The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1883-06-23
The Next Session Of Congress.


The next session of Congress will
have great deal to do in determining
the next Presidential election. Not
that there will be any arrangement of
the campaign by the politicians at Wash
ington, d naming of the candidates, an
outline of the platforms and general
setting up of the game. How much
or how little of such secret work the
politicians may do is of little moment.
1t is in the public proceedings of the
two houses that the fate of the contest
viii be determined.
The House will be Democratic, the
Senate Republican. In the action of
the House the country will look for the
Democratic National platform of 1884;
and in the action of the Senate it will
look for the opposite platform. This
is inevitable, and perfectly fair. What
a party promises to do when it gets into
power is not half as much to be relied
on as an indication of its policy as
what it actually does when in power.
The two parties that are to stand face
to face in the next Presidential contest
will previously stand face to face in the
Forty-eighth Congress; and the coun-
try, without waiting for the regularly
proclaimed platforms, will look to the
House and the Senate respectively to
learn what Democracy is and what Re-
publicanism is on the practical ques-
tons of the day.
j. is easy enough to tell what these
questions will be. They are few and
simple-so few and similar that they may
be disposed of in single bill. There is no
dispute about the currency; no dispute
about Indians, pensions or foreign poll
icy; happily there is not a single con-
stitutional issue before the country
since Mr.. Hayes withdrew the troops
from the South and adopted the DEM
ocratic policy of leaving the Southern
States, as well as the Northern States,
to their own self-government. All these
matters over which the parties fiercely
wrangled eight years ago are settled.
There remains the single fact of large
excess of revenue annually pouring into
the Treasury-and this is the subject to
be dealt with.
The estimated surplus for the current
fiscal year is $4,000, 900. and for the
next fiscal year is $l19, 900, 000-and the
actual surplus will exceed the estimate
in both cases-and that, too, after pay
ing out $59,500,00O for interest and
S1U2. 900, 900 in pensions each year.
This surplus revenue must be re-
duced, and to reduce it taxes must be
taken eff the people. How? Right
here is where the two parties differ. The
Democrats believe in large reductions
of the revenue, and insist that these re-
auctions should be made SO as to bring
the largest measure of relief to the
whole people. The Republicans, on the
other hand, will not make any reduce
tions they can possibly avoid, and in
making them will attempt TO give tho
relief to favored classes. In the new
Tariff and Revenue bill passed bv the
late Congress, the Republicans took off
about $40, 900, 900 taxes-from whom?
Banks, bank depositors, match-makers,
the manufacturers of patent medicines
and cosmetics, and tobacco consumers.
/ They do not think any further reduc-
tons ought to be made in the next Con-
gress, and they will oppose them if pro-
posed, but if the reductions must be
made, they will endeavor TO limit them
to the consumers of spirits, beer and to-
bacco, leaving the masses of the people
still subject to the oppressive taxes of a
war tariff on the materials of their in
dustry and the necessaries of life.
This is the Republican programme.
1t is Pig-Iron Kelley's policy. 1t will
be the policy of the Republican Senate.
1t win be the policy of the Republican
protectionists of the East. The issues
of the contest will be made up, and the
lines drawn, not in the party conven-
tons of next summer, but in the Con-
gressional session which begins next
December. A beginning will be made
the first day of that session. and the
whole business will be virtually COM
pleted in the election of the House
Speaker. That will be the critical event
with the Democracy for four years to
come.-St. Louis Republican.