censure. He
does not, however, restrict himself to repro
ducing the annals of crime. By way of con-
trast to the gloomy and threatening picture
of Democratic domination he gives, in the
following words, a vivid picture of the prog
ress made by the country under Republican
rule:
The record of the Republican party, as
brie ny alluded to in its resolutions, is singu-
"a cyyn ocuio ,nf hall
which had armed nearly million of men; the
reconstruction of the union Of the States,
with freedom instead of slavery, as its corner
stone the transformation of 100000 human
beings from the likeness of things to the rank
of citizens Gf, indeed, they really possess
that rank); the raising our paper from thirty
eight per cent. to the par Of gold; the lifting
the national credit from six per cent. bonds at
eighty-three to four per cent bonds above par;
the extraordinary increase in our import and
export trade; the increase of our railroads
from 81 900 miles in 1869 to $1,000 in 1879; the
great revival of immigration at this time;
the revival of the various industries of the
countre the increased demand for labor and
the higher rate of wages, following close upon
Resumptlon-that signal triumph Of Mr.. Hayes
administration which has placedi the name of
John Sherman at the head of the great finan-
ciers OF this nineteenth century. In this con-
nection it may be remarked that one draw
back which the Democratic Congress has
failed to correct and which much of the intelli-
gent patriotism of the country views with re-
gret is the policy which obstructs the revival
of our shipping.
The census of 1880 when complete will af-
ford the material for further comparison be-
tween the year lS59-60, which was one Of gen.
eral prosperity, and the present time; but the
following table taken from the Tribune of the
increase in population and in some articles of
production, may give some idea of the enor-
nous expansion of our industry and trade
since the country exchanged the rule of the
Democracy for that of the Republicans: