Year: 1870

HIS baOIcaA Betrayal 1n Congress


Western Renegades 10 be Brought


10 Account.


The Republican party will undoubtedly
have as much as it can do to keep its ma
Jority IN the house of representatives. It
will lose in New York, and 1 suspect, in
every southern state, and will be hard
pushed IN Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio,
Missouri, and parts of Pennsylvania. By
the executive government and the senate,
1t will be able to hold the leading strings
of power fer at least three wears
more, but the experience of the past is
that the senate is ductile and malleable
body, seldom leaning far from the true SEN
timents of the lower house. Let the SEN
ate stand in the way Of a determined con-
gress and the noise of the people will ter
rify it as Wellington and his peers grew
pale before the roar of the reform party
With the senate against Andrew jackson,
it was never able to do more than to ilri-
tate him by rejecting few of his appoint
ments. The history of a senate against
the President is that it becomes corrupt
ed by his patronage, and of a senate
against the house, that it yields to intimi-
dation and the wilt of the country.


l say, therefore, that the change of the
lower house is equivalent to a general
change of policy and expenditure, a change
of majority in the house at present might
be substantially Republican victory
Much of the present congress is Republi-
can only in name and organization The
purposes for which the party was organi-
zed, and the spirit which animated it, are
retained by a minority of the Republicans
in Congress only. The Republican party
was the party of free homesteads, but this
Congress has swept down the homestead
system, and substituted the land monopo-
ly system. The Republican party was
the party Of no section, but of national
freedom, this Congress considers Pennsyl-
vanla to be the Union, and insulation to
be enlightenment The Republican party
was the party of all, but this Congress has
represented a few, and they not those
whose daily cry IS, What shall we eat,
and what shall we drink, and wherewithal
shall we be clothed p The Republican
party set up a new man as the type of a
State, and asked that he be unrestrained
in his industries, adventures and enterpri-
ses, and be left free to establish confedera-
cies of freemen like himself in his own way,
the majority of Congress would create a
State modelled upon its own pet theories
and private interests, and compel the man
to inhabit it and conform to it. This is
the Repubhcanism of a majority of Con-
gress, a set of inventive bureaucrats, and
mice" in every drawer of the bureau
Let these take their involved piece of cab
met ware which they have named the New
Nation, and preach upon it for text
Those men who have sold or misrepresen-
ted the manhood of the west are now to
come face to face with their constituents,
and it is no funeral of the Republican par
ty if they be elected to stay at home. Let
these questions be put to them:


l. How many bills have you favored
to take our homsteads and give them to
railways2


2. What protection can you give to a
man on the open prairie, menaced all
round by combinations of Indians, capt.
alists, tariff and transportion monopolies


3. How much has your vote lightened
my taxes and the cost ofmy salt, clothing,
lumber, &C.?


4 Have I, with my 16O acres and
nothing else, been as much considered by
and yours as the man with stream and
mill?


8. Have you been taking care of me
according to my notions or according to
the notions of the gentleman on the other
side of the Alleghanies7


6. Have you voted for any subsidy,
drawback, grant, foreign island, bounty,
increased tax or discriminating duty?


T. Produce the record of your votes.
venture the prophecy that in all the States
where the Republican delegations can
meet these questions, Republicans will
come back to the next Congress. And
where the delegation cannot answer them,
disaster will fall upon like the Philistines
upon Saul


The administration, by which We mean
the executive government-President and
cabinet, Vice President and Speaker of the
House-will have little influence upon the
election of the next Congress. None of
them have defined any position upon the
questions propounded The President has
signed whatever railroad bills have got up
to him. He has, apparently, very crude
and sophomore ideas of what Republi-
can State ought to be- The Vice Presi-
dent has been silent and can therefore be
quoted neither for good nor evil. The
Speaker Of the House would be low tar
iff man, even If he were a good politician,
but small is the help his committees have
given the Republican party. The cabinet
has the merit of harmony, but it has not
probably filed the measure of expectation
and has certainly failed to strike the en-
thusiasm of the people. The consequence
is that the next election will be a popular
election, pure and simple, every district
selecting a Congressman for itself, and
concerning itself little about past issues
| Upon that next Congress will depend the
fate Of the Republican party in 1872.