Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1891-01-07

from the people, 1t refused to wait the
orderly and traditional course of legisla-
tion; overthrow the rules Of parliamentary
procedure, framed and sanctioned by all
past experience and announced its readiness
for action by the exultant proclamation
that the House of Representatives waa no
longer q deiiberaiive body As the most
striking proof it could offer of this fact it
rushed through tho House q general tariff
bill increasing taxes, with hundred pages
not considered and with hundred pro-
posed amendments not voted on, and
deigned to give to all appeals for time and
opportunity to consider them, no other
answer than, s'l'his is Republican bill
and will be passed by Republican votes. -
1t counted its own quorums in its own rev.
olutionary way, and made that way more
easy by vacating seats of duly chosen men,
bers, wherever contestants could be found
to ask for them. With equal recklessness
it threw open the doors of the American
Union to rotten borroughs, balancing in
the Senate by the votes of three States
whoee combined population is less than
that of my own Congressional district, the
votes of States that contain fourth part
of the population of the entire Union. Nor
was it satisfied with this cataloges of mis-
deeds. Looking to the remote future and
foreseeing thu resentment of an outraged
people, it devised its crowning infamy, the
Force bill, whose real purpose is to strip
the people of the power to resist its ex-
actions, and to turn popular elections into
sham battles that decide nothing.
Such is an incomplete list of the fagi
tious doings of the present Congress. Who
that reviews this list can marvel ct the
tremendous explosion of popular anger last
November And if the condemnation was
not greater than it deserved, what is the
plain duty of the Representatives whom
the people have commissioned to succeed
it2
Undoubtedly the Fifty-second Congress
will begin its work, with one lesson that
none of its members can mistake, and that
lesson is that its shortest road to irretrieva-
BILE bankruptcy, will be to follow the foot
steps of its immediate predecessor, and its
surest road to popular approval will be to
offer as clear contrast as possible to the
temper, the methods and the legislation of
that predecessor.
In this one lesson it will find no small
part of the justice, temperance and fore
thought, we invoke for it tonight.
It has been favorite saying of the
leaders of the present Congress, when AZ
raigned for refusing to allow consideration
or public discussion of their measures, that
the American people demand of Congress
the transaction of business business being
too often a name for some kind of class
jobbery.
That may be true, but it does not follow
that they demand or will tolerate the trans
action Of business by bureaucratic or rev0-
methods. Indeed the methods
of transacting public business is of the very
definition of free government. All govern
ments must levy taxes but it measures all
the way from despotism to freedom
whether taxes are levied by arbitrary de-
cree or through the free and deliberate
action Of the representatives of the people
who pay them.
If, then, Mr.. Chairman, the protective
principle brings in its train corrupted
ballot, perpetual lobby, an unnumbered
brood of bounties and subsidies, paternal
tion, and a standing menace to free elec-
lions, must we not look to the rescue of our
taxing system from private control and its
dedication to public uses, as the beginning
and only sure basis of every reform that
seeks to overthrow these dangers to free
government?
But deeply and sincerely as we may be-
Iieve all this, there is wise craftsmanship,
learned in the school of experience, that
bids lawmakers remember that temperate
reform is permanent reform, having in it
the principIe>of growth. Looking, there
fore, to the Fifty second Congress as hold
ing the key to ignominous defeat or stable
victory in 1899, we cannot give better ex-
preston to our hopes, our wishes and our
anxiety, than to pray that it may be 'just,
and far-seeing." And why
should it not be? True the majority that
shall come up to maintain the peoples
CAUSE in the next House, may be hindered
by its unwieldiness, but among both the
old and the new members, will be found
not a few, who can claim with the old re-
formers, that they have earned right to
share in the work of the harvest, by hav-
ing done, to the best of their ability, their
duty in the seed time.