Year: 1869

by wear, and you are now gathered


together in this city to-day to organ
ize yourselves for one more final tri-
umph over this Democrat party, in
settling the last issue which the wal
has raised, the issue that | believe we
shall settle before the next election Is
ended.


Fellow citizens, as we progressed in
this contest, we came by and by to
find out that God, the God of nations
who looks down upon med rs his
children and asks them to be brethren,
had linked to our destiny the destiny OF
the black race on this continent, and
made us to know by signs hung out
i'm the heavens, that could not be mis-
taken, that we must give liberty to
the black race or lose it for ourselves
tllat we must do justice to all men,
or loose our own Government, and we
have tried to learn His lessons, and |
believe we have succeeded in learn
ing them at last.


Now, fellow citizens, this Demo-
cratic party has done more than this.
1t has attempted to attack the credit
of the nation. When it failed to
break down the valor of the army, ii
undertook to break down the faith OF
the nation and the credit of the Treas
ury. And l could detain you much
longer than will, in going over some
of the steps in the career of that Dem
ocratic party on all these financial
questions. Show me the place in the
career of that party where they have
not attempted TO cripple your Treas
uTy, and damage the strength of the
/ Government in every way that could
damage you. l do not think they de-
sired to destroy the Government be-
cause they hated it they tried to de-
stroy the Government because they
hated us. They would rather the
Treasury would break down than that
YOU and l should succeed in main
tanning it. TLey would rather the
! Government would be failure, than
that the Republican party should be a
success. And that, fellow citizens, is
a kind of moral treason with which
this Democratic party has been guilty
of up to the present hour.


THE FINANCIAL QUESTION.


Now, fellow citizens, 1 will ask your
attention only for a few moments to
a few facts in our financial situation.
| give them as the signs of hope and
encouragement to our party and to the
people. Gen. Grant came into power
on the 4th of March with n great
many difficulties to encounter. You
| know better than l can tell you the
sad, terrible history Andrew Johnson
wrote in the name of the Democracy
during the last two years and n half,
and if any party in the National Gov
eminent ever disgraced the nation by
their management of the affairs of it
/ that party has been the administra-
ton lately in power in all that 1t did
/ in the management of our affairs.


See how corruption ran riot through
out every department of the ENecu-
| tive Government at Washington.
Look through the revenue service,
look through the foreign service, look
through the whole civil service, over
/ loaded as it was with innumerable
men, more than the country needed
/ to do the necessary business. The
army was overloaded; the civil SER
vice was overloaded. In every place
where the partizans of Andrew john
son could be put into position, they
were put in and fed at the public crib.
And, fellow citizens, to such an extent
had the corruption gone in regard to
our revenues that good men every
where were beginning to despair, and
saying, 1--WE cannot collect the reve-
nue. at ALL" Why, think of it. Take
the single fact in regard to the tax on
whiskey-a tax that ought to have
brought us fifty or sixty millions a
year at the very lOwest-and the last
wear of Andrew Johnson's admins
| tration that great interest produced
for the Treasury but $4,000, 900.
| They did not collect the tax on one
gallon in five.


Why, sir, only five months before
Andrew Johnson went out of office, a
man offered s., 1000 to to be given the
Inspectorship of whiskey for the
six months following, and the posi-
ton is worth but S3, 900 year. How
was it that he was ready to pay $1,000
to get six months of a salary of $1,000
a year? / give that fact to illustrate
the depths of the corruption to which
the revenue service had fallen.
When General Grant came into Of
flee he reversed all this. The party
in power in Congress aided him in
n
past, and since General Grant came
into power, the Executive Depart
ment of the Government have aided
in putting the knife to the whole SER
vice and cutting it down to the low
est figure.


THE PROGRESS OF RETRENCHNIENT.


Congress passed a law during the
past winter reducing the army by
twenty regiments of infantry and in
many other ways and by careful COM
putatiOn the expenses of the army
have been reduced at the rate of ten
million a year. When the whole
force of the reduction takes effect, 1t
will cost you ten millions less to keep
up your army than it cost before. We
have been reducing in all departments
of the civil service. One week from
to-day a reduction takes place in the
Treasury Department, which will cost
five hundred thousand year less for
clerks in this service alone, than 1t
has done through the past. a similar
reduction is made in all the other de-
partments of the Government.


And now let me tell you what is
being done in regard to the collection
of the revenue. These men that have
hung about and fastened themselves
like leeches upon the public treasury
have been swept out by the new ad-
ministration. And what is the result
so far as the revenue is concerned? l
obtained, just before leaving Wash
ington, an official statement of the
course of the revenue as compared
with what it was before, and let me
give YOU some of the facts.


During the first three quarters of the
fiscal year our receipts into the Treas
ury were S256, 600, 900. During the
last quarter, which will end a week
from to-day, the receipts into the
Treasury will be 500, 900, ,000-only
S256, 100000 in three-quarters, and in
the remaining one-quarter SlOO,OOO,-
600, better by $50, 100000 than in any
other quarter of that year, and there
has been no increase in taxation. 1t
is the simple difference of an honest
collection of the revenue. And on
the score of expenditures, the eXpen-
ditures during the first three quarters
of the fiscal year were S256, 900, ,0OO.-
During the last quarter they were
only S6S, 900, 600, being more than
$40, 100000 less than in any other
quarter of the year. The year will
foot up in this way: 1851 900, 900 of
receipts; S324, 900, 600 of expenditures,
leaving a clean surplus of S37, 900, 900
in the Treasury for the year that will
end a week from to-day, and large
share of all that Surnlus has been