The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-08-30
REPENTINC AT LEISURE

REPENTING AT LEISURE.
Senator Chandler, of New Hampshire
is one Republican who has manliness
enough to confess that it is to his dis
credit and shame that section % of
the Dingley tariff act was inserted in
the conference committees report and
passed through without notice. He &C
knoWledges his neglect of duty, and
says that all that he can do is to prom
Use to be more watchful hereafter.
There are a great many Republican
senators and representatives in New
England and in the Northwest who are
In the same frame of mind No man
who sat in either house Of congress
while the Dingley bill progressed to
nnal passage can escape his RESPONSE
b1l1ty. No senator or representative
from the Northwest or from New Eng
land dare face his constituents without
explaining his vote upon an act con-
tanning any section so diametricalIv
opposed to their most important inter-
ests. Every member, from Maine to
the Rocky mountains, needs to rise and
explain what must be either his treach-
cry or his neglect.
1t is no answer to this accusation to
say that this obnoxious section was
Overlooked" What are men sent to
congress for? Is it that they may get
through private pension bills and pri-
Vate claims against the treasury and
attend carefully to little local Jobs af-
fecting their districts, or are they to
have also a Watchful eye upon the ma
tional interests? Has any member a
valid excuse for being ignorant of the
contents of any bill for which his vote
is cast? We are reaping, in this case
the reward of the Republican system
of one-man government and of GAM
ming" bills through. We are eating
the rich fruits of the policy summed
up by Speaker Reed when he said con-
temptuously that congress sis not a
deliberative body" He spoke, alas. too
truly. In a deliberative BODY no such
section as this could have crept into
tariff or any other act without detec-
ton by the close scrutiny of hundreds
of eyes and exposure upon the floor of
the house. Men who have given their
consciences and their judgments. into
the absolute keeping of the car of the
house; men who have agreed to do ex-
actly what the committee on rules tells
hoy 70 a.
it fixes for them, without debate, with
out inquiry and without investigation.
cannot be expected to inform them
selves of the subject. matter upon
which they pass. Why should they?
They are not free agents. They do the
bidding of their masters, and it is one
of the privileges of serfdom that it at
least exempts the slave from response
bility.
1t appears that, in this case, even
the senate, with it's boasted freedom of
debate, was in no better case A COM
bination had been formed to pass the
Dingley bill. 1t was engineered by
Mark Hanna and composed of all the
men to fill out a majority. The mem
bers of it. like the representatives of
the house, We're no longer free agents.
1t mattered not to them what the bill
contained, because they were pledged
to vote for it. Therefore, there was no
examination in either house of the de-
tails of this act. Senators and repre-
sentatives abdicated their functions
and discharged their sworn duty to the
people. We do not doubt for one mo-
ment that, if there hal been added to
the Dingley bill in conference a sect ION
abolishing the right of trial by jury.
or decreeing that the property of a
certain citizen should be confiscated by
cuted on the east steps of the national
capitol, it would have received precise
ly the same vote that was given to sec
ton %, and for precisely the same rea-
son; namely, that those voting AYE"
were mere machines, registering the
will of superior power and both ig-
norant and careless of the contents of
that upon which they set the seal of
their approval. These men voted in
haste, and they are repenting at leis-
ure. The people whose interests they
failed to protect ought to give to them
abundant reasons for repentance and
throw in a little sackcloth and ashes
free of char ge Every man whose vote
was registered in favor of the Dinglel