Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1886-05-07

papers as were necessary for our action
here in dispUsing of the cases that we have
before us
After number of speeches by Democrats
Senators and replies from Senators In
gals, Harrison and Logan, who answered
various specious arguments brought for
ward on the other side and pointed out
the general avoidance of the real issue
on the part of the administration, Mr..
Edmunds on the Goth of March closed
the discussion. Brushing away the vari-
Gus bubbles advanced in place of argu-
ments, and placing himself on the broad
ground of the proper relations of the Co
ordinate branches of the government, and
of the good of the public service, he said
among other things:
MIR. EDMUNDs's CLOSING REMARKS.
This denial of papers is so clear n case
of endeavoring to cover up what he great
majority of the Democratic party consider
to be a false position of the President of
the United States, that it is not necessary
in my judgment to make any speclaf re-
mark thereon.
The trouble with this administration
has been that it thought it had virtue
that good many people in the United
States believed in, and that it would be a
good thing for its success to affect 1t II
it had it not. They came in on pro
LESSONS that tine senator from Kansas has
read to-day, iterated and reiterated in re-
spect of what should become of public
Offices for the public purposes and for the
public uses and it was not easy for the
president of the United States to get out
of that dilemma He came in, rs every
body knows that he could not otherwise
have come in, on the profession that the
great mass of the mere administrative
functions of the government should no
longer be the stakes that political gamb-
lers played for or the spoils that political
warriors fought for. That was the plat,
form on which the president of the United
States came to his position. Having got
in, the question was then what was to be
done Was the president to follow what
he had said, no matter how many of his
political friends it irritated, was he going
to stick to his professions or not
Anybody who has had as long expert
ence of American affairs as you, Mr.. Presi'
dent, can readily see that what the adj
ministration was to do as a fact must de-
pend in country of six million people
and of thousands and tens of thousands of
offices, upon those whom the president
called around him as his heads of depart
ments. If you and |, and my friends
from South Carolina and West Virginia,
and so on, had made up his cabinet, and
we had thought as he had protested to
think and did think, | dare say, that this
change of president of the United States,
whose only mission was to execute law,
was not going to disturb the autonomy OF
the mere work of the government on the
sole ground of political opinion, and we
had all thought so and acted so, then yon
and and all the Others making up that
body, when applications were made to us
for changes would have said, NO. we can
not do it,"
Nine-tenths of all these offices Qeavino
out those that Mr.. Villas has taken into
his special charge by inviting ISLANDERS
etc, the fourth-class postmasters), are
offices that have terms of four years and
no more and in the first year more than
one fourth of the offices would fall vacant
designations removals for cause, death
accident, and all that, would have made
up larger number than quarter III the
| first year.
When you had got to the second veal
you would have found that instead OF
two -fourths you had nearly three-fourths
of the offices falling vacant, and into then
you could have put Democrats, with the
unanimous consent of this Republican
| senate, given that the men named were
! honest and honorable, not the persons
whom the Democratic party has decora
ted with its favors as the senator from
| Indiana showed us, because they had beer
] III lIt ItllltIll ltIN. Dul lldl QUIET AM
smaller portion of the Democratic party
| that contained and comprised and wac
embodied in honest men. You woulC
/ have got into the Offices of this govern
ment before half your administration was
out at least three-iiiths of all the eXecu
tive functions of the government, and be
fore the term of this present president
would have been out by almost yeal
there would have been nine tenlhs of the
offices in the hands of his political adher
entS, in the hands of men whose pOlitica
opinions were like his--that is to say, they
would have been in favor of suspendinl
silver coinage no more they woulC
! have been in favor of encouraging the
pauper labor of Great Britain, Germany
and France, etc, at the expense of the
| honests labor of American citiZens-that
! is what | understand by a Democrat, YOU
know-so it was quite unnecessary, in or
der that the equilibrium of non-partisan
ship in offices should be observed ant
maintained, that the postmaster-general
after consulting the president, as he says
he does in his letter signed by himself OF
| ficially as postmaster general and there
fore not private and confidential paper
should have invited persons to max,
charges against officials, in order that III
excuse may be made, consistently witt
the professions of the president before anC
after his election, for making changes
Now, want to ask my good friends OF
the other side-for am not talking fo
politics, am talking for our country ano
our great insttutons-f they think tina
is a square and honest way.
Now, if the president of the United
States, filled with this enthusiasm of re
form as he was, had selected some one
out of the seven heads of department.
some two or three, or, better. the whol,
seven, who believed in any such thing anC
and who thought as he did, we should no
have had any difficulty at all &; but the un
happy circumstance is, going upon his
theories and they are mine, that, so far as
| know with one exception in the
whole seven of those highly respectable
gentlemen there is only one who does moi
believe that the mission of the Democratic
party is to get every Office, and that is pre-
cisely what the election is for. 1t has moi
got any other principle; it has not hat
any other IN twenty years. There is NJ
measure for the welfare and improvement
and progress Of this country that has beef
proposed by the Democratic party in tn,
twenty-five years that it has been out o
Office and in Office in the House of Repre-
sentatives and here for during that periot
it has had, even in the time of war, once
a. nl Af 4