The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-03-11
THE VERDICT OF HISTORY.

A reception was given by the National
Republican Auxiliary Association, at
Washington, on Monday evening last to
ex.Speaker Reed. Senator Perkins of
Kansas presided, and congratulatory adj
dresses were made by Hon. ]. c. Bur-
rows of Michigan and others, to which
Mr. Reed responded as follows:
"Only one year agolast Friday, only
one short year ago on March the 9TH,
1891, had occasion to address an
august assembly in the presence of
many spectators. The Republican party
had been subjected in the election just
before to the severest reverse, but one
in all its history. All that partisan
malice could do had been done. Re-
proach, clamor, recrimination and
derisive epithet were at high tide on
every shore, and seemed to be rolling
landward still.
81 ventured then and to that audience
to express my unshaken confidence that
time would do justice to the House Of
Representatives of the Fifty-first Con-
gress, and that the verdict of history,
the only verdict worth recording, would
place the man of the majority on the list
of those who had done the State some
service. 49,.
"With all my faith, however, did not
dream that the verdict would be so
swift, so sure and so complete. But
history in this age of the world, and in
this land of surprises, does its work for
the living as in old days it used to do it
for the dead.
"Time has not justified all that we
did, but the catalouge is already large,
and every day brings its just additions.
Since the new House came into being
the majority have shown how incapable
they are to cope with tariff revision.
Unable to make warp and wool of their
own. they have confined themselves to
trying to shoot holes through the cloth
we have made.
DISABLED by prejudice and passion
from adopting in its entirety the admir-
able system of rules left them by their
predecessors, they have reused cries of
shame from their own party by the ruth
less manner in which they have sur
passed even their own false description
| of our acts.
''Since yesterday there remains but one
solitary shred of foundation on which to
base their outcries and reproaches of
two years ago, and that remains there in
defiance of the opinion-the unanimous
opinion-of the Supreme Court of the
United States.
"Our works do follow us. Only two
years ago these men connected the name
of William Mckinley with every de-
risive epithet and every term of reproach.
Elected since then Governor of his great
State by the greatest majority of recent
times, he has lived to see returning
prosperity justify his work and crown
him with honOrs.
"The charges of extravaganza and
waste are in like fashion falling to the
ground. All the rest of the country
will soon know it as well as you know il
in the District of Columbia, where you
have seen that the only attempt to re-
duce expenditures has been on items
like that on streets, whereby the growth
of the nations capital will be impeded,
and like that on school books, whereby
are lessened the chances of education of
the children of the poor. Meanwhile,
the Republican party, emerging from its
temporary disaster, turns its shining
face to the future, now as ever, the one
hope of progress of the people Of the
| United States"