The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-12-26
AN ACCEPTED INVITATION.

Very fortunate was 1t for the ma
jority elected to the Fifty-fifth congress
that the latest national convention Of
the Democratic party was dominated
by expedieney men and sprinkling of
wildeyed senfimentalists, the former
Of whom thought it would be a cute
dodge and a. winning card to join the
Populists, while the latter were cap
tured by the tinsel and glitter of the
silver arguments. Between them they
were strong enough to cast off the
mornings that held the old party to it's
historic principles and set it adrift with
a motley crew, an unheard-of chart,
a compass awry, on an unknown sea,
with
"a wet sheet and a flowing sea
And wind that followed fast"
Fortunate for the Republicans, we
say, for it is as plain now as it was
then that, had the convention stuck
to Democratic faith on currency and
tariff, success would have come to 1t
as it always comes to Democracy when
1t Is itself. Had that old course been
kept true the country would have had
opportunity to express it's opinion Of
congress and the party that dominated
1t, that would, in time of slow recovery
from financial wreck, with 10-cent oats
and 40-cent wheat, a million men vainly
seeking work, and the national reve-
ate 100000 for a river and harbor
bill.
With the deserved rebuke such profit
gacy, verging, under the conditions
prevailing, on the criminal, would have
received, we would not now have the
members Of that committee whining
because the administration, more re-
gardful of the commonwealth than
they, has declined to use the lavish ap-
preparations made or make the contem-
plated contracts that would bind other
congresses to the spendthrift policy
inaugurated by them. Encouraged,
however, by the elections, regarding
them as vote of confidence, the COM
mittee, we are told, are going to in
quire why the secretaries have not
made the contracts contemplated in the
bill. This is not for the purpose of
their impeachment for misfeasance in
office, but because these statesmen
from Lilliput believe that something
should be done to invite the attention
Of the country to the fact that the adj
ministration has entirely ignored the
raid attempted to be made on the
treasury by these generous dispensers
of the money Of other people. We
heartily agree with them in this, If not
from the same motive. We, too, re-
gard it as important that the attention
Of the country be now, in calmer mood,
invited to the tremendous fact that
Republican congress could, at any
time, and especially amid the financial
distress of this year, take from the
treasury the amount carried by the
river and harbor bill of the last ses-
sion.
When the Republican Forty seventh
congress, in the insolence of their re-
turn to power passed over Arthur's
veto a river and harbor bill carrying
but $1S000,000, the attention Of the
country was invited to it with such
effect that John G. Carlisle presided
| as speaker of the succeeding house of
representatives. If the members of
this congress now wish to invite the
attention of the country to their OPP
preparation Of four times the amount Of
the bill of the Forty-seventh congress
and to the creditable fact that the ad-
ministration has refused to be party
to their profigacy, we will gladly as
| sist them, confident that the verdict
will be repeated and some other Car
| Isle will be speaker Of the Fifty-sixth
| congress.