Year: 1878

!, ing the weight of your respectable name


and the influence of your sacred Office to


the assertion that thousands of offices


have been made solely to provide places


for friends of members of Congress, and


that millions of money are levied in tax


es upon the people annually to feed these
supple servants of some of our great men. "


When the proofreader replied to Horace


Greeleys reproaches for an incorrect


election return in the morning Tribune,


that he did not see the mistake, See it?'


retorted the angry editor, Il could smell


itH If you, Mr.. Hincks, believe your
startling statement, you have not suffi-
GENTLY keen scent for truth to be safe
spiritual adviser. If you do not believe
it, you become the slanderer of your
country and of the great mass of its pub
lie men-an inconceivable wickedness in
clergyman or layman. If you give it in
dorsement and circulation without know
ing it to be true, you assume the moral
responsibility of him who repeats evil
stories concerning his neighbor without
inquiring or caring whether they be true
or false.


| .... UNwARRANTED CHARGES.


Reverend sir, thousands of Offices"
must mean at least two thousand. Con-
fning your charge to its narrowest posi-
BILE limit, tell me of how many of these
two thousand offices made solely to pro-
vide places for members of Congress"
have you personal knowledge? Can you,
aided by all the slanderous informants
who have misled you, name one hundred
of these offices? Can you name fifty?
Can you name twenty-five? Will you
name ten2 Will you name five? l pray
you to name one. And when you name
it, will you add the particular name of
the particular Senator or Representative
who caused it to be created for his
friend2 Let US 60 to the very bottom of
this thing, Mr.. Hincks, and then we may
perhaps hope to ascend


Millions of money must mean at least
two millions. That is the annual inter
est on forty millions of our public debt
Do you see the magnitude of you accusa-
tion. the prodigious dimensions of the
statement it embraces? l await with i'm
| patience your proof or your retraction. l
am sure the Portland Advertiser will
gladly homer itself by obliging you and
| beg the same unknown friend who fur
nished me with your sermon to forward
me your manly justification or your still
more manly confession.


/ have confined your assertion to the
narrowest limits your language would al
low-two thousand offices, two millions
of money. Do you not know that the
popular acceptation would carry your as
sertions far beyond these figures? Did
you not intend that your meaning should
be unlimited if not illimitable? There
are no metes and bounds to falsehood
1t is only truth that is hemmed in by
rigid lines and impossible barriers.


Accepting these limitations of truth,
let me give the actual facts, which did





shocked me into a search for them which
put upon your statements a more mon
strous mendacity than even l suspected,
and which stand over against them so
palpably and defantly as to cast upon
them a shadow not only blackening but
baleful. l discover then, upon inquiry,
that Congressman whom you so dishon-
orably depict did, during the administra-
ton of President Grant, abolish more
than two thousand offices, and did de-
crease our taxes for the,salaries of officers
by far more than two millions per an
mum. | assert, on the authority of Off
cial and undeniable Reports, that as soon
as the war closed, the Republicans in
Congress began the great work of Re-
trenchment and that every Congress re-
duced enormously the number of offices.
and reduced taxation in every form; not
merely by "two millions" annually, but
by tens of millions, and-it will not
shock your large generic sense of arith-
metic to hear it-hundreds of millions
in the aggregate of the several years. So
that not merely is your statement unyer-
ihed, but the opposite of your statement
is true. Not only is it untrue that offices
were created and taxes levied for the
support of friends of Congressman, but
these very Congressman abolished by
the hundred and the thousand offices
held by their friends and repealed by
the tens of millions the taxes levied on
the people. Not only was this true un-
der President Grant; it was true under
the Republican Congresses of President
Johnsons time. Under every year of
both Johnson's and Grants administra-
tions, more Offices were abolished and
more taxes were repealed than during
the one year of President Hayes's adj
ministration.


To one who has so lofty a disdain for
facts, it is difficult to join logical issue in
argument. To maintain the total de-
pravity of Congress on the silver Bill |
you put laws of your own manufacture
into your country's code. To give your
self ground for assailing the relations of
Congressman to the Civil Service, you
stand before your people and create Of
noes Just at the point Wnere tney nave |
been notoriously abolished; you levy and !
increase taxes at the precise time when
they were diminished and repealed. |
Then you press valiantly through serried
columns of your own fancies to prove |
that Congress is corruptly aggregated |
through the instrumen tality of the Off |
GERS they control, and that this is "the
sure cause of the deterioration of Con-
gress.'


1.-THE DETERIORATION OF CONGRESS"


Is not this also fancy? You give no
reason for believing that Congress has
deteriorated, except that this Congress
has not voted according to your views on
finance, and l search your Scriptures in
vain for any Divine illumination. On
the contrary, have lately heard from
the lips of a venerable man, who has
been distinguished alike in the official,
the diplomatic and the literary world,
the declaration that Congress had steadi-
ly grown in its average ability; that dur
ing the forty years since he first entered
the public service, the number of capable


4 i r