Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1888-07-05
TIE ISSUE DEFINED.
\ Clear Statement OF the Work Now Bs-
fore the Democratic Party.

u Clear Statement Of the Work Now BS-
fore the Democratic Party.
Intelligent Republicans have ceased
to deny that the whole trend of their
party's principles is in the direction Of
Capitalization. The facts are too
patent They had already become too
patent when. after a quarter of a CEN
fury of opposition, responsibility for
the execution of the laws was devolved
upon the Democracy. These laws are
the real government; their spirit is the
centralizing spirit of Republicanism.
Opposed as this spirit is to the best
interest of the people and TO the per-
petuity of popular government. the re-
publican laws embodying it stand on
the statute-bookS, and since they evade
a violation of the letter of constitution
Al restrictions, the Democratic party,
represented in the Executive branch of
the Government, has been obliged to
administer them. There is scarcely a
law passed during the period of COM
plete Republican ascendancy that is
not dangerous in its tendency, yet these
laws have bound the Democratic Execu-
tive Administration of the Government.
ing on it the necessity of administering
law as it found it, prevented by the
Republican Senate from beginning re-
form at the root of injustice, it is now
entering a new campaign with the
greater part of its work before it.
1t seems to us that this is the most
important fact of the present situation,
for it shows the absolute necessity of
Andrew Jackson's policy of "aggres-
sion, aggression and always aggres-
SION" To act on the defensive. to
leave a possibility of being forced from
the offensive to the defensive, is, under
such circumstances, to court defeat.
The Democratic party in the House
of Representatives has done we'll. 1t
was impossible for it to do better with
a hostile majority in the Senate hold
ing it in check and the precedents of
SO many years of vicious Republican
legislation constantly raised against it.
But it has been able to do nothing that
would serve to turn a Presidential cam
paign in the party's favor, if the issue
were other than it is-an issue of work
yet to be done, of work the Democratic
party is bound by the necessity of its
existence to do.
Much has been done in four years, it
is true. The Government has been
brought to a basis of economical adj
ministration. The plundering of the
Treasury has been checked. Millions
of acres of land have been restored to
| the public domain; Republican finan-
cial legislation has not been allowed to
precipitate panic; the Administration,
hampered as it has been by Republican
laws, has still been able to keep the
business of the country from disaster
and to postpone results that will be
inevitable unless the financial policy
involved in the present policy of taxa
ton is thoroughly reformed; the sec
tons have been brought nearer to-
gether; the Union has been restored in
fact as well as in name; prosperity has
! begun to return to the Southern States;
the old issues Of sectiOnalism have been
forced into the background to make
room for the issues of the present; the
country has been brought to renewed
confidence in the Democratic party, and
we have thus been given ground on
which to form for attack.
Attack it must be. The campaign
must be fought in the enemy's country.
There must be no compromises Of the
principle at stake. To compromise any
thing is to imperl every thing.-&.
| Louis Republic.