Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-04-23
The Chris. Buckley and Delmas
Meeting to Instruct.
Oakland Times, April 21st.l

people it is to be expected that more than
ed there is real reason and a living issue
to Justify it. OF the half thousand present
how many were shippers? how many were
employers of labor and the payers of its
of San Francisco were not even tempted
out to hear the plaintive story of their
wrongs told by poor Mr.. Delmas, whose
mission in life seems to be the narration of
his failure to get the taxes out of the rail-
roads and the expression of his spite against
the Acknowledgement because that officer
easily and ineXpensiyely without compro-
missing the dignity nor abridging the rights
of the State, secured for the treasury nearly
million, the full face of the tax, where
Mr.. Delmas had failed to get a penny.
The resolutions submitted to the meet
ing and rushed through by the nerv-
Gus Chairman, were hailed by rs
many noes as ayes, and the subse-
uuent proceedings were most vociferously
| applauded on the platform, while the audi
encei in the body of the hall conversed. In
the conversation going on in the back part
of the hall while Mr.. Delmas was on the
piano passages of his Grafton, Mr.. Chris.
| Buckley took so loud part that the
speaker stopped and sharply rebuked the
railroad spies who were sent there to
disturb him. The Chair threatened to call
on the police, and Mr.. BIS inherent respect
! for law caused him to close his perfectly in
nocent and unintentional damming of the
| silvery stream of Mr.. Delmas oratory.
But the Democratic party is not so much
concerned with the smallness of the meet
| ing nor the incidents which attended 1t, as
with the demands made upon 1t by Mr..
! Delmas That gentleman Is so enraptured
| with his own rhetoric that its very sumptu-
business is apt to tempt the party into self
| abuse, unless Il very deliberate course Is
pursued. The party made the ticket and
won the victory of 1882 without any help
| from Mr.. Doyle or Mr. Delmas, and now
that these gentlemen purpose TO ride it, their
proposition should be critically reviewed
Now, what does Mr. Delmas demand OF
| the party?
First, that it shall treat railroad property
as public property, the beneficial ownership
of which is ia the State and not in the cor
porations. To use his own words 4
railroad is rs much public institution as
! is the postotfice the two are analogous,
and that is why railroads have no right to
discriminate in freights, because the post
Office does not discriminate i'll postage
This premise Mr.. Delmas argued AT great
and convincing length, confessing that it is
new but insisting upon it as fact in law
and morals Few men can argue more
! cOnyincinglv, out of Court, than this able
! LAWYER, and if any man can convince q
crowd that the Democratic party shall treat
a railroad as the same sort of public institu-
ton as is the postoffice, he can do it. But
when his luxurious illustrations had car
ried conviction on that point he turned to
! the subject of taxing railroads and ordered
| the Democratic party to assess and tax
! them the same as individuals, and if dclin-
quent to sell their property.
! Now we believe in Just that method of
taxation, but pray what does Mr. DelmaS
mean? He declares that the party will
! bctray the people if it fails To treat the rail-
roads as public institutions exactly like the
poStotfice. Then the converse is true, that
the party must treat the poStotfice exactly
| like the railroads, and railroads, saws this
pundit, must be taxed like individuals and
sold for delinquency. Hence the Demo-
/ cratic party must tax the pOStotiice and sell
! it for delinquency
| In such 4 web of abSurdities would Mr..
! Delmas involve the party If his first
proposition is true, as Il matter of public
/ law. then the second i false. If the sec
/ ond he true and we should tax railroads
/ like persons. then the first is Il transparent
absurdity, for no rule of law permits the
| taxation of public institutions like the
/ postofficc'
/ Mr.. Delmas may be sincere. We know
/ that he is sincerely mad because Ned Mar
! shall found nearly amillion of dollars for
/ the State when he had failed To find even
/ his own fee, but if he is sincere the Demo-
cratic party should object to his demand
/ that it go in opposite directions at the same
/ time. The Egyptian taSkmasters forced
/ the Jews to make bricks without straw, but
/ the task Mr. DclmaS sets for the Democratic
| party is so much harder that the Egyptian
/ bosses appear to have been reasonable by
contrast.
| Mr. Dclmas confesses hat these theories
are novelties, and yet he and Judge Wal
/ lace demand that members of the Lcgis-
| laturc adopt them as the party creed
/ Now we are willing to concede that Mr..
| Delmas is as great as his disappointment
( over Ned Marshall's success in a field
/ where he had wrought earnestly, to reap i'll
/ luck, but we refuse to consider him as a
| Democratic Convention or paste him IN our
hat as party platform. When the party
/ in National Convention declares it as part
of the creed that a railroad is like the post
Office, public institution. but that it shall
y.
enough for Mr.. Delmas to crack his whip
Until then we for one, propose to exercise
the right of private judgment upon the
! legal and political novelties which he and
| Judge Wallace are licking into shape, and
| the man who denies us that right of pri-
waite Judgment is a knave, while he who
ascribes our exercise Of it to corrupt mo-
tiveS is liar.
But Mr.. Delmas does not stop with his
absurd analogy between the railroad and
/ the postofiice. Having girdcd at Ned Mar
shall for the crime of success where he had
failed, he next assaulted the Railroad Com
miSSionerS, a majority of whom he deli
Cately declined to name-a thOughtfulncSS
which we are sure MeSSrS Carpenter and
HUMPHREYS will appreciate since the honor
of being named by Mr.. Delmas is not yet
at such a premium as 10 cause anything
like panic at the box office. Now rs Mr.
Delmas, with all his trumpetcd talents, has
failed as an attorney for the people to get
even a dollar out OF the railroads for the
public treasury, rs all his devices against
the corporations have proved as harmless
/ as a wooden gun and as unproduCtive Us Il
mare mule, ii is simply human nature that
he should resent success in Il line where he
has made a brilliant record of failure
Having prosecuted the railroads down to
even the hopeless loss of his own fee which
! * sorrows crown of sorrow to a lawyer
and being driven to accept the empty dyi-
dend of applause secured by deciding his
loss to the State for the benefit of the
| University. it is, we say, only human
nature that Mr. Dclmas should see an
enemy in every man who does come out
victor where he limped away yanquishcd
Hence his attack ON the Railroad Commits
SiOncrS. What is their history? The State
of California began to assert control of rail
ways by Commission i'll 1879. Six years
later, rs we believe the record shows, the
first reduction was proposed and chat was
in passenger rates on the Central and
Southern Pacific lines, of Sc per cent. 1t
was proposed, it was adopted, but was never
enforced. 1t was left 10 die like bastard
at the door of the Commission which begot
it. And that was all. The record of the
Commission as failure had but one twin
in California, and that is Mr. DelmaS re-
cord as legal gladiator against the corpo-
rations.
Messrs. Carpenter and Humphreys found
! the office bald of gathered statistics, beg
CARED so far as concerned procedure, empty
of method and not track left by the feet
of their predecessors, who had stepped out