Year: 1877

L
[Great applause.] 1 had, on one hand,
a course of laborious service, in which
health and even life might be imperil-
ed on the other hand 1 had period
of relaxation here and abroad to reeu-
perate from the exhaustion that in
your service l had incurred, but to the
} people it was a robbery of the dearest
rights of the American citizen. The
condemnation by the people of the
greatest political crime in our history,
by which the result of the presidential
election of 1876 was set aside and re-
versed, is general and overwhelming.
Her sister States might afford to have
the voice of New York frittered away
or its expression deferred. 1t could
not change history; it could not alter
the universal judgment of the civilized
world; it could not avert the moral
retribution that is impending. But
New York herself cannot afford to
have her voice unheard.


"The Declaration of Independence,
the bills of right and the State consti-
tutions all contain assertions Of the
right of the people to govern them
selves and to change their rulers at
will. These declarations had ceased
to have any meaning to the American
mind. They seemed to be truisms
which there was nobody to dispute.
The contests known tous were contests
between different portions of our peo-
pie.


"To comprehend the significance of
these declarations, it is necessary to
carry ourselves back to the examples
of human experience in view of which
our ancestors acted. They had seen
the governmental machine and small
governmental class, sometimes with
the aid of the army, able to rule arbi-
trarily over millions Of unorganized,
isolated atoms of human society. In
forming the government of United
States they endeavored to take every
precaution against the recurrence of
!


such evils in this country. They kept
down the standing army to a nominal
amount. They intended to limit the
functions of the federal government SO
as to prevent the growth to dangerous
dimensions of an ofice-holding class
and of corrupt influences. They pre-
served the State governments as a
counterpoise to act as centres of opin-
ions, and as organized means of resist
ance to revolutionary usurpation by
the federal government. Jefferson, the
leader of liberal opinion, in his first
inaugural recognized this theory
Hamilton, the representative of the
extreme conservative sentiment, in the
Federalist expounded it with elaborate
arguments. Madison, the father of the
constitution, enforced these conclusions.
"The increase of power in the fed
eral government during the last twenty
years, the creation of vast Office
holding class, with its numerous de-
pendents, and the growth of the means
of corrupt influence, have well nigh
DESTROYED the balance of our complex
system. It was my judgment in 1875
that public opinion, demanding a
change of administration, needed to
embrace two-thirds of the people at the
beginning of the canvass, in order to
cast majority of votes at the election.


eff this tendency is not arrested its
inevitable result will be the practical
destruction of our system. Let the
federal government grasp power over
the great corporations of our country
and acquire the means Of addressing
their interests and their fears let it
take jurisdiction of riots which it is the
duty Of the State to suppress; let it
find pretexts for increasing the army,
and soon those in possession of the
government will have a power with
which no opposition can successfully
compete. The experience of France
in the Third Napoleon shows that,
with elective forms and universal suf-
frage-despotism can be established and
maintained.


"In the canvass of 1876 the federal
government embarked in the contest
with unscrupulous activity. A MEM
Der of the cabinet was the head of a
partisan committed: Agents stood at
the doors Of the pay Offices to exact
contributions from official subordinates.
The whole ofice-holding class were
made to exhaust their power Even
the army, for the first time, to the dis
gust of the soldiers and many of the
officers, was moved about the country
as an electioneering instrument. All
this was done under the eye of the
beneficiary of it, who was making the
air vocal with professions of civil SER
vice reform, to be begun after he had
himself exhausted all the immoral ad-
vantages of civil service abuses.


"Public opinion in some States was
overborne by corrupt influences and