Year: 1876

gantic sum of $4, 100000, 900; local taxation has amounted to two thirds as much more. The vast aggregate is not less thar $9, 500,000,000. This enormous taxation followed a civil conflict that had greatly impaired our aggregate wealth, and had made . prompt reduction of expenses indispensable. It was aggravated -by the most unscicntific and ill adjusted methods of taxation, that increased the sacrifices of the people far beyond the receipts of the Treasury. It was hggra- yated moreover by q financial | policy which tended to diminish the energy, skill and economy of 1 production, and the fruSality of private consumption, and induced miscalculations in business and the uhfcmunerative use of capital and labor. Even in prosperous times the daily wants of indus trious communities press closely upon their daily earnings. The margin, if possible, of natural savings is at the best small per centage of the national earn ings. Yet, now, fos thess eleven years, the governmental consump- tion has been larger portion of the national earnings than the whole people can possibly save, even in prosperous times for all new investments. The conse- qucnces of these errors are now q pressing public calamity, but they were never doubtful, never invisible. They were necessary and inevitable, and were seen and depicted when the waves of that fictitious prosperity ran the high est. In speech made by mo on the 24th of September, 1868, it was said of these taxes: "Thcy bear heavily upon every industry and every business in the coun- try, and year by year they are destined to press still more heav- fly unless We arrest the system that gives rise to them. It was comparatively easy when the val hes were doubling Under the re peatcd issues of legal tender paper money to pay out of the growth of our growing and appar- ent wealth these taxes, but when values recede and sink toward their natural scale, the tax gath ercr takes from us not only our income, not only our profits, but also q portion of our capital."

 do not wish to eXaggeratc or alarm, 1 simply say that we can not afford the costly and ruinous policy of the Radical majority of COngres; we cannot afford their policy toward the South; we can not afford the magnificent and oppressive centralism into which our government is being convert. ed; we cannot afford the present magnificent scale of taxation. To the Secretary of the Treasury 1 said early in 1865: "Therc is no royal road for a government more than for an individual or a cor poration. What you want to do now is to cut down your expenses and live within your income" l would give all the lcgerdcmain of fihGhce and financccring. would give the whole of it for the old hUmciy maxim: "Live within your income" This

 REFORM WILL BE RESISTED

 at every step, but it must be pressed consistently. We sec to- day the immediate representative of the people in one branch of Congress, while struggling to re ddce expenditures, compelled to confront the fiiciiace of the Sen ate and the executive; that unless the objectionable appropriations be consented to the operations of the Government hereunder shall suffer detriment or cease. In any judgment an amendment of the Constitution ought to be adopted separating into district bills appropriations for the va rious departments of the public service, and excluding from each bill all appropriations for other objects and all independent legis- lation. In that way alone can every power of each of the two houses and of the executive he preserved and exempted from the moral duress Which often compels assert to objectionable appropriations rather than to stop the wheels of government. An accessory cause enhancing distress in business is to be found in the systematic and insupportable government imp6sed on the States of the South. Besides the ordi nary effect of an ignoi'ttnt and dis honest administration, it has in flicted upon enormous issues of fraudulent bonds, the scanty avails of which were wasted or stolen, and the existence of which is a public discredit, tending to bankruptcy or rcpudiation. Tax es, generally oppressive, in some instances have confiscatcd the en- tire income of property, and total