Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-09-03
WHAT ARE WE TO SAY?".
Asks Thomas B. Reed and He Says /
Immediately.

Immediately.
His Brilliant, Scathing, Just Review Of thu
Congress Which Wsaried Us.
Copyright, 1894, by the New York Press
| PORTLAND, Me-, Aug. 2S.-And now they
have gone, this Senate and House OF Rep
resentatives, gone, with only three months
more of unhappy life left in them. What
are we to say? one year of almost continu.
Gus session, and what have they done! and
how have they done it? The Republican,
cannot use the Language of reproach, OF
invective or abuse. The whole vocabulary
has been exhausted by themselves speaking
| of themselves. We cannot hope to equal,
in commenting on the Senate, the tremen-
dous and effective words of the President
| of their own choice. Ii we were to search
the whole dictionary of diatribe, we could
not equal the charge of party perfdy and
party dishonor, made by the President
| against the Senate and received by the
House of Representatives, with its 100
Democratic majority, with cheers and ap-
plause.
If we were to comment upon the Presi-
dent and his action We could not use
language half so damaging as Democratic
| senators used in open Senate with uplifted
hands, asseverating the truth of personal
betrayal and personal bad faith.
If we were to comment upon the House of
Representatives and its leaders we should
be deemed guilty of gross partisanship if
we used even their own words in describing
| their own actions. What condition for q
partisan critic to be in to be obliged in
common decency to use softer words shout
his enemies than they use about themselves
And the enemies are not saints in embryo,
| beating their beasts and confessiDg their
transgre s,ions to reach the heights of saint
hood through the depths of sin. Oh, no,
they are simply earnest men standing by
the broken business of whole country and
trying to tell who destroyed it, and having
| met success we obviously cannot use any
language of reproach or of harshness.
Earlier and (for that purpose) worthier
hands have gathered all these laurels. All
we can say is that all three sides are prob
ably right. The President and Senate have
told the truth about each other, and the
| House about itself.
Now Let Us Review.
With this simple expression of faith in
their veracity, let us turn to a slight re-
view of what they have done. There is no
doubt that this review will be as distssteful
and unsatisfactory to the majority OF hon
est Democrats as to Republicans them
selves. Whatever good there has been
done has been spoiled in the doing. If the
| L. 81 81, 1>no
denounced common sense and adopted
proper rules, it was only after all sound
precedent had been violated in the attempt
to avoid the necessity. If the Congress has
repealed the purchasing clause of the Sher-
man act, it was only done after such
long delsy as has deprived the country
of any advantage the repeal might have
given it. Nor has the mystery Of the
collapse of the compromise and the con-
nection of the President Herewith ever
been cleared up. Whether he consented
to that compromise or not is not for me to
say. That is family secret, but it is no
family secret that that compromise was not
repudiated until after the Republican MEM
bers were sounded, and it was clear that
they would have no part or lot in it.
| Two such misunderstanding as these be-
tween the President and the Senate, if Re-
publican, would have caused a sensation as
of burned WOODEN among the people. But
the Democracy has limitations as to moral
ity very much enlarged. That party seems
to realize what Gen. Butler ssii in jest
that nobody was truly unassailable until his
character was gone. The tariff bill of
"perfidy and dishonor" has become law,
and an interesting law it is. How a Demo-
| h11.o ..~k h. xlnk -
its party, could have passed it, how Dem
ocratic House could have passed it, having
hundred majority, is simply Incompetent
sible.
| How the President could have permitted
it to become law is simply an impossible
study in human nature. How can the
country reconcile this action with its fromtr
estimate of him? He was deemed by a very
large part of the people as man of sound
common sense and of great will power.
His reputation for good sense certainly had
shock in the case of the Sandwich Islands.
And this is more likely to suffer from the
| contrast between the letter to Wilson and
the surrender to German. Twas not one
| of who expected such result. Surrender
was in the capitulation. He ought to have
| handed in his side arms and signed the bill.
|
House and Senate, he has been pronounced
| to be not even factor in the transaction.
Hereafter the President, instead Of stand
| ing on Mugwump and unreal pedestal,
| must be reckoned with the rest of them,
and the regrets will not all be on the Demo.
cratic side.
The Wilson Bill.
The truth about the Wilson bill is that it
was foolish bill when it went out of the
ways and means committee, and was made
still more foolish in the House. 1t had
neither policy nor practice, and yet it has
been erected into q golden calf, to be
worshipped by party conventions, and that,
too, with the consent ard approval of their
own Moses. Even the Senate bill does have
some regard to the business of the country
in spots, but it will prove failure like the
other, though not to the same degree. The
strikes in Fall River, New Bedford and
elsewhere over the cotton schedule, SAID
to be the best ever made. shows us, as
| prominent Democratic capitalist mt il. that