Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1893-10-26
WILMINGTON. THURSDAY, ooT. 20.


The End in Sight.
This is the feeling of the press and
the public at last, and upon seemingly
sufficient ground, regarding tine bust
ness for the transaction of which the
United States Congress was convened
in extra session by President Cleveland
on the seventh day of last August
eleven weeks ago last Mondayl
Friends and foes of repeal, to-
gether with most of the despicable time
servers who have been hesitating from
various motives both cowardly and
suspectable to get down on either
side of the fence, have finally
patched up a truce in which there
seems to be a fairly substantial
promise that within the next week or
ten days the food of obstructive Sena-
torial yerbosity shall be dried up and
the vote be taken which should have
been taken six weeks ago. About the
outcome of that vote there is no manner
Of doubt-it must be for repeal--the
long-suffering patience of the American
people will not brook anything else.
With thousands Of steady, industrious,
honest, and in every way worthy work.
ingmen in every city of the land driven
already to the verge of desperation and
beggary by the failure of theSenate to
act, with the grain and cotton of the
northern farmer and the southern
planter going to market at depressingly
unremuneratiye prices, a vote against
repeal would find formidable body of
the plain people of the land ready to
repeal the Senate itself-and some of the
time-servers of the south especially have
been having this fact brought home to
themselves with increasing urgency, so
far as their individual political interests
are concerned, within the past few days.
While, therefore, expressing our con-
viction that the end is at last in sight,
we do so with feeling of relief, but
with little Of thankfulness or hope. The
hour has gone by for expressing the
hope that the lawmakers of the nation
may do the will of the nation; it is now
full time for the press everywhere to
voice the determination of the men who
make and unmake laws and lawmakers
that the United States Senate shall do
the will of the nation. This determine.
ton has found expression-expression
pregnant with warning-in the sudden
ness and completeness with which the
contemplated cowardly, and we will
odd treacherous, surrender of two or
mree days ago was knocked out and
the sticklers for senatorial ocourtesy"
and incompetency brought to a realiza-
ton of the truth that this is a govern
pent by majority-not minority.
We look upon this attempted com
promise of Saturday with wonder that
some OF the men concerned in il could
have been capable of so far forgetting
their manliness-or at least of surrender
ing their sense of right and Justice and
their plighted faith to their party and to
their constituents to moss-grown sena-
torial tradition-as to have connected
themselves with such a dishonoripr
Zeal. For that is just what 1t amounted
10, described in mild terms. They were
elected as staunch advocates OF financial
honesty, upon platform which did
whats Pledged them to. the speedy
repeaT of what in the words of that
platform was characterized as the
'cowardly makeshift" of the Sherman
act. They were sent to Washington by
the party representing the majority Of
the voters of this nation; the same
party that elected the President bv an
overwhelming vote; the same party
that sent to Washington considerable
majority of the House of Representa-
tives that on the 2Sth of August-more
than eight weeks ago-passed this Re.
peal bill with over 100 votes to spare.
And they proposed to go back on their
pledge; to surrender to q handful of
hlibusters; to proclaim to the world
that in this government of the people,
Tor the people and by the people it is
the province Of a dozen determined OBJ.
structionists to block legislation and to
dictate terms to the Senate;to betray their
party, their President and that Demo-
cratic House which had done its duty so
promptly and so well. They pro-
posed to say, in effect, to the
voters who sent them there: awe
would like to do what you have
employed us to do, but there are few
troublesome men here who wont let us
do it, and our hands are so tied by
courtesy and tradition and other balder-
dash that we must do, not what the
American people have commanded but
what these filibusters will permit us to
do" Talk of 'cowardly surrender p
The words are weak; they do not ex.
press one 1.-THE of the disgust which the
plain people of the country feel over
such an admission of incompetency. A
government by the majority presup
poses the constitutional right of the
majority to rule; to make way If they
cannot find it ready to hand,
and not to come whining to
their constituents like crippled ours
and cry "those fellows wont let
us do anything" Moreover, what would
have been the outcome2 Did these
would-be betrayers of their party and
their people imagine that the House of
Representatives and President Cleve-
land would follow heterogeneous ex.
ample and in like manner to surrender
the flibustering minority Of the Senate?