Year: 1878

The first regular session of the
Forty-fifth Congress is approaching
its end. That body has many
claims to the gratitude of the people
of the United States. In the first
place, it has shown an energetic
disposition to favor retrenchment
in all possible ways. This econo-
my in the public expenditures is a
virtue which the Republican party
has never held in any esteem, but
1t is one which an impoverished
people appreciate very highly.
The Democratic House of Repre-
sentatives has made determined
fight to reduce the regular army
and it has succeeded in getting our
peace establishment down to
twenty thousand men-a reduction
Of five thousand men, whose main
tenance would have consumed
many millions of dollars. The
Democratic House of Representa-
tives has entire confidence in the
ability and patriotism of the Amer
lean people. 1t takes absolutely
no stock in the clamor about COM
munism. 1t regards a properly
organized State militia as bull
wark against any possible develop
ment of lawlessness. We much
mistake the signs of the times, or
the people sympaLhize very heart
lily with this view of the matter.


The next respect in which the
Democratic House of Representa-
tives has won the gratitude of the
masses is in throttling the specter
OF guarantee and subsidy. Under
the specious pretence of giving re-
lief to labor, and doing something
to establish an equipeise in public
expenditures between the North
and South, the Tom Scott guaran-
tee was advocated. The whole
scheme in underlaid with the prin-
ciple of doing evil that good may
come. Because the Credit Mobilier
Republican Congresses have dow
cred the Central and Union Pacific
Railways with royal largesses, it is
right that Tom Scott and his
friends should be similarly en-
riched, under the specious name
of "helping the South" Had
q majority of Democratic Con-
gressmen caught at this bait,
the party would have re-
ceived blow far heavier than any
which the Republicans have been
able to inflict upon it. The real
WY to ''help" the South is to re-
duce the tariff as much as possi-
BILE, to diminish the imports of the
Internal Revenue Bureau, to stop
the insane talk about again sub
jugating that unhappy section and
to leave its unfortunate people to
develop the riches of its fertile soil
in peace. The Democratic party
has assisted to make the South the
mistress of her own destiny; and,
in so doing, it has done twenty
times more for the South than
opening the floodgates of subsidy
and guarantee, after the Republi-
can fashion, would ever have done.
The Southern people know this
well. Whatever mistakes they
may have made, at times, the in
habitants of the South have al
ways been pre-eminently honest.
They boIe to our politics, before
the war, the relation of the salt to
the water In the ocean-they kept
them pecuniarily pure. In the
Texas Pacific guarantee, at the
best, the South was to be used SIM
ply as cats-paw TO pull the
chestnuts out of the fire for Tom
Scott and the ambitious business
men Of Philadelphia.


The third particular in which
the Democratic party has earned
the undying good will of self-re-
specting men Of all parties is in its
), plucky determination to lay bare
the frau Is of the last Pre- esdential
election. 1t really looked for n
time as If no one, of either party,
cared to assert the detiled majesty
of the nation. Had the atrocious
tran actions through which Hayes's
Cabi let and foreign ministers as
sisted to make him President
passed altogether without note Of
interest or reprobation, we should


hardly have gone through the
mockery of an election next time.
The majority must RUE in the
United States and elections must
be fair. In throwing Itself into
the breach to uphold this cardinal
republican doctrine, the Demo-
cratic party is not SO much par
tizan organization as the champi-
on of Republican institutions.


We might enumerate other
grounds on which the first session
~--mr- ~