Santa Fe daily New Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1885-1897, 1896-01-29
PRESS COMMENT.
Arraign the Guilty.

Democrats now begin to see what OPP
portunities they have been neglecting.
In politics there is no exception to the
rule that attack is better than defense.
Democratic leaders have not only in
vited attack, but have weakened their de-
Tense by internal feuds.
All the logic of facts makes the Repub-
lican party the apologist.
If there is evil in issuing bonds to
maintain the redemption of currency
notes, the Republican party forced the
government into the market as a Dor
ROVER.
If it is revenue deficiency which
causes the treasury's embarrassment the
Republican party spent the surplus and
pulled the ends of income and expendi-
ture apart.
If the currency is botch, the Republi-
cans are its makers.
1t ia on record that Republican presi-
dent ordered a Republican secretary of
the treasury to prepare plates for issuing
bonds long before Mr.. Cleveland was in
augurated. The order is on file in the
treasury department.
In the campaigns of two years the Re
publicans have carried on with great sue
cess an aggressive fight with no better
material than the falsehood that Demo-
cratic president is responsible for Repub-
lcan criminality.
There could have been no such success
if Dem ocratic leaders had taken their
posts and discharged their duties as polit-
lcal soldiers with ordinary ability. The
huge central falsehood which was the key
of the whole Republican strength would
have been demolished with one deter
mined and solid advance of the men elect
ed by the Democratic party to enlarge its
power by proving its rectitude.
John Sherman may shift to either posi-
tion-may charge that bonds are issued
to supply revenue deficiencies or admit
that they are used to maintain the cur
rency reserve.
His party robbed the treasury. If the
Mckinley law had remained, there would
still be difficulty in meeting expenditures
with taxation.
His own name branded Republican
law which piled $l50,000,000 new notes
on the gold reserve; a law which in pre-
else terms, by a clause enioining exact
parity of gold, silver and paper, COM
pslled the secretary of the treasury to
treat the bullion as merchandise and the
notes as charge on the gold reserve.
Let him choose. The glazing fraud of
the Republican argument is apparent
either way. If the bonds were issued only
to protect the gold reserve, and if the
gold was depleted because there was
doubt in regard to the currency standard,
Republican legislation raised the doubt
by increasing the debt standing against
the reserve and passed the law which
ordered the government to issue bonds
whenever necessary to maintain the re-
demption of notes. Revenue deficiency
or gold reserve deficiency, whichever it is,
Republicans made it, and by the official
confession of their last president pleaded
guilty prior to the evil financial days of
1898.
There has been plausibility ia their
fraud. The worst consequences of their
wickedness and folly fell upon the nation
after the Inauguration of Democratic
president. But if Democratic leaders
had been true to their party's welfare, the
people would never have been imposed
upon by shallow plausibility. One set
of them helped the Republicans in the
western friends of silver.
Another set helped western Republican
candidates by abusing the president for
doing what unrepealed laws compelled
him to do. 1t was perhaps, impossible
for Clev Gland and the majority of west
ern Democrats to agree upon the curren-
.cy standard. But neither element of the
Democratic party is chargeable with the
financial troubles of the government.
These troubles are of Republican manu-
facture. Waste, corruption, selling bonds
to syndicates, currency botches, taxation
imposed without referency to revenue
and expenditures not for needs, but to
get rid of all the money raised by e1ces-
sive taxation-not one of these sins is
Democratic ard their inevitable penal
ties of national suffering can not justly
be visited on any Democrat
Make the Democratic campaign aggres-
sive. Hold the wreckers to their culpa
bility. Atone for Democratic negligence
of the Democratic party in 1894 and 1895
with concerted energy in behalf of the
party this year. AS long as the bad ef-
fects of Republican legislation last the
Democratic tactics should be attack. If
we have lost lately and lost much by for
getting the lessons of political general
ship, it is still possible to retrieve rapid
ly everything and to be at the end of the
cam paign of 1896 where we we're when
the people judged the two parties in 1892.