The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1894-04-11

est and most successful fraud since the
somewhat similar one of 1874. Mr..
Cleveland was nominated on a plat
form framed to render his nomination
impossible, and he accepted it in a
letter which was model of adroit
evasiveness. His managers were thus
enabled to solicit popular support on
pledges suited to any given section. IT
objections were made to the radical
demagoguery of the platform, they
could declare that Mr.. Cleveland was
the platform, and that his assumed
conservatism was guarantee against
dangerous innovation. Where that
conservatism was Objectionable, they
could point to the platform, and prom
Use that its principles should be enforced
in legislation. The bogy of defunct
and buried force bill was effectively
used, farmers were dazzled with the
prospect of "a acknowledgements wheat,
; while workiugmen were told that the
tariff had nothing to do with wages
The anti-snappers were lured with the
hopes of vindication of the principles
for which they had struggled, while the
Tammany tiger was placated in the
mysteries of the Victoria Hotel dinner
| L
sighted skill, the managers succeeded
in uniting in Mr., Cleveland's support
the most incongruous and antagonistic
elements. So heterogeneous a COM
bination of voters was never before
marshaled together at the polls. Its
nucleus was that standing menace to
our institutions, the solid South, with
its votes in congress and the electoral
college based on the freedmen, whose
ballots are practically suppressed.
Allied with this were the great cor
porations in sugar, beer and whiskey;
Tammany Hall in New York; the race
track gamblers in New Jersey; the
anarchists and enemies of the public
schools in Illinois; and the socialists,
who, under various DISCUSSES, have OBJ
tanned so wide following beyond the
Mississippi. Mr.. Cleveland marched
to triumph at the head of all the
dangerous classes of the republic. 1t
was Pyrrhic victory, and the success
of an administration so brought into
power would be reversal of the moral
law. When the time came to redeem
the assortment of mutually destructive
pledges made for Mr.. Cleveland by his
lieutenants, there inevitably ensued
the disintegration and decentralization
which are rendering congress an object
of contempt, and which are only kept
under fitful control by prostitution of
patronage more cynical than has
hitherto disgraced the nation. No
great party in our history was ever be-
fore placed in position so humiliating
as was the democracy when, in order
carry out the silver policy of its plat
form, it was obliged to call upon its
cheated and defeated opponents to
overcome the majority of its own
members; nor is it to-day able to con-
troll the antics of Mr. Bland with that
majority at his back, or to prevent its
helpless and nerveless secretary of the
treasury from toying with the Elusive
prospect of tifty-fve millions Of fiat
the so-called seigniorage.
cit is small wonder that the land
which two years since was so prosper
GUS is now paralyzed with fear of the
possibilities which lie before US at the
hands of the motley mob gathered in
the halls of congress. Nor, in consid
ering the effect of this upon the popular
mind, can we omit the bitter humilia-
ton arising from the fact that we are
delivered over to the tender mercies of
the South. To one whose memories of
the civil war are still fresh it would
seem impossible that the vanquished
South should already, by means of the
democratic party, have become dom
inant in the Union, into which it was
coerced. Yet so it is. 1t may please
Mr.. Hewitt to disparage the statesman
ship of the South, but in so doing he
only passes a sentence of the severest
condemnation on his own party, which
is so abjectly under southern control,
and is content to be the instrument
through which the late rebellious states
rule the republic. The South is thus
enabled to look with patience on the
spectacle of the suffering industries of
the North-the silent FORCES, the closed
mills, the hundreds of thousands of
starving men and women converted
from industrious operatives to depend
ents on charity. To one who deplores
this desolation it adds a sense of shame
to reflect that the vast and complex
structure of northern civilization was
placed in the house of representatives
at the mercy of little knot of southern
country lawyers, and that in the senate
Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas furnish
the men who counsel together on the
destinies of Massachusetts,, New York,
and Pennsylvania. Under such condi-
tons it is no wonder that the policy
adopted seems as though it were meant
for the grand duchy of Gero'stein. To
meet an approaching deficit of seventy
millions tariff is framed deliberately
estimated to reduce the revenues
seventy-ive millions more, and to fill this
yawning abyss resort is had to the most
unjust and detested of war taxes-the
tax on incomes. Moreover, as though
to advertise the predetermined purpose
of this, the tax is so devised as to
throw the burden mainly on the in.
dustrious communities of the North.
Under the $4 900 exemption it is rea
sonably fair to predict that south of the
Potomac the returns will not defray the
cost of collection, aud that the practical
working of the law will be to send